单选题Inflation can destroy the fabric of society by adversely affecting fixed income groups. A．stability B．perplexity C．evolution D．structure

单选题 Good news is bad news and bad news is good news, newsmen often say to one another. And when you look at the media it's only too easy to see what they mean. A dictionary definition of the media is mass communications, e.g. the press, television, radio. The media sees its main purpose as giving the public news. Naturally to provide the public with news it has first to gather it. The whole function and purpose of the media, then seem to depend on the word "news", but more important, on how the word is interpreted. The media, like any big business venture today, is an extremely competitive world of its own. In providing material for its public it has constantly to make sure it serves the right diet. No public will waste time on your paper or your TV channel otherwise. The sad truth is that there seems only one way to catch an audience—hit them right between the eyes. What started as a mild tap has now become a sledgehammer blow that goes by the name of sensationalism. A reporter chooses—has to choose—a news story because of its sensation value. The young inexperienced cub reporter rings his news editor about a car crash. He starts to explain the details to him but the experienced editor asks the cub one question: "Anyone killed?" and to himself he thinks, why do we offer jobs to children? One may accuse newsman of cynicism but they will quickly remind you of the hard facts of survival in the world of the media. The favorite words the newspaper place cards in the streets bombard the public with are, "Surprise, Sensation, Drama, Shock". You wonder, put an end to sensation long ago. As a regular newspaper reader you also thank Heavens for the light relief of the comic strips. Turn finally from them to what is referred to laughingly as "steam radio", in order to show its relative antiquity. This for many millions of people is the only live contact they have with the outside world that rightly or wrongly they have been led to believe they should have contact with. It's extremely hard of course to see why, when for the most part its news services bring them tragedy, disaster, heartbreak, other people's misfortunes—in a word, trouble. What again becomes quickly apparent is that a man's job depends on sensationalism, and we are asked to excuse him for this. Perhaps the media hasn't quite grown up and we should congratulate it on getting this far. The year 2000 may see great changes in the way news is presented to us. Again, who knows, it might even get worse—if such a thing is possible. Perish the thought!

单选题Directions: In this section, you will hear nine short conversations between two speakers. At the end of each conversation a question will be asked about what was said. The conversations and the questions will be read only once. Choose the best answer from the four choices given by marking the corresponding letter with a single bar across the square brackets on your machine-scored Answer Sheet.

单选题The study of genetics has given rise to a profitable new Industry called biotechnology. As the name suggests, it blends biology and modern technology through such techniques as genetic engineering. Some of the new biotech companies, as they are called, specialize in agriculture and are working enthusiastically to patent seeds that give a high yield, that resist disease, drought, and frost, and that reduce the need for hazardous chemicals. If such goals could be achieved, it would be most beneficial. But some have raised concern about genetically engineered crops. "In nature, genetic diversity is created within certain limits, " says the book Genetic Engineering, Food, and Our Environment. "A rose can be crossed with a different kind of rose, but a rose will never cross with a potato..." Genetic engineering, on the other hand, usually involves taking genes from one species and inserting them into another in an attempt to transfer a desired property or character. This could mean, for example, selecting a gene which leads to the production of a chemical with antifreeze properties from an arctic fish, and joining it into a potato or strawberry to make it frost-resistant. It is now possible for plants to be engineered with genes taken from bacteria, viruses, insects, animals or even humans. In essence, then, biotechnology allows humans to break the genetic walls that separate species. Like the green revolution, what some call the gene revolution contributes to the problem of genetic uniformity----some say even more so because geneticists can employ techniques such as cloning and tissue culture, processes that produce perfectly identical copies, or clones. Concerns about the erosion of biodiversity, therefore, remain. Genetically altered plants, however, raise new issues, such as the effects that they may have on us and the environment. "We are flying blindly into a new era of agricultural biotechnology with high hopes, few constraints, and little idea of the potential outcomes," said science writer Jeremy Rifkin.

单选题The ______ appeal and profound influence of these classical novels are far beyond doubt. A. insistent B. intolerable C. clumsy D. enduring

单选题I had the privilege of watching many patients {{U}}restoring{{/U}} their sight after many years of blindness. A. regaining B. revising C. remarking D. recruiting

单选题Whywasthewomanwatchingare-runprogramonTV?A.BecauseshelikesoldprogramsonTV.B.Becauseshewasverybored.C.Becauseshehadmissedtheprogramearlier.D.Becauseshedoesn'tlikeoutdooractivities.

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单选题It is generally believed that money can always bring happiness, but studies and surveys have proved that this is a {{U}}myth{{/U}}. A. fairy tale B. absolute truth C. mistaken idea D. big controversy

单选题Upon finding her son missing, the lady was {{U}}utterly{{/U}} at a loss what to do. A. partially B. impartially C. entirely D. incidentally

单选题Bill Clinton rose to prominence after he was elected ______ of Arkansas at age 32 in 1978.

单选题 In the United States it is not customary to telephone someone very early in the morning. If you telephone him early in the day, while he is shaving or having breakfast, the time of call shows that the matter is very important and requires immediate attention. The same meaning is attached to telephone calls made after 11：00 p. m.. If someone receives a call during sleeping hours, he assumes it is a matter of life or death. The time chosen for the call communicates its importance. In social life, time plays a very important part. In the United States, guests tend to feel they are not highly regarded if the invitation to a dinner party is extended only three or four days before the party date. But this is not true in all countries. In other areas of the world, it may be considered foolish to make an appointment too far in advance because plans, which are made for a date more than a week away, tend to be forgotten. The meanings of time differ in different parts of the world. Thus, misunderstandings arise between people from cultures that treat time differently. Promptness is valued highly in American life, for example. If people are not prompt, they may be regarded as impolite or not fully responsible. In the U.S. no one would think of keeping a business associate waiting for an hour, it would be too impolite. When equals meet, a person who is five minutes late is expected to make a short apology. If he is less than five minutes late, he will say a few words of explanation, though perhaps he will not complete the sentence. To Americans, forty minutes of waiting is the beginning of the "insult period" . No matter what is said in apology, there is little that can remove the damage done by an hour's wait. Yet in some other countries, a forty minutes' waiting period was not unusual. Instead of being the very end of the allowable waiting scale, it was just the beginning. Americans look ahead and are concerned almost entirely with the future. The American idea of the future is limited, however. It is the foreseeable future and not the future of the South Asian, which may involve centuries. Someone has said of the South Asian idea of time: "Time is like a museum with endless halls and rooms. You, the viewer, are walking through the museum in the dark, holding a light to each scene as you pass it. God is in charge of the museum, and only He knows all that is it. One lifetime represents one room" Since time has different meanings in different cultures, communication is often difficult. We will understand each other a little better if we can keep this fact in mind.

单选题Some scientists are trying to eliminate malaria by developing a GM mosquito that can"t transmit the disease.

单选题There have been some insensible people who attempt to end their pains through suicide. A. by and large B. once for all C. heart and soul D. on the whole

单选题At that time, there was a wealth of evidence that Japan was planning war in the Pacific. A. abundant B. valuable C. expensive D. priceless

单选题 CARDINAL MEZZOFANTI of Bologna was a saint who was said to speak 72 languages. No one was certain of the true Figure, but it was a lot. Visitors flocked from all corners of Europe to test him and came away stunned. Two condemned prisoners were due to be executed, but no one knew their language to hear their confession. Mezzofanti learned it in a night, heard their sins the next morning and saved them from hell. Or so the legend goes. In Babel No More, Michael Erard has written the first serious book about the people who master vast numbers of languages. A journalist with some linguistics training, Mr. Erard is not a {{U}}hyperpolyglot{{/U}} himself, but he approaches his topic with both wonder and a healthy dash of skepticism. To find out whether anyone could really learn so many languages, Mr. Erard set out to find modern Mezzofantis. The people he meets are certainly interesting. One man with a mental age of nine has a vast memory for foreign words and the use of grammatical endings, but he cannot seem to break free of English word-order. Ken Hale, who was a linguist at MIT and died in 2001, was said to have learned 50 languages. Professional linguists still swear by his talent. But he insisted he spoke only three and could merely "talk" in others. Mr. Erard says that true hyperpolyglottery begins at about 11 languages, and that while legends abound, tried and tested exemplars are few. Hyperpolyglots are likely to be introverted, which may come as a surprise to some. Hale's son always said that, in his father's case, languages were a cloak for a shy man. Emil Krebs, a German diplomat who was also. credited with knowing dozens of languages, was rude in all of them. He once refused to speak to his wife for several months because she told him to put on a winter coat. At the end of his story, however, Erard finds a surprise in Mezzofanti's archive: flashcards. Stacks of them in twelve tongues. The world's most celebrated hyperpolyglot relied on the same tools given to first-year language-learners today. The conclusion? Hyperpolyglots may begin with talent, but they aren't geniuses. They simply enjoy tasks that are tedious to normal people. The talent and enjoyment drive a virtuous cycle that pushes them to feats others simply shake their heads at.

单选题Passage Five Before the arrival of the internet, computer files were exchanged via storage media such as floppy disks (软盘) which were sent by post or delivered by foot, bike, car or train. After the appearance of the internet, a term was invented for such exchange of information: the sneakernet. Now that the internet is established, and our connections have become faster, the sneakernet sounds outmoded. Nevertheless, the opposite is true when larger files are considered. Because storage media evolve much faster than internet connections, it becomes ever more interesting to choose the route of physical transport over the internet. One of the routes is via carrier pigeon(信鸽). This may sound ridiculous (and it has been a popular joke for many years), but thanks to shrinking storage media, the speed and capacity of the pigeon internet promises to become quite amazing. A well trained contemporary carrier pigeon can maintain a speed of 50 kilometres an hour over a distance of 600 kilometres, and carry a weight of 1 gram. One gram does not seem to be much, but this weight can already contain quite some data. For instance, the Transcend Micro SD card weighing 1 gram has a capacity of 2 gigabytes. Compared to a fibre connection, the pigeon has to surrender quite fast. This internet connection only needs 2.6 minutes to send 2 gigabytes. A carrier pigeon only flies 2 kilometres far in that time. A carrier pigeon is thus faster than a fibre connection when the distance is shorter than 2 kilometres. A broadband connection needs 4 hours to send 2 gigabytes, while the pigeon can reach a distance of 200 kilometres in 4 hours. This means that sending 2 gigabytes of information from Amsterdam to Brussels goes faster by carrier pigeon than by a broadband connection. A dial-up connection needs 3.3 days to send 2 gigabytes, so in that case, the pigeon (flying 600 km per day) is faster than the internet up to a distance of about 2,000 kilometres. The bandwidth of a carrier pigeon increases faster than the bandwidth of the internet. Ten years in the future, a pigeon will be able to carry 2 terabytes (around 2,000 gigabytes). Our fibre connection will need 8.5 minutes for sending that amount of data. The carrier pigeon is then faster than a fibre connection if the distance is less than 7 kilometres-compared to 2 kilometres today.

单选题Directions: There are 10 questions in this part of the test. Read the passage through. Then, go back and choose one suitable word or phrase marked A, B, C, or D for each blank in the passage. Mark the corresponding letter of the word or phrase you have chosen with a single bar across the square brackets on your machine-scored Answer Sheet. There are two primary causes of traffic accidents, those that are caused by the driver and those that are environmental and outside the driver's control. {{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}environmental issues like weather or poor road maintenance may cause an accident, statistically these are far less likely to do so. Driver distractions prove to be the main cause of accidents. The most {{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}distractions are looking at traffic, crashes and roadside incidents. While it is widely believed that cell phones are a greater cause, cell phones only {{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}sixth on the list. {{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}, laws to limit cell phone use while driving do not decrease accidents. Hands-free phones are {{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}}than hand-held devices. Alcohol was a factor in at least 41 percent of all fatal crashes. Alcohol {{U}} {{U}} 6 {{/U}} {{/U}}affects vision, reaction time and attention of the driver, and decreases overall driving performance. Fatigue {{U}} {{U}} 7 {{/U}} {{/U}}100,000 vehicle crashes per year, killing {{U}} {{U}} 8 {{/U}} {{/U}}1,500 people and injuring 71,000 people. Accidents caused by fatigue are particularly {{U}} {{U}} 9 {{/U}} {{/U}}for truck drivers and others taking long-haul driving trips. Speeding is another major cause of traffic accidents, particularly for younger or newer drivers. Teens are more likely to speed, and among male drivers aged 15 to 20 who were {{U}} {{U}} 10 {{/U}} {{/U}}a fatal crash in 2005, 37 percent were speeding at the time of the crash.

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单选题The patient"s unusual symptoms confounded even the most experienced doctor of the hospital.