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Volcanic fire and glacial ice are natural enemies. Eruptions at glaciated volcanoes typically destroy ice fields, as they did in 1980 when 70% of Mount Saint Helens ice cover was demolished. During long dormant intervals, glaciers gain the upper hand cutting deeply into volcanic cones and eventually reducing them to rubble. Only rarely do these competing forces of heat and cold operate in perfect balance to create a phenomenon such as the steam caves at Mount Rainier National Park.Located inside Rainier’s two ice-filled summit craters, these caves form a labyrinth of tunnels and vaulted chambers about one and one-half miles in total length. Their creation depends on an unusual combination of factors that nature almost never brings together in one place. The cave-making recipe calls for a steady emission of volcanic gas and heat, a heavy annual snowfall at an elevation high enough to keep it from melting during the summer, and a bowl-shaped crater to hold the snow.Snow accumulating yearly in Rainier’s summit craters is compacted and compressed into a dense form of ice called firm, a substance midway between ordinary ice and the denser crystalline ice that makes up glaciers. Heat rising from numerous opening (called fumaroles) along the inner crater walls melts out chambers between the rocky walls and the overlying ice pack. Circulating currents of warm air then melt additional openings in the firm ice, eventually connecting the individual chambers and, in the larger of Rainier’s two craters, forming a continuous passageway that extends two-thirds of the way around the crater s interior.To maintain the cave system, the elements of fire under ice must remain in equilibrium. Enough snow must fill the crater each year to replace that melted from below. If too much volcanic heat is discharged, the crater’s ice pack will melt away entirely and the caves will vanish along with the snows of yesteryear. If too little heat is produced, the ice, replenished annually by winter snowstorms, will expand, pushing against the enclosing crater walls and smothering the present caverns in solid firn ice.31. With what topic is the passage mainly concerned?32. According to the passage, long periods of volcanic inactivity can lead to a volcanic cone’s .33. The second paragraph mentions all of the following as necessary elements in the creation of steam caves EXCEPT .34. According to the passage, heat from Mount Rainier’s summit craters rises from .35. “smothering” (Paragraph 4) means .

Bank of America, holding company for the San Francisco-based Bank of America, was once unchallenged as the nation’s biggest banking organization. At its peak, it had more branches in California, 1,100, than the U.S. Postal Service. It was also a highly profitable enterprise. But since 1980, Bank of America’s earnings have been down or flat. From March 1985 to March 1986, for example, earnings per share dropped 50.8 percent. Samuel H. Armacost, president and CEO, has confessed that he doesn’t expect a turnaround soon.Some of Bank of America’s old magic seems to have rubbed off on New York’s Citibank, perennial rival for top banking honors. Thanks to aggressive growth policies, Citicorp’s assets topped Bank of America’s for the first time in 1983 and by a healthy margin. Citibank has also been generating profits at a fast clip, enabling it to spend lavishly on campaigns to enter new markets — notably Bank of America’s turf in California.The bad times Bank of America is currently facing are partly the result of the good times the bank enjoyed earlier. Based in a large and populous state and operating in a regulated environment, Bank of America thrived. Before deregulation, banks could not compete by offering savers a higher return, so they competed with convenience. With a branch at every crossroads, Bank of America was able to attract 40 percent of the California deposit market — a source of high earnings when the legal maximum payable to depositors was much lower than the interest on loans.The progressive deregulation of banking forced Bank of America to fight for its customers by offering them competitive rates. But how could this mammoth bureaucracy, with its expensive overhead, offer rates as attractive as its loaner competitors? Pruning the establishment was foremost in the minds of Bank of America policymakers. But cutbacks have proceeded slowly. Although the bank is planning to consolidate by offering full services only in key branches, so far only about 40 branches have been closed. Cutbacks through attrition have reduced the work force from 83,000 to fewer than 73,000; wholesale layoffs, it seems, would not fit the tradition of the organization. And they would intensify the morale problems that already threaten the institution.26. According to the passage, New York’s Citibank .27. Which of the following is NOT the reason for which Bank of America thrived?28. The phrase “mammoth bureaucracy” (Line 2, Paragraph 4) refers to .29. Now the most important factor for a bank to win in competition seems to be __.30. Which of the following conclusions can’t be drawn from the passage?

The mental health movement in the United States began with a period of considerable enlightenment. Dorothea Dix was shocked to find the mentally ill in jails and almshouses and crusaded for the establishment of asylums in which people could receive humane care in hospital-like environments and treatment which might help restore them to sanity. By the mid 1800s, 20 states had established asylums, but during the late 1800s and early 1900s, in the face of economic depression, legislatures were unable to appropriate sufficient funds for decent care. Asylums became overcrowded and prison-like. Additionally, patients were more resistant to treatment than the pioneers in the mental health field had anticipated, and security and restraint were needed to protect patients and others. Mental institutions became frightening and depressing places in which the rights of patients were all but forgotten.These conditions continued until after World War II. At that time, new treatments were discovered for some major mental illnesses theretofore considered untreatable (penicillin for syphilis of the brain and insulin treatment for schizophrenia and depressions), and a succession of books, motion pictures, and newspaper exposes called attention to the plight of the mentally ill. Improvements were made and Dr. David Vail’s Humane Practices Program is a beacon for today. But changes were slow in coming until the early 1960s. At that time, the Civil Rights movement led lawyers to investigate America’s prisons, which were disproportionately populated by blacks, and they in turn followed prisoners into the only institutions that were worse than the prisons—the hospitals for the criminally insane. The prisons were filled with angry young men who, encouraged by legal support, were quick to demand their rights. The hospitals for the criminally insane, by contrast, were populated with people who were considered “crazy” and who were often kept obediently in their place through the use of severe bodily restraints and large doses of major tranquilizers. The young cadre of public interest lawyers liked their role in the mental hospitals. The lawyers found a population that was both passive and easy to champion. These were, after all, people who, unlike criminals, had done nothing wrong. And in many states, they were being kept in horrendous institutions, an injustice, which once exposed, was bound to shock the public and, particularly, the judicial conscience. Patients’ rights groups successfully encouraged reform by lobbying in state legislatures.Judicial intervention has had some definite positive effect, but there is growing awareness that courts cannot provide the standards and the review mechanisms that assure good patient care. The details of providing day-to-day care simply cannot be mandated by a court, so it is time to take from the courts the responsibility for delivery of mental health care and assurance of patient rights and return it to the state mental health administrators to whom the mandate was originally given. Though it is a difficult task, administrators must undertake to write rules and standards and to provide the training and surveillance to assure that treatment is given and patient rights are respected.21. The main purpose of the passage is to .22. The author’s attitude toward people who are patients in state institutions can best be described as .23. It can be inferred from the passage that, if the Civil Rights movement hadn’t prompted an investigation of prison conditions, .24. The tone of the final paragraph can best be described as .25. According to the passage, mental hospital conditions were radically changed because of __.

World leaders need to take action on the energy crisis that is taking shape before our eyes. Oil prices are (1) and it looks less and less likely that this is a bubble. The price of coal has doubled. Countries as far apart as South Africa and Tajikistan are (2) by power cuts. Rich states, no longer strangers to periodic blackouts (断电), are worried about (3) of energy supply. In the developing world, 1.6 billion people—around a quarter of the human race—have no (4) to electricity.I believe that fundamental changes are (5) in the energy field whose significance we have not yet fully grasped. Global (6) for energy is rising fast as the population increases and developing countries such as China and India (7) dramatic economic growth. The International Energy Agency (IEA) says the world’s energy needs could be 50% (8) in 2030 than they are today. Yet the fossil fuels on which the world still depends are (9) and far from environmentally friendly. Serious thought needs to be given now to creating feasible (10). The need for coordinated political action on energy and related (11)—climate change and alleviating poverty, to name but two—has never been more (12). Yet there is no global energy (13) in which the countries of the world can agree (14) joint solutions to the potentially enormous problems we see (15).So does the world really need yet another international organization? (16), yes. A global energy organization would (17), not replace, bodies already active in the energy field. It would bring a vital inter-governmental (18) to bear on issues which cannot be left to (19) forces alone, such as the development of new energy technology, the role of nuclear power and innovative solutions for reducing pollution and greenhouse gas (20).

Directions: Carefully read the following passage and write a short composition of about 250 to 300 words. You should write the composition on the ANSWER SHEET. Note that your score will be awarded mainly on the base of content, logic, style and language. (30 points)The five-game clash pitting man against machine was over in March 2016, with Google’s artificial intelligence program winning the series. The program—called AlphaGo—took four of five games against Korean Lee Sedol, an 18-time world champion of the board game Go.[Note: Go 围棋]Why is this achievement of science helpful or disastrous to human beings? An argumentative is expected to support your viewpoint.

Directions: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Your translation should be written neatly on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)Your Smartphone Has Officially Hijacked Your Life(46) It’s time for you to take step No.1 and acknowledged that there is a problem that you are powerless to resolve—that the moment you and your date finish ordering dinner you pull out your smartphones and start texting so you don’t have to face the possibility of silence; that you have come to believe that you more-or-less actually have read War and Peace because you read the plot summary on Wikipedia; that you find out what your kid is up to not by talking to her but by monitoring her Facebook page; (47) that at work you simply cannot go more than 10 minutes without surreptitiously checking email no matter how much else you have to do—and that if there are no new messages you feel like a total loser; that you’re always taking pictures of yourself with your friends so you can check on how good you look; that you cheat on the crossword puzzle; that even though you’re married you are always assessing your market value on match.com—which is not cheating, right?(48) But think of the upsides. You can never get lost anymore, you always know how to pack for wherever it is you’re going. You deal with fewer mediocre meals, fewer hotels with lousy service. There are no ticket lines for the movie, no need for pick-up lines at bars or excruciating intro Q-and-As at parties, no risk of boredom as you play Temple Run or check stock prices between subway stops. (49) Gone is the frustration of not being able to identify the song you’re hearing, or the inadequacy of not knowing the meaning of the acronym that the know-it-all in the next office used at yesterday’s staff meeting. Instant expertise on every subject, and all the data you could imagine to back up your own personal convictions about the evils of gluten, delivered to your brain in predigested paragraphs. Camera at the ready for every photo op, voice recorder for whatever idea pops into your head and out of your mouth. (50) So what if your attention span has been fragmented into nanoseconds, if you measure your social life by Facebook friends, your professional worth by Google hits, and the worst words you can imagine are “airplane mode”?We are all one-marshmallow OCD narcissists, granted by our devices the magic of comprehensive instant gratification, of self-reinforcing world views, of control over the daily minutia of our fates and fortunes. To not be irrevocably addicted to our smartphones would be senseless.That being said, why is it that the essence of our app-mediated existence seems so eerily reminiscent of some of our most famous and enduring visions of dystopia?

Directions: In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list A-F to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There is one extra choice, which does not fit in any of the blanks. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)It’s a big moment for Bitcoin. (41) Senior economist Francois R. Velde wrote an elegant critique of the four-year-old currency, explaining its mechanics, limitations, and prospects for success, ultimately deeming it a “remarkable conceptual and technical achievement, which may well be used by existing financial institutions.” (42)(43) Producing a bitcoin “at current levels of difficulty requires a machine worth about $3,000 and about a dollar’s worth of electricity per day,” meaning the cost of producing one bitcoin, taking into account the machine’s depreciation over five years, is about $2.50. While the estimate seems to discount the steadily rising cost to higher-powered machines that are necessary for more complex hashing and the pools of machines necessary for mining—with Bitcoins currently valued at 100 times that, you can see why companies offering ‘mining’ equipment are doing such good business.Velde points out that there is $1,200 billion circulating in U.S. currency compared to $1 billion in Bitcoin (when he authored the December 2013 paper). (44) But even given that, Bitcoin is a “relatively small phenomenon,” as Velde puts it. “But it has been growing,” he writes. “The value of a bitcoin has increased tenfold since early 2013.”To further put it into the context of the larger economy, he writes that “there are on average about 30 bitcoin transactions per minute” vs. 200,000 Visa transactions per minute, and that the average bitcoin transaction size is “about 16, i.e., on the order of $2, 000” while “the average Visa transaction is about $80.” (45) (Of course, every once in a while someone might drop a cool mil on mining gear.)“So far, the uses of bitcoin as a medium of exchange appear limited, particularly if one excludes illegal activities,” notes Velde. “It has been used as a means to transfer funds outside of traditional and regulated channels and, presumably, as a speculative investment opportunity.”A. Velde starts out by laying out the numbers.B. For those who have pondered what bitcoin actually is—currency vs. stock vs. money—Velde has an answer.C. If this were Economic Mean Girls, this is the part of the movie where Lindsay “Bitcoin” Lohan gets friended by the powerful, popular crowd.D. At that level of spending, it’s fairly obvious that most of the activity happening in Bitcoin is not actually buying things (as I did in May), but rather trading.E. Thanks to a recent price surge to over $250, the market cap for the nearly 12 million Bitcoin in existence is now well over $3 billion.F. The digital currency has gotten an official nod from the overseer of U.S. currency in the form of a primer out of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Helplessness and passivity are central themes in describing human depression. Laboratory experiments with animals have uncovered a phenomenon designated “learned helplessness.” Dogs given inescapable shock initially show intense emotionality, but later become passive in the same situation. When the situation is changed from inescapable to escapable shock, the dogs fail to escape even though escape is possible. Neurochemical changes resulting from learned helplessness produce an avoidance-escape deficit in laboratory animals.Is the avoidance deficit caused by prior exposure to inescapable shock learned helplessness or is it simply stress-induced noradrenergic deficiency leading to a deficit in motor activation? Avoidance-escape deficit can been produced in rats by stress alone, i.e., by a brief swim in cold water. But a deficit produced by exposure to extremely traumatic events must be produced by a very different mechanism than the deficit produced by exposure to the less traumatic uncontrollable aversive events in the learned-helplessness experiments. A nonaversive parallel to the learned helplessness induced uncontrollable shock, e.g., induced by uncontrollable food delivery, produces similar results. Moreover, studies have shown the importance of prior experience in learned helplessness. Dogs can be “immunized” against learned helplessness by prior experience with controllable shock. Rats also show a “mastery effect” after extended experience with escapable shock. They work far longer trying to escape from inescapable shock than do rats lacking this prior mastery experience. Conversely, weanling rats given inescapable shock fail to escape shock as adults. These adult rats are also poor to nonaversive discrimination learning.Certain similarities have been noted between conditions produced in animals by the learned-helplessness procedure and by the experimental neurosis paradigm. In the latter, animals are first trained on a discrimination task and are then tested with discriminative stimuli of increasing similarity. Eventually, as the discrimination becomes very difficult, animals fail to respond and begin displaying abnormal behaviors: first agitation, then lethargy.It has been suggested that both learned helplessness and experimental neurosis involve inhibition of motivation centers and pathways by limbic forebrain inhibitory centers, especial in the septal area. The main function of this inhibition is compensatory, providing relief from anxiety or distress. In rats subjected to the learned-helplessness and experimental-neurosis paradigms, stimulation of the septum produces behavioral arrest, lack of behavioral initiation and lethargy, while rats with septal lesions do not show learned helplessness.How analogous the model of learned helplessness and the paradigm of stress-induced neurosis are to human depression is not entirely clear. Inescapable noise or unsolvable problems have been shown to result in conditions in humans similar to those induced in laboratory animals, but an adequate model of human depression must also be able to account for the cognitive complexity of human depression.36. The primary purpose of the passage is to .37. The author raises the question at the beginning of Paragraph 2 in order to .38. It can be inferred from the passage that rats with septal lesions (in Paragraph 4) do not show learned helplessness because .39. The author cites the “mastery effect” (in Paragraph 2) primarily in order to .40. Which of the following would be the most logical continuation of the passage?

Concern for the environment in the US extends back into the nineteenth century, when nature lovers and sports enthusiasts first sought protection for areas of exceptional natural beauty or significance. But it was not until the late 1960’s that environmental concerns entered the mainstream of American political debate. By then many Americans had come to the conclusion that more development was not necessarily desirable, especially if it meant more polluted air, dying lakes and rivers, and a landscape strewn with unsightly waste, and crowded with sprawling construction projects. In May of 1970, several environmental groups staged the first Earth Day celebration, designed to heighten public awareness of environmental problems. The success of that initial effort led to it becoming a regular annual event.During the 1950s and 1960s, industrial and vehicle pollution levels had become a serious threat to public health, so the environmental movement of this period focused heavily on restoring and ensuring the cleanliness of basic air and water supplies. Rapidly expanding development pressures were also spurring efforts to preserve unique lands and threatened wildlife habitats, and to protect the endangered species supported by them before they vanished into extinction. It is generally accepted that the environmental protection movement was so successful because of its grass roots support; groups of activists in hundreds of towns that took the initiative in cleaning up their own communities. During the 1970s, this local activism reinforced support for the passage of key laws at the national level, such as the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, and National Environmental Policy Act, which together have constituted the foundation for environmental; standards in the US ever since.In addition to this national legislation, the year after the first Earth Day, by executive order, President Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); an organization dedicated to restoring and protecting the environment. The EPA spearheaded many contemporary efforts to protect the environment, but it was not working alone. It was allied with a wide variety of distinctly different and separate organizations ranging from a small number of well-funded high-profile national and international organizations to many thousands of smaller special interest groups and even individuals working at the local level. Thanks to the additional help of environmentally conscious political figures in the mold of Teddy Roosevelt, who nearly a century before established the first national parks in the USA, the movement gained momentum. The EPA has now become one of the government’s largest and most influential regulatory agencies. Through its own efforts and in cooperation with other organizations, it has earned a large measure of credit for protecting and restoring the quality of the environment in the United States.Although one might assume that the cause of environmental protection would engender universal support, it does have its detractors. One criticism that has been leveled against the movement is the claim that its predictions about the dire consequences of environmental damage have often been in error. Environmentalists counter this assertion by pointing out that their warnings have often brought about changes on the part of the public, the government and private industry, and that these changes prevented the predictions from being realized. However, just as it is often very difficult to gauge the impact of human activity on something as complex as the environment, it is equally difficult to determine which side is right in this debate. Because environmental issues cover such a wide range of concerns, this is a question that must be considered on a case by case basis. These voices of dissent have demonstrated to environmentalists the need to apply quantitative methods in assessing the extent of the destruction they have witnessed, or the degree to which their work has been manifested in actual improvement of the environment.31. On which of the following does the passage mainly focus?32. The word spurring in Paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to .33. According to Paragraph 2, why was the environmental protection movement so widely successful?34. The word spearheaded in Paragraph 3 can be best replaced by .35. According to Paragraph 4, what was a common criticism of the environmental protection?

“I’m a little worried about my future,” said Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. He should be luck. All he had to worry about was whether to have an affair with Mrs. Robinson. In the sixties, that was the sum total of post-graduation anxiety syndrome.Hoffman’s modern counterparts are not so fortunate. The Mrs. Robinsons aren’t sitting around at home any more, seducing graduates. They are out in the workplace, doing the high-powered jobs the graduates want, but cannot get. For those fresh out of university, desperate for work but unable to get it, there is a big imbalance between supply and demand. And there is no narrowing of the gap in sight.The latest unemployment figures show that 746,000 of 18-24 year-olds are unemployed—a record rate of 18 per cent. Many of those will have graduated this summer. They are no panicking yet, but as the job rejections mount up, they are beginning to feel ashamed.Of course, it is easy to blame the Government and, in particular, the target that Labour has long trumpeted—50 per cent of school-leavers in higher education. That was not too smart. The Government has not only failed to meet its target—the actual figure is still closer to 40 per cent—but it has raised expectations to unrealistic levels.Parents feel as badly let down as the young people themselves. Middle-class families see their graduate offspring on the dole queue and wonder why they bothered paying school fees. Working-class families feel an even keener sense of disappointment. For many such families, getting a child into university was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. It represented upward social and financial mobility. It was proof that they were living in a dynamic, economically successful country. That dream does not seem so rosy now.Graduate unemployment is not, ultimately, a political problem ready to be solved. Job-creation schemes for graduates are very low down in ministerial in-trays. If David Cameron’s Conservatives had a brilliant idea for guaranteeing every graduate a well-paid job, they would have unveiled it by now. It is a social problem, though a more deep-seated social problem than people perhaps realize.26. The author begins with an episode from The Graduate in order to .27. With regard to job opportunities for young graduates, the author sounds .28. The author is the Labour Government’s target: 50% of school leavers in higher education.29. Which of the following statements about parents’ feelings is correct?30. Towards the end of the passage, the author implies that .

In the 19th-century, there used to be a model of how to be a good person. There are all these torrents of passion flowing through you. Your job, as captain of your soul, is to erect dams to keep these passions in check. Your job is to just say no to laziness, lust, greed, drug use and the other sins.These days that model is out of fashion. You usually can’t change your behavior by simply resolving to do something. Knowing what to do is not the same as being able to do it. Your willpower is not like a dam that can block the torrent of self-indulgence. It’s more like a muscle, which tires easily. Moreover, you’re a social being. If everybody around you is overeating, you’ll probably do so, too.The 19th-century character model was based on an understanding of free will. Today, we know that free will is bounded. People can change their lives, but ordering change is not simple because many things, even within ourselves, are beyond our direct control. Much of our behaviour, for example, is guided by unconscious habits. Researchers at Duke University calculated that more than 40 percent of the actions we take are governed by habit, not actual decisions. Researchers have also come to understand the structure of habits—cue, routine, reward.You can change your own personal habits. If you leave running shorts on the floor at night, that’ll be a cue to go running in the morning. Don’t try to ignore your afternoon snack craving. Every time you feel the cue for a snack, insert another routine. Take a walk. Their research thus implies a different character model, which is supposed to manipulate the neural networks inside.To be an effective person, under this model, you are supposed to coolly examine your own unconscious habits, and the habits of those under your care. You are supposed to devise strategies to alter the cues and routines. Every relationship become slightly manipulative, including your relationship with yourself. You’re trying to arouse certain responses by implanting certain cues.This is a bit disturbing, because the important habitual neural networks are not formed by mere routine, nor can they be reversed by clever cues. They are burned in by emotion and strengthened by strong yearnings, like the yearnings for admiration and righteousness.If you think you can change your life in a clever way, the way an advertiser can get you to buy an air freshener, you’re probably wrong. As the Victorians understood, if you want to change your life, don’t just look for a clever cue. Commit to some larger global belief.21. Which of the following is a key element in the 19th-century character model?22. The 19th-century model supposedly does not work because .23. What is the main implication of the research at Duke University?24. According to the new character model, personal behaviour could be altered through .25. We learn from the passage that the new character model __.

American cities are (1) other cities around the world. In every country, cities reflect the (2) of the culture. Cities contain the very (3) aspect of a society: opportunities for education, employment, and entertainment. They also contain the very worst parts of a society: violent crime, racial conflict and poverty. American cities are changing, just (4) American society.After World War II, the population of (5) large American cities decreased; however, the population in many Sun Belt cities (6). Los Angeles and Houston are cities (7) population increased. These population shifts to and from the city (8) the changing values of American society. During this time, in the (9) 1940s and early 1950s, city residents became wealthier, more prosperous. They had more children. They needed more (10). They moved out their apartments in the city (11) their own homes. They bought houses in the (12) areas near a city where people live. These are areas (13) many offices or factories. During the 1950s the American “dream” was to have a house on the outskirts. Now things are changing. The children of the people who left the cities in the 1950s are now (14). They, (15) their parents, want to live in the cities. (16) continue to move to cities in the Sun Belt. Cities are (17) and the population is increasing in such states as Texas, Florida, and California. Others are moving to more (18) cities of the North-east and Midwest, such as Boston, Baltimore and Chicago. Many young professionals, doctors, lawyers, and executives are moving back into the city. They prefer the city (19) the suburbs because their jobs are there; they are afraid of the fuel shortage; or they just (20) the excitement and opportunities which the city offers. A new class is moving into the cities—a wealthier, more mobile class.

Directions: Carefully read the following passage and write a short composition of about 250 to 300 words. You should write the composition on the ANSWER SHEET. Note that your score will be awarded mainly on the base of content, logic, style and language. (30 points)In the United Kingdom and many other European countries, many old buildings are well reserved and protected by historic trusts and international organizations such as UNESCO. In China, a number of public administrations however believe that old buildings stand in the way of progress.Why is protection of old buildings important in China or not? An argumentative is expected to support your viewpoint.

Directions: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Your translation should be written neatly on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)Will teleportation become a reality in time for General Relativity’s 100th birthday?THE YEAR 2015 is the 100th anniversary of the publication of Albert Einstein’s first papers on relativity. (46) This revolutionary theory of physics changed our view of the Universe and opened up many possibilities, such as the use of atomic energy, which had never been dreamed of before.Teleportation is one dream that’s yet to be achieved. In science fiction, teleportation means disintegrating an object in one place while a perfect replica appears somewhere else. The transporter of Star Trek is probably the best-known example. Ironically, a limited kind of teleportation has been achieved through relativity’s “rival” of quantum theory. (47) As reported in Focus 272, quantum teleportation involves transferring information on a quantum system—that is, a small a simple system such as a single photon—from one place to another. Such experiments may lead to advances in communications and computing: we may even see a “quantum internet”.(48) But these experiments have yet to be scaled up to a system as large as a molecule, let alone Captain Kirk. Besides, Star Trek transporters don’t seem to work on quantum effects. In one Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, Data explains that transporter work by converting someone into an energy beam, then back to their original pattern. Einstein’s relativity did prove that energy and mass are equivalent. But in The Physics of Star Trek (1995), physicist Lawrence Krauss shows that to beam a human might require 10,000 times the current power output of Earth.Teleportation is a stubborn dream. Stories of matter transmitters go back to Edward Page Mitchell’s 1877 novel The Man Without A Body, with roots in myths like the “seven-league boots” of European folklore. If we ever could build a teleporter, what would we do with it?Larry Niven’s 1973 novel Flash Crowd showed a 2015 transformed since “displacement booths” were introduced back in 1990. (49) As you no longer needed to live close by your place of work, cities and suburbs dissolved, while property values soared and crashed. The title relates to a kind of permanent floating riot that is drawn to disturbances.In the Doctor who serial The Seeds of Death (1969), an UN-run global teleportation called Travel-mat (T-mat) is the world’s sole means of transportation. (50) The network is creaking because of human frailty and mistakes, even before disaster strikes in the form of an invasion of Ice Warriors from Mars. When T-mat is shut down, within hours “a total breakdown of social order (is) predicted”. This story is a metaphor for the dangers of over-reliance on a single technological system.

Directions: In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list A-F to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There is one extra choice, which does not fit in any of the blanks. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)Many people seem to think that creativity is producing the Big Idea—an idea from nowhere so clever and so profound that it defines creativity. (41) One of the key lessons of this book, and a clear message to the prospective client who rejected my proposals, is this: the instant Big Idea does not exist.(42) Ideas come through a series of small steps or moves. They build up each other to produce the final idea. Look back on any idea you have come up with; think back to precisely how the idea grew, and trace its lineage. (43) Rather than the creative idea being an instant revelation, it will more likely be characterized by a haphazard series of moves, steps and linkages.(44) (A study of the remaining 5 per cent of patents would, I suspect, reveal that they are the products of incremental thought.) Any truly great idea (possessing significant added value) will generally have emerged as a result of a series of incremental small steps in generating it, with much of its inherent added value gained in the subsequent implementation, or in how it was sold.Examine any field of activity where creative ideas are generated and used, whether it is the world of management, the arts, or television comedy. (45) Indeed, the management guru Tom Peters describes in his book A Passion for Excellence (Peters, 1996) several case studies where organizations made decisions to pursue a Big Idea: “In all of history it seems, from French fry seasoning at McDonald’s to IBM’s System/360 computer, the first and second prototypes don’t work.” Often the key people in a project were simply intent on “making it work”; through trial and error they eventually succeeded. No Big Idea brought an instant solution.A. Creativity, and its task of generating ideas, is essentially incremental.B. Their ideas are created through a number of mini-steps, not via an instant, earth-shattering moment of inspiration.C. The blinding flash of inspiration will, if you are honest enough, be linked to an earlier idea or element that you may have been dealing with.D. In public relations work it may be the new campaign idea that no one else has thought of, which will achieve significant publicity, or the photocall gimmick that shows the product in a new light and generates extensive media coverage.E. It is much more convenient to believe great creative people somehow intuitively and instantly arrive at Big Ideas rather than recognize that creativity can be a messy, unglamorous and protracted process.F. This incremental nature of creativity is confirmed by the UK’s Patent Office, which reports that 95 per cent of new patents are merely adaptations of existing ones.

Under my desk I kept a large carton of cassette tapes. Though they have all been transcribed, I still like to listen to them from time to time.Some are quiet and easy to understand. They are filled with the voices of American doctors, interrupted occasionally by the clink of a coffee cup or beep of a pager. The rest—more than half of them—are very noisy. They are filled with the voices of the Lees family, Hmong refugees from Laos who came to the United States in 1980. Against a background of babies crying, children playing, doors slamming, dishes clattering, a television yammering, and an air conditioner wheezing. I can hear the mother’s voice, by turns breathy, nasal, gargly, or humlike as it slides up and down the Hmong language s eight tones; the father’s voice, louder, slower, more vehement; and my interpreter’s voice, mediating in Hmong and English, low and deferential in each. The hubbub summons sense-memories; the coolness of the red metal folding chair, reserved for guests, that was always set up when I arrived in the apartment; the shadows cast by the amulet that hung from the ceiling and swung in the breeze on its length of grocer’s twine; the tastes of Hmong food.I sat on the Lee’s red chair for the first time on May 19, 1988. Earlier that spring I had to Merced, California, because I had heard that there were some misunderstandings at the county hospital between its Hmong patients and medical staff. One doctor called them “collisions,” which made it sound as if two different kinds of people had rammed into each other, head on, to the accompaniment of squealing brakes and breaking glass. As it turned out, the encounters were messy but rarely frontal. Both sides were wounded, but neither side seemed to know what had hit it or how to avoid another crash.I have always felt that the action most worth watching occurs not at the center of things but where edges meet. I like shorelines, weather fronts, international borders. These places have interesting frictions and incongruities, and often, if you stand at the point of tangency, you can see both sides better than if you were in the middle of either one. This is especially true when the apposition is cultural. When I first came to Merced, I hoped that the culture of American medicine, about which I knew a little, and the culture of the Hmong, about which I knew nothing, would somehow illuminate each other if I could position myself between the two and manage not to get caught in the crossfire. But after getting to know the Lees family and their daughter’s doctors and realizing how hard it was to blame anyone, I stopped analyzing the situation in such linear terms. Now, when I play the tapes late at night, I imagine what they would sound like if I could splice them together, so the voices of the Hmong and those of the American doctors could be heard on a single tape, speaking a common language.36. In Paragraph 2, the word of “summons” most nearly means .37. It can be inferred from the underlined sentences in Paragraph 3 that “collisions” was NOT an apt description because the .38. Which of the following views of conflict is best supported by the first underlined sentence in Paragraph 4 (“These ... one”)?39. According to the second underlined sentence in Paragraph 4 (“When I ... crossfire”), the author’s initial goal was to .40. At the end of the passage, the author suggests that it would be ideal if the .

The question that comes first to my mind is this. What would it mean to say that an animal has the right to the pursuit of happiness? How would that come about, and in relationship to whom?In speaking of “animal happiness,” we often tend to mean something like “creature comforts.” The emblems of this are the golden retriever rolling in the grass, the horse with his nose deep in the oats, kitty by the fire. Creature comforts are important to animals: “Grub first, then ethics” is a motto that would describe many a wise Labrador retriever, and I have a bull terrier named Annie whose continual quest for the perfect pillow inspires her to awesome feats. But there is something more to animals, something more to my Annie, a capacity for satisfactions that come from work in the full sense—something approximately like what leads some people to insist that they need a career (though my own temperament is such that I think of a good woodcarver or a dancer or poet sooner than I think of a business executive when I contemplate the kind of happiness enjoyed by an accomplished dressage horse). This happiness, like the artists, must come from something within the animal, something trainers call talent, and so cannot be imposed on the animal. But at the same time it does not arise in a vacuum; if it had not been a fairly ordinary thing in one part of the world at one point to teach young children to play the harpsichord, it is doubtful that Mozart’s music would exist. There are animals versions, if not equivalent, of Mozart, and they cannot make their spontaneous passions into sustained happiness without education, anymore than Mozart could have.Aristotle identified happiness with ethics and with work, unlike Thomas Jefferson, who defined happiness as “Indolence of Body; Tranquility of Mind.” and thus what I call creature comforts. Aristotle also excluded as unethical anything that animals and artists do, for reasons that look wholly benighted to me. Nonetheless, his central insights are more helpful than anything else I know in beginning to understand why some horses and dogs can only be described as competent, good at what they do, and therefore happy. Not happy because leading lives of pleasure, but rather happy because leading lives in which the sensation of getting it right, the “click,” as of the pleasure that comes of solving a puzzle or surmounting something, is a governing principle.31. The author presents examples in Sentence 2, Paragraph 2 in order to .32. The motto “Grub first; then ethics” (in Paragraph 2) indicates that animals .33. Which of the following statements is more consistent with the author’s discussion of temperament in “... (though my temperament...accomplished dressage horse)” in Paragraph 2?34. The word of “indolence” in Paragraph 3 can be best replaced by .35. The author’s discussion of Mozart in the end of Paragraph 2 primarily emphasizes the .

Traffic science is one of those disciplines that seems permanently poised on the verge of a breakthrough. Professional journals regularly publish promising research, and the press trumpets their importance. However, it turns out that traffic is a deceptively complicated problem. It could be said to resemble molecular physics, in fact, since it’s a system of individual practices interacting in complex ways. Except, with traffic, the particles have minds of their own.There are two kinds of traffic flow. In uncongested, stable flows, cars can move at or near the speed limit, and individuals are able to move in and out of lanes or enter the highway smoothly. Then, there’s what traffic experts call the “unstable regime,” what laypeople refer to as stop-and-go traffic. What scientists have figured out over the past decade or so is when and why traffic shifts between the two.“We see in our models that traffic become unstable when the number of cars (passing a specific spot) per lane per hour reaches between 2,000 and 2,500. At that nominal capacity level, traffic is very likely to become unstable,” says Hani Mahmassani, a traffic scientist at Northwestern University in Chicago.Consider a classic case. A slow-moving car shifts into the left lane to pass an even slower-moving car. The car immediately behind the lane-changer has to decelerate dramatically—not just to the speed of the car in front of him, but slow enough to create a safe driving distance between them. The next car back has to slow down even more, again to give itself a cushion. This slowdown ripple back through the lane and eventually spreads into the other lanes as nearby drivers notice the sea of brake lights and reflexively slow down. Traffic researchers refer to this as a shock wave, and it can travel back for miles.Unfortunately, while we’ve gotten really good at understanding why traffic jams happen, our tools to prevent them are pretty limited.First, we don’t hate spending time in our cars as much as we pretend to. “Because building more roads doesn’t improve traffic flow,” says Chris Barrett, a Virginia Tech professor who constructs traffic modeling systems. “If you decrease the amount of time it takes to travel a certain distance to work, people just move farther away from their offices. It changes behavior in a negative way.”Moreover, people have strongly resisted the best congestion-fighting tool that can be immediately implemented. Every traffic expert I spoke with pointed out the runaway success of London’s congestion pricing system. Drivers who want to enter the heart of the city during busy times have to pay 10 pounds-about $16. The system has made a huge difference in reducing congestion, and the city is using the extra revenue to renovate the subway and add buses.26. In Paragraph 1 “traffic is a deceptively complicated problem” means that ______.27. According to the passage, what conclusion can be drawn from the traffic science?28. Which of the following statement about “shock wave” is CORRECT?29. Which of the following traffic jam prevention tools is both effective and realistic?30. What is the main idea of the passage?

People who let their dogs sleep with them or allow them to lick their faces are no more likely than other dog owners to have the same strains of E. coli bacteria as their dogs, a Kansas State University veterinarian reports.Dr. Kate Stenske, a clinical assistant professor at the university’s College of Veterinary Medicine, said it’s known that diseases can be shared between dogs and people and that about 75 percent of emerging diseases are transferrable between humans and other animals.She decided to focus on E. coli, which is common in the gastrointestinal tracts of both humans and dogs.For the study, Stenske analyzed fecal samples from dogs and their owners. She found that 10 percent of human-dog pairs had the same E. coli strains and that these strains were more resistant to common antibiotics than expected. However, owners had more multiple drug-resistant stains than their dogs.“This makes us think that dogs are not likely to spread multiple drug-resistant E. coli to their owners, but perhaps may spread them to their dogs,” Stenske said in a university news release. “What we learn from this is that antibiotics really do affect the bacteria within our gastrointestinal tract, and we should only take them when we really need to—and always finish the entire prescription as directed.”There was no evidence that owners who sleep with their dog or allow face licking were more likely to have shared strains of E. coli, according to the study, which was expected to be published in an upcoming issue of the American Journal of Veterinary Research.However, the study did find an association between antibiotic-resistant E. coli and owners who didn’t wash their hands after petting their dogs or before cooking meals.“We should use common sense and practice good general hygiene,” Stenske advised. She said the find that close human-dog bonding behaviors aren’t more likely to spread germs is good news because of the physical and psychological benefits of pet ownership. Surveys show that nearly half of all dog owners share their food with their dogs, and more than half allow their dogs to sleep with them and lick their face.“If you look at one study, 84 percent of people say their dog is like a child to them,” Stenske added.Future research might look at cat owners and shared E. coli. More Americans own cats than dogs, and cats interact with people in different ways than dogs, Stenske noted.21. What can we infer from the first paragraph?22. The reason why the study focuses on E. coli is that .23. Which one is NOT the conclusion of the study?24. According to Stenske, people should practice general hygiene by .25. The study has brought good news to the dog-owners in that __.

In terms of the evolution of life on Earth, human beings have just arrived. (1) their short time on Earth, however, people have brought about enormous changes to the surfaces of the planet—changes far out of (2) to the interval of time they have (3) it.With the (4) of intelligence and manual skill, people have found ways to use plant and animal resources, mineral ores, fuels, and so on. As the number of people on Earth increases, it becomes increasingly difficult for the population to survive (5) the resources of the land. The amount of land is limited. Although agricultural production can be promoted by use of (6) such as tractors and the addition of fertilizer, the land (7) can produce only so much food and no more. As human population grows, people (8) more.People are only a very small (9) of all the living things on the planet. Yet their numbers create a (10) on resources that can’t be (11). For example, the amount of water on Earth is limited; this water is (12) through natural processes. However, the natural processes for (13) can clean only a certain amount of water. (14), a limited number of petroleum can be found under the Earth’s surface. All natural systems tend toward (15) among opposing factors or forces. Human activities can cause or (16) permanent changes in natural systems. The (17) smoke from thousands of factories has caused enormous air pollution. Cleaning this smoke has exceeded the protective ability of natural processes. The forests cannot clean the air fast enough. The twentieth century began with powerful countries competing to take (18) of the Earth. (19) an outcome of their hunger, the Earth was abused. Now that people are no longer (20) of the causes of the sickness of our planet, they seek ways to rescue the Earth.

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