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The collapse of the Earth’s magnetic field—which guards the planet and guides many of its creatures—appears to have started seriously about 150 years ago, the New York Times reported last week.The field’s strength has decreased by 10 or 15 percent so far and this has increased the debate over whether it signals a reversal of the planet’s lines of magnetic force.During a reversal, the main field weakens, almost vanishes, and reappears with opposite polarity. The transition would take thousands of years. Once completed, compass needles that had pointed north would point south. A reversal could cause problems for both man and animals. Astronauts and satellites would have difficulties. Birds, fish and animals that rely on the magnetic field for navigation would find migration confusing. But experts said the effects would not be a big disaster, despite claims of doom and vague evidence of links between past field reversals and species extinctions.Although a total transition may be hundreds or thousands of years away, the rapid decline in magnetic strength is already affecting satellites. Last month, the European Space Agency approved the world’s largest effort at tracking the field’s shifts. A group of new satellites, called Swarm, is to monitor the collapsing field with far greater precision. “We want to get some idea of how this would evolve in the near future, just like people trying to predict the weather,” said Gauthier Hulot, a French geophysicist working on the satellite plan. “I’m personally quite convinced we should be able to work out the first predictions by the end of the mission.”No matter what the new findings, the public has no reason to panic. Even if a transition is coming on its way, it might take 2,000 years to mature. The last one took place 780,000 years ago, when early humans were learning how to make stone tools. Deep inside the Earth flow hot currents of melted iron. This mechanical energy creates electromagnetism. This process is known as the geophysical generator. In a car’s generator, the same principle turns mechanical energy into electricity.No one knows precisely why the field periodically reverses. But scientists say the responsibility probably lies with changes in the disorderly flows of melted iron, which they see as similar to the gases that make up the clouds of Jupiter.1. According to the passage, the Earth’s magnetic field has .2. During the transition of the Earth’s magnetic field .3. The author say “...the public has no reason to panic” because __.

Competing in the Olympics comes with many obvious perks, like the honor of representing one’s country on the international stage and huge bonus. But when elite athletes enter the health-insurance market, they face the same complicated system the rest of us do. Numerous plans exist, each with different requirements and benefits. How much you pay hinges on your sport, your level of competition, and your geographic location.Many American team members receive insurance through the U.S. Olympic Committee, which offers a plan called Elite Athlete Health Insurance. The policy operates like employer-based insurance, in which a group of individuals purchase together to drive down prices. In this case, though, the employees are Olympic athletes. The USOC plan covers the basics-things like doctors’ visits and prescriptions—with athletes chipping in small co-pays.The Olympic Committee supplies a limited number of policies to each sport. This year U.S. Figure Skating reports 18 spots. USA Luge（竞赛用的小型撬）has 12, and the U.S. Skiing and Snowboard Association has about 70. Each of these organizations known in Olympic terms as the “national governing bodies” —is left to distribute their allotment of policies to their athletes; this means that not every athlete in a particular sport can get coverage—just the top ones.What the USOC plan does not pay for—and what athletes definitely want covered—are sports-related injuries: costs incurred from accidents that happen during competition or practice. Each professional athletic association, from figure skating to luge, offers a catastrophic plan, usually for Olympic athletes as well as lower-level competitors. Coverage varies—deductibles（免赔额）range from nonexistent up through $2,500. The USA’s Elite Athlete Insurance, for example, has a $500 deductible and maximum $ 1,250 co-pay per accident, according to a description of its plan listed on its site. But if you’re part of USA Luge, your deductible drops to $250. And at the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation, deductibles change whether you are competing internationally or domestically.“The accident insurance is secondary,” explains Amy Chapin, director of administration at USA Luge. So if a luge athlete suffers a sports-related injury, “it needs to go through their Elite Athlete Insurance, be denied, and then it comes to us.”The losers in the Olympic insurance market are usually the almost-Olympic athletes, the handful of elite competitors for whom their sport is a full-time job yet do not qualify for the Games. They often do not have access to an employer-based plan. From the way athletic officials describe it, they’re left in a health-insurance situation quite similar to that of unemployed Americans. “The athletes that have it hardest are those who aren’t on the Olympic team, those who don’t qualify,’ says Darrin Steele CEO of the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation. “We don’t have a supplemental policy for them. They’re on their own.”1. The writer wants to convey to the reader that .2. Why do some Olympic athletes buy health insurance through the U.S. Olympic Committee?3. We can say that the almost-Olympic athletes .

Immigration is a sensitive subject now. The economic crisis has destroyed millions of jobs in rich countries, making their governments especially sensitive about the impact of immigration on the demand for local labour.Such concerns are illogical, because immigration is counter-cyclical. Recession in rich countries has discouraged some would-be incomers from trying their luck. America, for instance, has seen a sharp decline in Mexicans trying to cross its southern border. Immigration to Europe has slowed. Some studies also suggest that increased inflows of migrants are a leading indicator of a pickup in growth.Yet governments are often reluctant to leave migration flows to the labour market. In recessions, they tend to take steps to discourage new migrants and even get rid of existing ones. Over the past year the Danish, French and Italian governments have rolled back the Schengen passport-free zone and reintroduced limited border controls. Even Australia and Canada, which pioneered the “points system” to give preference to skilled workers, have cut back on work permit. David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister, has imposed a “migration cap” for those from outside the EU. Countries including Spain, Japan and Denmark have taken this to its logical conclusion, with “pay as you go” schemes, under which migrants get cash handouts to return to their countries of origin.Concerns about immigration are understandable, especially at a time when jobs are in such short supply. Polling in both Europe and America suggests that a majority of locals think immigrants do more harm than good and damage locals’ chances in the job market. Evidence that immigration hurts local workers is, however, weak. In seasonal work and construction, cheap foreign labour can depress wages and make it harder for the low-skilled to find work, but the flexibility and willingness of new workers can also boost productivity and encourage innovation.Strains on public services can sorely test the patience of locals, especially when budget cuts are making it hard to maintain such services. In Britain, for instance, a contingency fund（应急费用）to help cash-strapped（资金短缺的）local authorities facing pressure on public services has been scrapped. Yet over time immigrants more than repay the extra short-term burden they impose on education, health and other budgets.Politicians often say that they want a sensible debate about immigration; but too often they cater for voters’ fears of immigrants rather than attempting to allay（减轻）them.Immigration is, on the whole, good for economies. Rather than sending immigrants home, with their skills, energy, ideas and willingness to work, governments should be encouraging them to come. If they don’t, governments elsewhere will.1. Governments are sensitive about the impact of immigration on labour market because immigrants ______.2. What measures do governments take to deal with immigration in time of recession?3. What benefits can immigrants bring to the receiving country according to the passage?

The recession is changing the makeup of homelessness in America to include more families and more people in suburbs and rural areas. Private and public services for the homeless—concentrated on individuals and in urban areas—must now quickly adjust.Last year, the number of individuals who used a shelter or other transitional housing in the U.S. basically held steady, at 1.6 million, according to federal figures. But the number of people in homeless families—typically a mother with two children—increased by 9 percent overall. Alarmingly, it rose by more than 4 percent in suburban and rural areas. In all, more than 40,000 individuals in families were homeless last year, about a third of the homeless population. The nation can build on its recent success in reducing homelessness. Between 2005 and 2007, the number of chronic homeless—mentally ill or otherwise disabled people without a residence over the long term—fell by 30 percent, to 123,833. A coordinated nationwide effort was made to move from merely managing this group to helping them find permanent housing and assigning them case workers. The needs of the chronically homeless may not mirror those of a family on the economic edge. But the overall approach must be the same: keeping or finding stable homes for them.Fortunately, $1.2 billion of federal stimulus money for homelessness was released this month to communities across America. By assisting with rent and utilities, the funds can prevent households from losing their residences. And by providing funds for expensive up-front costs such as security deposits, the federal help aims to quickly move people out of shelters, to avoid fraud（欺骗）and abuse, the money is paid to third parties, such as landlords.Homelessness is a lagging economic indicator, and while the overall numbers may have held steady last year, they’re expected to increase. At some point, people wear out their welcome with friends or relatives or can no longer afford a motel room. Shelters are seeing an increase in homeless families headed by professionals or skilled workers. Some shelters say they’re full and are having to tum families away.Homeless experts say the federal stimulus money will help greatly, but it’s not enough. Local governments and charities will have to increase their efforts. Yet they, too, are cash-strapped. One answer, says Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the homeless, is for religious groups to gear up for these families.1. Which of the following is an influence of recession in America?2. What approach can be used by the government to reduce homelessness?3. According to the homeless experts, we can learn that ______.

A recurring criticism of the UK’s university sector is its perceived weakness in translating new knowledge into new products and services.Recently, the UK National Stem Cell Network warmed the UK could lose its place among the world leaders in stem cell research unless adequate funding and legislation could be assured. We should take this concern seriously as universities are key in the national innovation system.However, we do have to challenge the unthinking complaint that the sector does not do enough in taking ideas to market. The most recent comparative data on the performance of universities and research institutions in Australia, Canada, USA and UK shows that, from a relatively weak starting position, the UK now leads on many indicators of commercialisation activity.When viewed at the national level, the policy interventions of the past decade have helped transform the performance of UK universities. Evidence suggests the UK’s position is much stronger than in the recent past and is still showing improvement. But national data masks the very large variation in the performance of individual universities. The evidence shows that a large number of universities have fallen off the back of the pack, a few perform strongly and the rest chase the leaders.This type of uneven distribution is not peculiar to the UK and is mirrored across other economies. In the UK, research is concentrated: less than 25% of universities receive 75% of the research funding. These same universities are also the institutions producing the greatest share of PhD graduates, science citations, patents and license income. The effect of policies generating long-term resource concentration has also created a distinctive set of universities which are research-led and commercially active. It seems clear that the concentration of research and commercialisation work creates differences between universities.The core objective for universities which are research-led must be to maximise the impact of their research efforts. These universities should be generating the widest range of social, economic and environmental benefits. In return for the scale of investment, they should share their expertise in order to build greater confidence in the sector.Part of the economic recovery of the UK will be driven by the next generation of research commercialisation spilling out of our universities. There are three dozen universities in the UK .which are actively engaged in advanced research training and commercialisation work.If there was a greater coordination of technology transfer offices within regions and a simultaneous investment in the scale and functions of our graduate schools, universities could, and should, play a key role in positioning the UK for the next growth cycle.1. What does the author think of UK universities in terms of commercialisation?2. What does the author say about the national data on UK universities’ performance in commercialisation?3. We can infer from Paragraph 5 that “policy interventions” (Line 1, Para. 4) refers to ______.4. How can the university sector play a key role in the UK’s economic growth?

Google recently introduced a new service that adds social-networking features to its popular Gmail system. The service is called Buzz, and within hours of its release, people were howling about privacy issues—because, in its original form, Buzz showed everyone the list of people you e-mail most frequently. Even people who weren’t cheating on their spouses or secretly applying for new jobs found this a little unnerving.Google backtracked and changed the software, and apologized for the misstep, claiming that, it just never occurred to us that people might get upset. “The public reaction was something we did not anticipate. But we’ve reacted very quickly to people’s unhappiness,” says Bradley Horowitz, vice president for product management at Google.Same goes for Facebook In December, Facebook rolled out a new set of privacy settings. A spokesman says the move was intended to “empower people” by giving them more “granular（颗粒）” control over their personal information about themselves—partly because its default settings had lots of data, like your photo, city, gender, and information about your family and relationships, set up to be shared with everyone on the Internet. (Sure, you could change those settings, but it was still creepy.) Facebook’s spokesman say the open settings reflect “shifting social norms around privacy.” Five years after Facebook was founded, he says, “we’ve noticed that people are not only sharing more information but also are becoming more comfortable about sharing more with more people.” Nevertheless, the changes prompted 10 consumer groups to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.What’s happening is that our privacy has become a kind of currency. It’s what we use to pay for online services. Google charges nothing for Gmail; instead, it reads your e-mail and sends you advertisements based on keywords in your private messages.The genius of Google, Facebook, and others is that they’ve created services that are so useful or entertaining that people will give up some privacy in order to use them. Now the trick is to get people to give up more—in effect, to keep raising the price of the service.These companies will never stop trying to chip away at our information. Their entire business model is based on the notion of “monetizing” our privacy. To succeed they must slowly change the notion of privacy itself—the social norm,” as Facebook puts it—so that what we’re giving up doesn’t seem so valuable. Then they must gain our trust. Thus each new erosion of privacy comes delivered, paradoxically, with rhetoric（华丽的词藻）about how Company X really cares about privacy. I’m not sure whether Orwell would be appalled or impressed. And who knew Big Brother would be not a big government agency, but a bunch of kids in Silicon Valley?1. According to the passage, the original form of Buzz .2. It can be inferred from Bradley Horowitz’s words that .3. How does Facebook evaluate people’s tolerance on private information sharing?4. What does the author think of some companies’ strategies on privacy?

Public image refers to how a company is viewed by its customers, suppliers, and stockholders, by the financial community, by the communities _1_ it operates, and by federal and local governments. Public image is controllable _2_ a considerable extent, just as the product, price, place, and promotional efforts are. A firm’s public image plays a vital role in the _3_ of the firm and its products to employees, customers, and to such outsiders _4_ stockholders, suppliers, creditors. government officials, as well as _5_ special groups. With some things it is impossible to _6_ all the diverse publics: for example, a new highly automated plant may meet the approval of creditors and stockholders, _7_ it will undoubtedly find _8_ from employees who see their jobs _9_. On the other hand, high quality products and service standards should bring almost complete approval, _10_ low quality products and _11_ claims would be widely looked down upon.A firm’s public image, if it is good, should be treasured and protected. It is a valuable _12_ that usually is built up over a long and satisfying relationship of a firm with publics. If a firm has learned a quality image, this is not easily _13_ or imitated by competitors. Such an image may enable a firm to _14_ higher prices, to win the best distributors and dealers, to attract the best employees, to expect the most _15_ creditor relationships and lowest borrowing costs. It should also allow the firm’s stock to command higher price-earnings _16_ than other firms in the same industry with such a good reputation and public image.A number of factors affect the public image of a corporation. _17_ include physical _18_, contacts of outsiders _19_ company employees, product quality and dependability, prices _20_ to competitors, customer service, the kind of advertising and the media and programs used, and the use of public relations and publicity.

Directions: For this part, you are required to write a composition on the topic On Food Safety Issues, in which you should follow the outline below:1) The current situation of food safety issues.2) The cause of the food safety issues.3) The countermeasures.You should write about 200 words neatly on the Answer Sheet.

丝绸之路（The Silk Road）可以追溯到公元前二世纪，中国使者（envoy）张骞沿着这条连接亚欧两大洲的贸易通道（trade access）出使西域。这条通道源于今日的西安，一路穿越河西走廊（Hexi Corridor）、塔里木盆地（the Tarim Basin）以及西亚的港口城市，最后抵达地中海的东岸，全程7千公里。中国通过这条通道给西域各国带去了丝绸织物（silk cloth）、火药、造纸术和印刷术。同时，也从国外给我们引进了佛教（Buddhism）、伊斯兰教（Islam），以及葡萄、玻璃、香水（perfume）等产品。因为著名的中国丝绸是沿着这条通道进入西方国家的，所以欧洲学者将此通道称作“丝绸之路”。

You’re sitting at a restaurant waiting for a friend. Twenty minutes after your designated meeting time, they arrive in a flutter with a list of excuses. Perhaps there was too much traffic or a meeting ran long. You’ve heard it a million times, yet their behavior never changes. Sound familiar?“I think everyone has a person in their life that does this.” said Herb Reich, author of the book 2051 Things That really Piss Me Off. “Being late constantly, to me, means you are saying your time is more valuable than mine.”Reich said while it’s easier to forgive friends and family for their lateness, we need to establish very clear boundaries for being on time when it comes to professional relationships. “Sometimes I will establish consequences in the contract.” he said, “It’s always wise to let people know what you feel about their behavior.”And while Reich said lateness is a “personality trait,” psychologist Pamela Brand said the behavior is neurological（神经学的）. “We call this a bio-psycho-socio pattern.” Brand said.The biological cause of lateness, she said, is when the person’s organization and planning skills are underdeveloped. Socially, she said there can be learned behaviors or cultural communities that don’t focus on time or being prompt.“If someone wasn’t raised ever looking at a watch, and things were kind of loose growing up, just knowing this can help us understand why they function a certain way.” she said.The psychological part of the pattern is when a person pardons or rationalizes their behavior with excuses, Brand said.So can people change their ways?“It’s my belief that all patterns can be changed if a person is conscious and wants it to be changed,” Brand said. “There’s a book called You Are Not Your Brain that I refer to often that outlines a four-step process of changing patterns in the brain. It does a wonderful job of giving a clear explanation of how patterns develop, how they are hard wired into the brain and how to shift patterns to support neurological shifting.“This could take six months for a neurological change to stick,” she said.To lend support for someone who is trying to be more punctual, Brand said it helps to raise the stakes.“A person is much less likely to be motivated if there are no consequences,” Brand said. “If there is no threat to losing a relationship, losing a job or getting kicked out of school, things will stay the same. So if being late bothers you, you have to really make the contract clear.”Reich agrees, “Once, I was waiting for someone in my professional life, and after 15 minutes, I left.” he said, “I explained why I did this, and that changed their behavior. My time is just as valuable as theirs and I don’t want to sit around. They weren’t late after that.”1. According to Herb Reich ______.2. What do we learn about the book You Are Not Your Brain?3. What is the viewpoint about lateness shared by Brand and Reich?

The word pesticide is a catch-all term for chemicals that kill or control anything that humans have deemed to be a pest. Such chemicals can be grouped according to the kind of organism targeted, such as insecticide (insect), herbicide (weed), fungicide (fungus，菌), or rodenticide (rodent，鼠). Most pesticide compounds in use today are synthetic; that is, they are man-made concoctions（混合物）produced in a laboratory. A danger inherent to the use of synthetic poisons is that once the chemicals are released into the environment, they may harm unintended victims and have unanticipated effects.On a global scale, over five billion pounds of conventional pesticides are used annually. Twenty-five percent of this total volume, or 1.2 billion pounds, is used in the United States alone. Population declines and extensive mortality of birds strongly indicate that the health of the environment and thus the health of organisms that depend on it suffers due to the prevalence of pesticides. From songbird declines beginning in the 1940’s, to population crashes of peregrine falcons, ospreys, and other predatory birds first detected in the 1960’s, to the more recent deaths of over 5% of the world’s population of Swainson’s Hawks during the winter of 1995, birds have been unwitting victims of pesticide contamination.In 1962, Rachel Carson’s best-selling book, Silent Spring, drew international attention to the environmental contamination wrought by pesticides, particularly the insecticide DDT. Thanks partly to the fervor generated by Carson’s book and partly to a study done by the National Institutes of Health which found DDT or its by-products in 100% of the human tissues it examined, DDT and most other organochlorines（有机氯杀虫剂）were banned for use in the United States in the early 1970’s. Since the ban, numbers of the more severely affected bird species have slowly recovered. However, the fate of some populations of Peregrine Falcons remains uncertain because DDT, its breakdown products, and other organochlorines are still prevalent in the environment.If DDT was banned in the United States in the early 1970’s, why is there still a problem today? One reason is that the United States continues to export DDT, along with other pesticides known to be hazardous to the environment and to human health. The countries of Latin America, the wintertime destination for many of the migratory birds that breed in the United States and Canada (including many Peregrine Falcons), are also the destination for many of these exported pesticides.1. One danger of using pesticides is that .2. The use of pesticides leads to all the following except .3. After DDT and most other organochlorines were banned for use in the United States .4. The word “hazardous” in the last paragraph most probably means .

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895-1975) was arguably the most original and yet the most misunderstood Russian thinker of the twentieth century. By Soviet standards, his life was not especially eventful. He earned a degree in classics (a lifelong interest) and philology at Petrograd University (1913-18). To avoid the hardships of the Russian Civil War, he moved to Nevel and later to Vitebsk, where his study circle included Valentin Voloshinov and Pavel Medvedev. There he married, and the couple returned to Leningrad in 1924. Because of a bone disease, and lacking proper political credentials, he was unable to find stable employment. In 1929 he was arrested, apparently for alleged participation in the underground Russian Orthodox Church, and sentenced to 10 years in the Solovetsky Islands camp. He managed to get the sentence changed to six years’ internal exile in Kazakhstan, where he worked as a collective farm bookkeeper and at other odd jobs.Bakhtin’s first professional appointment came in 1936 when he was hired by the Mordovia State Teachers College in Saransk to teach Russian and world literature. But rumors of the purges led him to resign and seek the safety of still greater obscurity in an even less visible town, where he remained until he returned to teach at Saransk after World War Ⅱ. His obscurity was such that when interest in his work revived in the 1950s, his admirers were amazed to discover that he was still alive. A miraculous survivor from the 1920s, he became a cult figure. He was allowed to revise and expand the only major work of his to have been published, his book on Dostoevsky (1929), in 1963 and to publish his book on Rabelais in 1965. In 1975 and 1979 large collections of his writings from various periods appeared in Russia; his important essay “Toward a Philosophy of the Act” was published in 1986. Because Bakhtin’s executors, who control his archives（档案）, have not been especially informative, it is impossible to be sure what the archives still contain.Reception of Bakhtin’s writings in both Russia and the West has been unusually complicated and politicized, thus impeding an understanding of his work. In the Soviet Union, the cult of Bakhtin led to strained attempts (in which the executors have participated) to recruit him as an ally in various intellectual battles. In the United States, the first book to attract attention was Rabelais and His World, which is the least representative of his thought as a whole but which became the glass through which subsequently translated writings were read. Although he was a severe critic of formalism（形式主义）and structuralism（结构主义）, Jokobsonians claimed him without qualification for their camp: despite his withering comments on Marxism. Marxists have done the same: poststructuralists seeking to appropriate him have also tended to overlook those passages where Bakhtin seems to be most unsympathetic with such an ethos. The attempt to see him as an essentially religious thinker, as some Slavists and others have proposed, has some basis but has probably been exaggerated.1. According to the passage, Bakhtin .2. Bakhtin resigned from his teaching post because .3. After the Second World War, Bakhtin .4. According to the author of the passage, .

Cell phone feels like a part of your body? A global survey has found that most people can’t live without their mobiles, never leave home without them and, if given a choice, would rather lose their wallet. Calling mobile phones the “remote control” for life market research firm. Synovate’s poll said cell phones are so common that by last year more humans owned one than did not.Three-quarters of the more than 8,000 respondents polled online in 11 countries said they take their phone with them everywhere, with Russians and Singaporeans the most attached. More than a third also said they couldn’t live without their phone, topped by Americans and again Singaporeans, while one in four would find it harder to replace the mobile than their purse. Some two-thirds of respondents go to bed with their phones nearby and can’t switch them off, even though they want to, because they’re afraid they’ll miss something.“Mobiles give us safety, security and instant access to information. They are the number one tool of communication for us, sometimes even surpassing face-to-face communication. They are our connections to our lives.” Jenny Chang, Synovate’s managing director in America, said in a statement.Mobiles have also changed the nature of relationships, with the survey finding nearly half of all respondents use text messages to flirt, a fifth set up first-dates via text and almost the same number use the same method to end a love affair.Apart from the obvious calling and texting, the top three features people use regularly on their mobile phones globally are the alarm clock, the camera and the games.As for e-mail and Internet access, 17 percent of respondents said they checked their inboxes or surfed the Web off their phones, led by those in the United States. One in 10 respondents log onto social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace regularly via mobile, again led by Britain and the United States.“As the mobile becomes more and more an all-in-one device, many other businesses are facing challenging times. The opportunities for mobile manufacturers and networks however are enormous.” said Synovate’s global head of media, Steve Garton.Not everyone is tech savvy（理解，悟性）, however: 37 percent of respondents said they don’t know how to use all the functions on their phone.1. What has the survey conducted by the market research firm Synovate found?2. What can be inferred about the development of cell phones?

Amid all the job losses, there’s one category of worker that the economic disruption has been good for: nonhumans.From self-service checkout lines at the supermarket to industrial robots armed with saws and taught to carve up animal bodies in slaughter-houses, these ever-more-intelligent machines are now not just assisting workers but actually kicking them out of their jobs.Automation isn’t just affecting factory workers, either. Some law firms now use artificial intelligence software to scan and read mountains of legal documents, work that previously was performed by highly-paid human lawyers.“Robots continue to have an impact on blue-collar jobs, and white-collar jobs are under attack by microprocessors,” says economics professor Edward Learner. The recession permanently wiped out 2.5 million jobs. U.S. gross domestic product has climbed back to pre-recession levels, meaning we’re producing as much as before, only with 6% fewer workers. To be sure, robotics are not the only job killers out there, with outsourcing（外包）stealing far more jobs than automation.Jeff Burnstein, president of the Robotics Industry Association, argues that robots actually save U.S. Jobs. His logic: companies that embrace automation might use fewer workers, but that’s still better than firing everyone and moving the work overseas.It’s not that robots are cheaper than humans, though often they are. It’s that they’re better “In some cases the quality requirements are so exacting that even if you wanted to have a human do the job, you couldn’t.” Burnstein says.Same goes for surgeons. who’re using robotic systems to perform an ever-growing list of operations—not because the machines save money but because, thanks to the greater precision of robots, the patients recover in less time and have fewer complications, says Dr. Myriam Curet.Surgeons may survive the robot invasion, but others at the hospital might not be so lucky, as iRobot, maker of the Roomba, a robot vacuum cleaner, has been showing of Ava, which could be used as a messenger in a hospital. And once you’re home, recovering, Ava could let you talk to your doctor, so there’s no need to send someone to your house. That “mobile telepresence” could be useful at the office. If you’re away on a trip, you can still attend a meeting. Just connect via videoconferencing software, so your face appears on Ava’s screen.Is any job safe? I was hoping to say “journalist”, but researchers are already developing software that can gather facts and write a news story. Which means that a few years from now, a robot could be writing this column. And who will read it? Well, there might be a lot of us hanging around with lots of free time on our hands.1. What do we learn from the first few paragraphs?2. What caused the greatest loss of jobs in America?3. Why are robotic systems replacing surgeons in more and more operations according to Dr. Myriam Curet?4. What does the author imply about robotics?

People have been painting pictures for at least 30,000 years. The earliest pictures were painted by people who hunted animals. They used to paint pictures of the animals they wanted to catch and kill. Pictures of this kind have been found on the walls of caves in France and Spain. No one knows why they were painted there. Perhaps the painters thought that their pictures would help them catch these animals. Or perhaps human beings have always wanted to tell stories in pictures.About 5,000 years ago, the Egyptians and other people in the Near East began to use pictures as a kind of writing. They drew simple pictures or signs to represent things and ideas, and also to represent the sounds of their language. The signs these people used became a kind of alphabet. The Egyptians used to record information and to tell stories by putting writing and pictures together. When an important person died, scenes and stories from his life were painted and carved on the walls of the place where he was buried. Some of these pictures are like modern comic strip stories. It has been said that Egypt is the home of the comic strip. But for the Egyptians, pictures still had magic power. So they did not try to make their way of writing simple. The ordinary people could not understand it.By the year 1,000 BC, people who lived in the area around the Mediterranean Sea had developed simpler system of writing. The signs they used were very easy to write, and there were fewer of them than in the Egyptian system. This was because each sign or letter represented only one sound in their language. The Greeks developed this system and formed the letters of the Greek alphabet. The Romans copied the idea and the Roman alphabet is now used all over the world. These days we can write down a story or record information without using pictures. But we still need pictures of all kinds: drawing photographs, signs and diagrams. We find them everywhere: in books and newspapers in the street and on the walls of the places where we live and work. Pictures help us to understand and remember things more easily and they can make a story much more interesting.1. According to the first passage, pictures of animals were painted on the walls of caves because .2. The Greek alphabet was simpler than the Egyptian system for all the following reasons EXCEPT that .3. The best title for this passage is __.

From childhood to old age, we all use language as a means of broadening our knowledge of ourselves and the world about us. When humans first _1_, they were like newborn children, unable to use this _2_ tool. Yet once language developed, the possibilities for human kind’s future _3_ and cultural growth increased.Many linguists believe that evolution is _4_ for our ability to produce and use language. They _5_ that our highly evolved brain provides us _6_ an innate language ability not found in lower _7_. Proponents of this innateness theory say that our _8_ for language is inborn, but that language itself develops gradually, _9_ a function of the growth of the brain during childhood. Therefore, there are critical _10_ times for language development.Current _11_ of innateness theory are mixed. However, evidence supporting the existence of some innate abilities is undeniable. _12_, more and more schools are discovering that foreign languages are best taught in _13_ grades. Young children often can learn several languages by being _14_ to them, while adults have a much harder time learning another language once the _15_ of their first language have become firmly fixed._16_ some aspects of language are undeniably innate, language does not develop automatically in a vacuum. Children who have been _17_ from other human beings do not possess language. This demonstrates that _18_ with other human beings is necessary for proper language development. Some linguists believe that this is even more basic to human language _19_ than any innate capacities. These theorists view language as imitative, learned behavior. _20_, children learn language from their parents by imitating them. Parents gradually shape their child’s language skills by positively reinforcing precise imitations and negatively reinforcing imprecise ones.

Directions: For this part, you are required to write a composition on the topic My View on NEET, in which you should follow the outline below:1) The emergence of the NEET group in China.2) The causes of this phenomenon.3) The countermeasures.Note: NEET（啃老族）means “Not in Education, Employment or Training”.You should write about 200 words neatly on the Answer Sheet.

中国实行（implementation）全面的对外开放的政策是指，它不仅对大国开放，也对小国开放，不仅对发达国家开放，也对发展中国家开放。中国与发达国家的全方位的经济合作取得了很大的进展，尤其突出地体现在吸引外资、扩大对外贸易、发展科学、教育和文化等方面。中国与发展中国家的经济技术合作也开辟了新的广阔的前景（vistas），各种中小合资企业（joint-venture enterprises）和商贸公司如雨后春笋般出现（mushroom）。在继续向一些小国提供援助的同时，中国通过合资经营、合作生产、技术服务和补偿贸易等形式开展互惠互利（mutual benefit）的经济合作。

The other problem that arises from the employment of women is that of the working wife. It has two aspects: that of the wife who is more of a success than her husband and that of the wife who must rely heavily on her husband for help with domestic tasks. There are various ways in which the impact of the first difficulty can be reduced. Provided that husband and wife are not in the same or directly comparable lines of work, the harsh fact of her greater success can be obscured by a genial conspiracy to reject a purely monetary measure of achievement as intolerably crude. Where there are ranks, it is best if the couple work in different fields so that the husband can find some special reason for the superiority of the lowest figure in his to the most elevated in his wife’s.A problem that affects a much larger number of working wives is the need to re-allocate domestic tasks if there are children. In The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell wrote of the unemployed of the Lancashire coalfields: “Practically never... in a working- class home, will you see the man doing a stroke of the housework. Unemployment has not changed this convention, which on the face of it seems a little unfair. The man is idle from morning to night but the woman is as busy as ever—more so, indeed, because she has to manage with less money. Yet so far as my experience goes the women do not protest. They feel that a man would lose his manhood if, merely because he was out of work, he developed in a ‘Mary Ann’.”It is over the care of young children that this re-allocation of duties becomes really significant. For this, unlike the cooking of fish fingers or the making of beds, is an inescapably time-consuming occupation, and time is what the fully employed wife has no more to spare of than her husband.The male initiative in courtship is a pretty indiscriminate affair, something that is tried on with any remotely plausible woman who comes within range and, of course, with all degrees of tentativeness. What decides the issue of whether a genuine courtship is going to get under way is the woman’s response. If she shows interest the engines of persuasion are set in movement. The truth is that in courtship society gives women the real power while pretending to give it to men.What does seem clear is that the more men and women are together, at work and away from it, the more the comprehensive amorousness of men towards women will have to go, despite all its past evolutionary services. For it is this that makes inferiority at work abrasive and, more indirectly, makes domestic work seem unmanly, if there is to be an equalizing redistribution of economic and domestic tasks between men and women there must be a compensating redistribution of the erotic initiative. If women will no longer let us beat them, they must allow us to join them as the blushing recipients of flowers and chocolates.1. Paragraph one advises the working wife who is more successful than her husband to .2. The last paragraph stresses that if women are to hold important jobs, then they must .3. Which of the following statements is INCORRECT about the present form of courtship?

The chief problem in coping with foreign motorists is not so much remembering that they are different from yourself, but that they are enormously variable. Cross a frontier without adjusting and you can be in deep trouble.One of the greatest gulfs separating the driving nations is the Atlantic Ocean. More precisely, it is the mental distance between the European and the American motorist, particularly the South American motorist. Compare, for example, an English driver at a set of traffic lights with a Brazilian.Very rarely will an Englishman try to anticipate the green light by moving off prematurely. You will find the occasional sharpie who watches for the amber to come up on the adjacent set of lights. However, he will not go until he receives the lawful signal. Brazilians view the thing quite differently. If, in fact, they see traffic lights at all, they regard them as a kind of roadside decoration.The natives of North America are much more disciplined. They demonstrate this in their addiction to driving in one lane and sticking to it—even if it means settling behind some great truck for many miles.To prevent other drivers from falling into reckless ways, American motorists try always to stay close behind the vehicle in front, which can make it impossible, when all the vehicles are moving at about 55 mph, to make a real lane change. European visitors are constantly falling into this trap. They return to the Old World still flapping their arms in frustration because while driving in the States in their car they kept failing to get off the highway when they wanted to and were swept along to the next city.However, one nation above all others lives scrupulously by its traffic regulations—the Swiss. In Switzerland, if you were simply to anticipate a traffic light, the chances are that the motorist behind you would take your number and report you to the police. What is more, the police would visit you; and you would be convicted.The Swiss take their rules Of the road so seriously that a driver can be ordered to appear in court and charged for speeding on hearsay alone, and very likely found guilty. There are slight regional variations among the French, German and Italian speaking areas, but it is generally safe to assume that any car bearing a CH sticker will be driven with a high degree of discipline.1. The author’s main purpose is to according to the passage.2. The fact that the Brazilians regard traffic lights as a kind of roadside decoration suggests that .3. The phrase “anticipate the green light” (Line.1, Para.3) is closest in meaning to __.

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