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To conduct some forms of sleep research, we have to find a way to track sleepiness over the day. Some people might believe that measuring sleepiness is a fairly trivial task. Couldn't you, for instance, simply count the number of times a person yawns during any given hour or so?In most people's minds,yawning—that slow, exaggerated mouth opening with the long, deep inhalation of air, followed by a briefer exhalation—is the most obvious sign of sleepiness. It is a common behavior shared by many animals, including our pet dogs and cats but also crocodiles, snakes, birds, and even some fishes. It is certainly true that sleepy people tend to yawn more than wide-awake people. It is also true that people who say they are bored by what is happening at the moment will tend to yawn more frequently. However, whether yawning is a sign that you are getting ready for sleep or that you are successfully fighting off sleep is not known. Simply stretching your body, as you might do if you have been sitting in the same position for a long period of time, will often trigger a yawn.Unfortunately, yawns don't just indicate sleepiness. In some animals, yawning is a sign of stress. When a dog trainer sees a dog yawning in a dog obedience class, it is usually a sign that the animal is under a good deal of pressure. Perhaps the handler is pushing too hard or moving too fast for the dog to feel in control of the situation. A moment or two of play and then turning to another activity is usually enough to banish yawning for quite a while.Yawning can also be a sign of stress in humans. Once, when observing airborne troops about to take their first parachute jump, I noticed that several of the soldiers were sitting in the plane and yawning. It was 10 a. m. , just after a coffee break, and I doubted that they were tired; I knew for a fact that they were far too nervous to be bored. When I asked about this, the officer in charge laughed and said it was really quite a common behavior, especially on the first jump.There is also a social aspect to yawning. Psychologists have placed actors in crowded rooms and auditoriums and had them deliberately yawn. Within moments, there is usually an increase in yawning by everyone else in the room. Similarly, people who watch films or videos of others yawning are more likely to yawn. Even just reading about yawning tends to stimulate people to yawn.The truth of the matter is that we really don't know what purpose yawning serves. Scientists originally thought that the purpose of yawning was to increase the amount of oxygen in the blood or to release some accumulated carbon dioxide. We now know that this is not true, since increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air seems not to make people more likely to yawn but to make them breathe faster to try to bring in more oxygen. On the other hand, breathing 100 percent pure oxygen does not seem to reduce the likelihood of yawning.Since yawning seems to be associated with a lot more than the need for sleep, we obviously have to find some other measure of sleepiness. Some researchers have simply tried to ask people how sleepy they feel at any time using some sort of self-rating scale. There are, however, problems with getting people to make these types of judgments. Sometimes people simply lie to the researchers when asked about how sleepy they are. This occurs because in many areas of society admitting that one is fatigued and sleepy is considered a mark of weakness or lack of ambition and drive. In other instances, people may admit they need four cups of coffee to make it through the morning, but it may never occur to them that this might be due to the fact that they are so sleepy that they need stimulation from caffeine to be able to do their required tasks. For these reasons, many researchers have developed an alternate method to determine how sleepy a person is. It is based upon a simple definition of sleep need: The greater your sleep need, or the sleepier you are, the faster you will fall asleep if given the opportunity to do so.1.The question in Lines 3-4 (Paragraph 1) is based on which of the following assumptions?2.The author uses which of the following in the fourth paragraph?3.The author mentions the "coffee break" to emphasize that a（）4.Which of the following, if true, would most directly disprove what "scientists originally thought" ？5.The passage as a whole is best characterized as （）

Why do some desert plants grow tall and thin like organ pipes? Why do most trees in the tropics keep their leaves year round? Why in the Arctic tundra are there no trees at all? After many years without convincing general answers, we now know much about what sets the fashion in plant design.Using terminology more characteristic of a thermal engineer than of a botanist, we can think of plants as mechanisms that must balance their heat budgets. A plant by day is staked out under the Sun with no way of sheltering itself. All day long it absorbs heat. If it did not lose as much heat as it gained, then eventually it would die.Plants get rid of their heat by warming the air around them, by evaporating water, and by radiating heat to the atmosphere and the cold, black reaches of space temperature is tolerable for the processes of life. Plants in the Arctic tundra lie close to the ground in the thin layer of still air that clings there. A foot or two above the ground are the winds of Arctic cold. Tundra plants absorb heat from the Sun and tend to warm up; they probably balance most of their heat budgets by radiating heat to space, but also by warming the still air that is trapped among them. As long as Arctic plants are close to the ground, they can balance their heat budgets. But if they should stretch up as a tree does, they would lift their working parts, their leaves, into the streaming Arctic winds. Then it is likely that the plants could not absorb enough heat from the Sun to avoid being cooled below a critical temperature. Your heat budget does not balance if you stand tall in the Arctic.Such thinking also helps explain other characteristics of plant design. A desert plant faces the opposite problem from that of an Arctic plant —the danger of overheating. It is short of water and so cannot cool itself by evaporation without dehydrating. The familiar sticklike shape of desert plants represents one of the solutions to this problem: the shape exposes the smallest possible surface to incoming solar radiation and provides the largest possible surface from which the plant can radiate heat. In tropical rain forests, by way of contrast, the scorching sun is not a problem for plants because there is sufficient water.This working model allows us to connect the general characteristics of the forms of plants in different habitats with factors such as temperature, availability of water, and presence or absence of seasonal differences. Our Earth is covered with a patchwork quilt of meteorological conditions, and the patterns of this patchwork are faithfully reflected by the plants.1. Which of the following characteristics of plants does the passage primarily focus on?2.According to the passage, which of the following is most responsible for preventing trees from growing tall in the Arctic?3.The author suggests that the "sticklike shape of desert plants" in Line 3 (Paragraph 4) can be attributed to the（）4.All of the following are mentioned in the passage as contributions to the plants,balancing their heat EXCEPT .5. Which is the TRUE statement about the different plants?

Many literary detectives have pored over a great puzzle concerning the writer Marcel Proust: what happened in 1909? How did Contre Saint-Beuve, an essay attacking the methods of the critic Saint Beuve, turn into the start of the novel Remembrance of Things Past"! A recently published letter from Proust to the editor Vallette confirms that Fallois, the editor of the 1954 edition of Contre Saint-Beuve, made an essentially correct guess about the relationship of the essay to the novel. Fallois proposed that Proust had tried to begin a novel in 1908, abandoned it for what was to be a long demonstration of Saint-Beuve's blindness to the real nature of great writing, found the essay giving rise to personal memories and fictional developments, and allowed these to take over in a steadily developing novel.Draft passages in Proust's 1909 notebooks indicate that the transition from essay to novel began in Contre Saint-Beuve, when Proust introduced several examples to show the powerful influence that involuntary memory exerts over the creative imagination. In effect, in trying to demonstrate that the imagination is more profound and less submissive to the intellect than Saint-Beuve assumed, Proust elicited vital memories of his own and, finding subtle connections between them, began to amass the material for Remembrance. By August, Proust was writing to Vallette, informing him of his intention to develop the material as a novel. Maurice Bardeche, in Marcel Proust,Romancier, has shown the importance in the drafts of Remembrance of spontaneous and apparently random associations of Proust's subconscious. As incidents and reflections occurred to Proust, he continually inserted new passages altering and expanding his narrative. But he found it difficult to control the drift of his inspiration. The very richness and complexity of the meaningful relationships that kept presenting and rearranging themselves on all levels, from abstract intelligence to profound dreamy feelings, made it difficult for Proust to set them out coherently. The beginning of control came when he saw how to connect the beginning and the end of his novel.Intrigued by Proust's claim that he had "begun and finished" Remembrance at the same time, Henri Bonnet discovered that parts of Remembrance's last book were actually started in 1909. Already in that year, Proust had drafted descriptions of his novel's characters in their old age that would appear in the final book of Remembrance, where the permanence of art is set against the ravages of time. The letter to Vallette, drafts of the essay and novel, and Bonnet's researches establish in broad outline the process by which Proust generated his novel out of the ruins of his essay. But those of us who hoped, with Kolb, that Kolb's newly published complete edition of Proust's correspondence for 1909 would document the process in greater detail are disappointed. For until Proust was confident that he was at last in sight of a viable structure for Remembrance,he told few correspondents that he was producing anything more ambitious than Contre Saint-Beuve.1.The passage is primarily concerned with（）2.It can be inferred from the passage that all of the following are literary detectives who have tried, by means of either scholarship or criticism, to help solve the "great puzzle" mentioned in Line 1 EXCEPT（）3.According to the passage, in drafts of Contre Saint-Beuve Proust set out to show that Saint-Beuve made which of the following mistakes as a critic?I . Saint-Beuve made no effort to study the development of a novel through its drafts and revisions.II. Saint-Beuve assigned too great a role in the creative process to a writer's conscious intellect.III. Saint-Beuve concentrated too much on plots and not enough on imagery and other elements of style.4.Which of the following best states the author's attitude toward the information that scholars have gathered about Proust's writing in 1909?5.The author of the passage implies that which of the following would be the LEAST useful source of information about Proust's transition from working on Contre Saint-Beuve to having a viable structure for Remembrance of Things Past?

Growth, reproduction, and daily metabolism all require an organism to expend energy. The expenditure of energy is essentially a process of budgeting, just as finances are budgeted. If all of one's money is spent on clothes, there may be none left to buy food or go to the movies. Similarly, a plant or animal cannot squander all its energy on growing a big body if none would be left over for reproduction, for this is the surest way to extinction.All organisms, therefore, allocate energy to growth, reproduction, maintenance, and storage. No choice is involved; this allocation comes as part of the genetic package from the parents. Maintenance for a given body design of an organism is relatively constant. Storage is important, but ultimately that energy will be used for maintenance, reproduction, or growth. Therefore the principal differences in energy allocation are likely to be between growth and reproduction.Almost all of an organism's energy can be diverted to reproduction, with very little allocated to building the body. Organisms at this extreme are " opportunists ". At the other extreme are "competitors",almost all of whose resources are invested in building a huge body, with a bare minimum allocated to reproduction.Dandelions are good examples of opportunists. Their seed heads raised just high enough above the ground to catch the wind, the plants are no bigger than they need be, their stems are hollow, and all the rigidity comes from their water content. Thus, a minimum investment has been made in the body that becomes a platform for seed dispersal. These very short-lived plants reproduce prolifically; that is to say they provide a constant rain of seed in the neighborhood of parent plants. A new plant will spring up wherever a seed falls on a suitable soil surface, but because they do not build big bodies, they cannot compete with other plants for space, water, or sunlight. These plants are termed opportunists because they rely on their seeds,falling into settings where competing plants have been removed by natural processes, such as along an eroding riverbank, on landslips, or where a tree falls and creates a gap in the forest canopy.Opportunists must constantly invade new areas to compensate for being* displaced by more competitive species. Human landscapes of lawns, fields, or flowerbeds provide settings with bare soil and a lack of competitors that are perfect habitats for colonization by opportunists. Hence, many of the strongly opportunistic plants are the common weeds of fields and gardens.Because each individual is short-lived, the population of an opportunist species is likely to be adversely affected by drought, bad winters, or floods. If their population is tracked through time, it will be seen to be particularly unstable—soaring and plummeting in irregular cycles.The opposite of an opportunist is a competitor. These organisms tend to have big bodies, are long-lived , and spend relatively little effort each year on reproduction. An oak tree is a good example of a competitor. A massive oak claims its ground for 200 years or more, outcompeting all other would-be canopy trees by casting a dense shade and drawing up any free water in the soil. The leaves of an oak tree taste foul because they are rich in tannins, a chemical that renders them distasteful or indigestible to many organisms. The tannins are part of the defense mechanism that is essential to longevity. Although oaks produce thousands of acorns, the investment in a crop of acorns is small compared with the energy spent on building leaves, trunk, and roots. Once an oak tree becomes established, it is likely to survive minor cycles of drought and even fire. A population of oaks is likely to be relatively stable through time, and its survival is likely to depend more on its ability to withstand the pressures of competition or predation than on its ability to take advantage of chance events. It should be noted, however, that the pure opportunist or pure competitor is rare in nature, as most species fall between the extremes of a continuum, exhibiting a blend of some opportunistic and some competitive characteristics.1.The word "squander" in the passage is closest in meaning to（）2.According to the passage, the classification of organisms as "opportunists" or "competitors" is determined by（）3.All of the following are mentioned in Paragraph 7 as contributions to the longevity of oak trees EXCEPT （）4. According to the passage, oak trees are considered as competitors because （）5. In Paragraph 7, the author suggests that most species of organisms（）

"The word ‘protection' is no longer taboo ". This short sentence, uttered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy late last month, may have launched a new era in economic history. Why? For decades, Western leaders have believed that lowering trade barriers and tariffs was a natural good. Doing so, they reasoned, would lead to greater economic efficiency and productivity, which in turn would improve human welfare. Championing free trade thus became a moral, not just an economic, cause.These leaders, of course, weren't acting out of unselfishness. They knew their economies were the most competitive, so they'd profit most from liberalization. And developing countries feared that their economies would be swamped by superior Western productivity. Today, however, the tables have turned—though few acknowledge it. The West continues to preach free trade, but practices it less and less. Asia, meanwhile, continues to plead for special protection but practices more and more free trade.That's why Sarkozy's word was so important: he finally injected some honesty into the trade debate. The truth is that large parts of the West are losing faith in free trade, though few leaders admit it. Some economists are more honest. Paul Krugman is one of the few willing to acknowledge that protectionist arguments are returning. In the short run, there will be winners and losers will be in the West. Economists in the developed world used to love quoting Joseph Schumpeter, who said that "creative destruction" was an essential part of capitalist growth. But they always assumed that destruction would happen over there. When Western workers began losing jobs, suddenly their leaders began to lose faith in their principles. Things have yet to reverse completely. But there's clearly a negative trend in Western theory and practice.A little hypocrisy is not in itself a serious problem. The real problem is that Western governments continue to insist that they retain control of the key global economic and financial institutions while drifting away from global liberalization. Look at what's happening at the IMF (International Monetary Fund). The Europeans have demanded that they keep the post of managing director. But all too often, Western officials put their own interests above everyone else's when they dominate these global institutions.The time has therefore come for the Asians—who are clearly the new winners in today's global economy—to provide more intellectual leadership in supporting free trade. Sadly, they have yet to do so. Unless Asians speak out, however, there's a real danger that Adam Smith's principles, which have brought so much good to the world, could gradually die. And that would leave all of us worse off, in one way or another.1.It can be inferred that "protection"( Line 1, Para. 1) means（）2.The Western leaders preach free trade because （）3. By "the tables have turned"( Line 3-4, Para. 2) the author implies that （）4.The Western economists used to like the idea of "creative destruction" because it （）5.The author uses "IMF" as an example to illustrate the point that（）

Taken together, income, occupation, and education are good measures of people's social standing. Using a layered model of stratification, most sociologists describe the class system in the United States as divided into several classes: upper, upper middle, middle, lower middle, and lower class. Each class is defined by characteristics such as income, occupational prestige, and educational attainment. The different groups are arrayed along a continuum with those with the most money, education, and prestige at the top and those with the least at the bottom.In the United States, the upper class owns the major share of corporate and personal wealth; it includes those who have held wealth for generations as well as those who have recently become rich. Only a very small proportion of people actually constitute the upper class, but they control vast amounts of wealth and power in the United States. They exercise enormous control throughout society. Most of their wealth is inherited.Despite social myths to the contrary, the best predictor of future wealth is the family into which you are born. Each year, the business magazine Forbes publishes a list of the "Forbes 400"—the four hundred wealthiest families and individuals in the country. Of all the wealth represented on the Forbes 400 list, more than half is inherited. Those on the list who could be called "self-made" were not typically of modest origins; most inherited significant assets ( Forbes, 1997; Sklar and Collins, 1997 ). Those in the upper class with newly acquired wealth are known as the nouveau riche. Although they may have vast amounts of money, they are often not accepted into "old rich" circles.The upper middle class includes those with high incomes and high social prestige. They tend to be well-educated professionals or business executives. Their earnings can be quite high indeed—successful business executives can earn millions of dollars a year. It is difficult to estimate exactly how many people fall into this group because of the difficulty of drawing lines between the upper, upper middle, and middle class. Indeed, the upper middle class is often thought of as "middle class" because their lifestyle sets the standard to which many aspire, but this lifestyle is simply beyond the means of a majority of people in the United States.The middle class is hard to define;in part, being "middle class" is more than just economic position. By far the majority of Americans identity themselves as middle class even though they vary widely in lifestyle and in resources at their disposal. But the idea that the United States is an open-class system leads many to think that the majority have a middle-class lifestyle because, in general, people tend not to want to recognize class distinctions in the United States. Thus, the middle class becomes the ubiquitous norm even though many who call themselves middle class have a tenuous hold on this class position.In the hierarchy of social class, the lower middle class includes workers in the skilled trades and low-income bureaucratic workers, many of whom may actually define themselves as middle class. Examples are blue-collar workers (those in skilled trades who do manual labor) and many service workers, such as secretaries, hairdressers, waitresses, police, and firefighters. Medium to low income, education, and occupational prestige define the lower middle class relative to the class groups above it. The term "lower" in this class designation refers to the relative position of the group in the stratification system, but it has a pejorative sound to many people, especially to people who are members of this class.The lower class is composed primarily of the displaced and poor. People in this class have little formal education and are often unemployed or working in minimum-wage jobs. Forty percent of the poor work;10 percent work year-round and full time—a proportion that has generally increased over time. Recently, the concept of the underclass has been added to the lower class. The underclass includes those who have been left behind by contemporary economic developments. Rejected from the economic system, those in the underclass may become dependent on public assistance or illegal activities.1. Why does the author mention the "Forbes 400" in Paragraph 3?2.The author states that business and professional people with educational advantages are most often members of the（）3. Why do most people identify themselves as middle class in the United States?4. What can be inferred about poor people in the United States?5.According to Paragraph 7, why has the underclass emerged?

Many of today's young people have a difficult time seeing any moral dimension to their actions. There are a number of reasons why that's true, but none more prominent than a failed system of education that eschews teaching children the traditional moral values that bind Americans together as a society and a culture. That failed approach, called "decision-making",was introduced in schools 25 years ago. It tells children to decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong. It replaced "character education". Character education didn't ask children to reinvent the moral wheel;instead, it encouraged them to practice habits of courage, justice and self-control.In the 1940s, when a character education approach prevailed, teachers worried about students chewing gum; today they worry about robbery and rape. Decision-making curriculums pose thorny ethical dilemmas to students, leaving them with the impression that all morality is problematic and that all questions of right and wrong are in dispute. Youngsters are forced to question values and virtues they've never acquired in the first place or upon which they have only a tenuous hold. The assumption behind this method is that students will arrive at good moral conclusions if only they are given the chance. But the actual result is moral confusion.For example, a recent national study of 1, 700 sixth- to ninth-graders revealed that a majority of boys considered rape to be acceptable under certain conditions. Astoundingly, many of the girls agreed.This kind of moral illiteracy is further encouraged by values-education programs that are little more than courses in self-esteem. These programs are based on the questionable assumption that a child who feels good about himself or herself won't want to do anything wrong. But it is just as reasonable to make an opposite assumption: namely, that a child who has uncritical self-regard will conclude that he or she can't do anything bad.Such naive self-acceptance results in large part from the non-directive, non-judgmental as-long-as-you- feel-comfortable-with-your-choices mentality that has pervaded public education for the last two and one-half decades. Many of today's drug education, sex education and values-education courses are based on the same 1960s philosophy that helped fuel the explosion in teen drug use and sexual activity in the first place.Meanwhile, while educators are still fiddling with outdated "feel-good" approaches, New York, Washington, and Los Angeles are burning. Youngsters are leaving school believing that matters of right and wrong are always merely subjective. If you pass a stranger on the street and decide to murder him because you need money一if it feels right一you go with that feeling. Clearly, murder is not taught in our schools, but such a conclusion―just about any conclusion—can be reached and justified using the decision-making method.It is time to consign the fads of "decision-making" and "non-judgmentalism" to the ash heap of failed policies, and return to a proved method. Character education provides a much more realistic approach to moral formation. It is built on an understanding that we learn morality not by debating it but by practicing it.

发展中国家的人们若为移民问题操心，往往是想到硅谷或发达国家的医院和大学去创造自己最辉煌的未来。英国、加拿大和澳大利亚等国给大学毕业生提供的优惠移民政策，就是为了吸引这部分人群。诸多研究表明，发展中国家受过良好教育的人才往往可能有移民倾向。2004年，曾针对印度家庭进行过一次大型调查，结果发现，近40%有移民倾向的人受过中学以上教育，而25岁以上的印度人只有约3.3%受过中学以上教育。"人才流失"问题长期以来一直让发展中国家的决策者很苦恼，他们担心这种情况会危及其经济发展，夺去他们紧缺的技术人才，而这些人才本该在他们自己的大学任教，在他们自己的医院工作，为他们自己的工厂研发新产品。

1.Washington Irving grasped this fact nearly a hundred years ago when he wrote: " The stranger who would form a correct opinion of English character must go forth into the country. He must sojourn in villages and hamlets; he must visit castles, villas, farmhouses, cottages; he must wander through parks and gardens, along hedges and green lanes; he must loiter about country churches,attend wakes and fairs and other rural festivals,and cope with the people in all their conditions and all their habits and humors. ''2.The impact of decentralization trends, of course, extends well beyond cities. Sprawling development patterns are destabilizing many of the suburbs that surround America's cities. Older suburbs are experiencing the same challenges as cities: failing schools,persistent crime, and the loss of jobs and businesses to other, further out suburbs. Even suburban areas that are developing rapidly are finding that explosive growth has its drawbacks, especially in the form of overcrowded schools, but also in long commutes and the inability of local governments to pay for new roads, sewers, and other infrastructure.

Pity those who aspire to put the initials PhD after their names. After 16 years of closely supervised education, prospective doctors of philosophy are left more or less alone to write the equivalent of a large book. Most social-science postgraduates have still not completed their theses by the time their grant runs out after three years. They must then get a job and finish in their spare time, which can often take a further three years. By then, most new doctors are sick to death of the narrowly defined subject which has blighted their holidays and ruined their evenings.The Economic and Social Research Council, which gives grants to postgraduate social scientists, wants to get better value for money by cutting short this agony. It would like to see faster completion rates: until recently, only about 25% of PhD candidates were finishing within four years. The ESRC's response has been to stop PhD grants to all institutions where the proportion taking less than four years is below 10%; in the first year of this policy the national average shot up to 39% . The ESRC feels vindicated in its toughness, and will progressively raise the threshold to 40% in two years. Unless completion rates improve further, this would exclude 55 out of 73 universities and polytechnics — including Oxford University, the London School of Economics and the London Business School.Predictably, howls of protest have come from the universities, who view the blacklisting of whole institutions as arbitrary and negative. They point out that many of the best students go quickly into jobs where they can apply their research skills, but consequently take longer to finish their theses. Polytechnics with as few as two PhD candidates complain that they are penalized by random fluctuations in student performance. The colleges say there is no hard evidence to prove that faster completion rates result from greater efficiency rather than lower standards or less ambitious doctoral topics.The ESRC thinks it might not be a bad thing if PhD students were more modest in their aims. It would prefer to see more systematic teaching of research skills and fewer unrealistic expectations placed on young men and women who are undertaking their first piece of serious research. So in future its grants will be given only where it is convinced that students are being trained as researchers, rather than carrying out purely knowledge-based studies.The ESRC can not dictate the standard of thesis required by external examiners, or force departments to give graduates more teaching time. The most it can do is to try to persuade universities to change their ways. Recalcitrant professors should note that students want more research training and a less elaborate style of thesis, too.1.By time new doctors get a job and try to finish their theses in spare time,（）.2.Oxford University would be excluded out of those universities that receive PhD grants from ESRC, because the completion rate of its PhD students' theses within four years is lower than （）.3.All the following statements are the arguments against ESRC's policy EXCEPT（）.4.The ESRC would prefer（）.5.What the ESRC can do is to（）.

Historians have only recently begun to note the increase in demand for luxury goods and services that took place in 18th-century England. McKendrick has explored the Wedgwood firm's remarkable success in marketing luxury pottery ; Plumb has written about the proliferation of provincial theaters, musical festivals, and children's toys and books. While the fact of this consumer revolution is hardly in doubt, three key questions remain: Who were the consumers? What were their motives? And what were the effects of the new demand for luxuries?An answer to the first of these has been difficult to obtain. Although it has been possible to infer from the goods and services actually produced what manufactures and servicing trades thought their customers wanted, only a study of relevant personal documents written by actual consumers will provide a precise picture of who wanted what. We still need to know how large this consumer market was and how far down the social scale the consumer demand for luxury goods penetrated. With regard to this last question, we might note in passing that Thompson, while rightly restoring laboring people to the stage of 18th-century English history, has probably exaggerated the opposition of these people to the inroads of capitalist consumerism in general; for example, laboring people in eighteenth-century England readily shifted from home-brewed beer to standardized beer produced by huge, heavily capitalized urban breweries.To answer the question of why consumers became so eager to buy, some historians have pointed to the ability of manufacturers to advertise in a relatively uncensored press. This, however, hardly seems a sufficient answer. McKendrick favors a Veblen model of conspicuous consumption stimulated by competition for status. The "middling sort" bought goods and services because they wanted to follow fashions set by the rich. Again, we may wonder whether this explanation is sufficient. Do not people enjoy buying things as a form of self-gratification? If so, consumerism could be seen as a product of the rise of new concepts of individualism and materialism (a preoccupation with or stress upon material rather than intellectual or spiritual things) , but not necessarily of the frenzy for conspicuous competition.Finally, what were the consequences of this consumer demand for luxuries? McKendrick claims that it goes a long way toward explaining the coining of the Industrial Revolution. But does it? What, for example, does the production of high-quality pottery and toys have to do with the development of iron manufacture or textile mills? It is perfectly possible to have the psychology and reality of a consumer society without a heavy industrial sector.That future exploration of these key questions is undoubtedly necessary should not, however, diminish the force of the conclusion of recent studies: the insatiable demand in eighteenth-century England for frivolous as well as useful goods and services foreshadows our own world.1.In the first paragraph, the author mentions McKendrick and Plumb most probably in order to（）.2.Which of the following items, if preserved from 18th-century England, would provide an example of the kind of documents mentioned in lines 3-4, Paragraph 2?3.According to the text, Thompson attributes to laboring people in 18th-century England which of the following attitudes toward capitalist consumerism?4.In the third paragraph, the author is primarily concerned with（）.5.According to the text, 18th-century England and the contemporary world of the text readers are（）.

Our culture has caused most Americans to assume not only that our language is universal but that the gestures we use are understood by everyone. We do not realize that waving good-bye is the way to summon a person from the Philippines to one's side, or that in Italy and some Latin-American countries, curling the finger to oneself is a sign of farewell.Those private citizens who sent packages to our troops occupying Germany after World War II and marked them GIFT to escape duty payments did not bother to find out that " Gift" means poison in German. Moreover, we like to think of ourselves as friendly, yet we prefer to be at least 3 feet or an arm's length away from others. Latins and Middle Easterners like to come closer and touch, which makes Americans uncomfortable.Our linguistic and cultural blindness and the casualness with which we take notice of the developed tastes, gestures, customs and languages of other countries, are making us lose friends, business and respect in the world.Even here in the United States, we make few concessions to the needs of foreign visitors. There are no information signs in four languages on our public buildings or monuments; we do not have multilingual guided tours. Very few restaurant menus have translations,and multilingual waiters, bank clerks and policemen are rare. Our transportation systems have maps in English only and often we ourselves have difficulty understanding them.When we go abroad, we tend to cluster in hotels and restaurants where English is spoken. Then attitudes and information we pick up are conditioned by those natives—usually the richer—who speak English. Our business dealings, as well as the nation's diplomacy, are conducted through interpreters.For many years, America and Americans could get by with cultural blindness and linguistic ignorance. After all America is the most powerful country of the free world, the distributor needing funds and goods.But all that is past. American dollars no longer buy all good things,and we are slowly beginning to realize that our proper role in the world is changing. A 1979 Harris poll reported that 55 percent of Americans want this country to play a more significant role in world affairs; we want to have a hand in the important decisions of the next century, even though it may not always be the upper hand.1.It can be inferred that Americans being approached too closely by Middle Easterners would most probably （）.2.The author gives many examples to criticize Americans for their（）.3.In countries other than their own most Americans（）.4.According to the author, Americans,cultural blindness and linguistic ignorance will （）.5.The author's intention in writing this article is to make Americans realize that （）.

Scientists have long understood that supermassive black holes weighing millions or billions of suns can tear apart stars that come too close. The black hole's gravity pulls harder on the nearest part of the star, an imbalance that pulls the star apart over a period of minutes or hours, once it gets close enough.Scientists say this uneven pulling is not the only hazard facing the star. The strain of these unbalanced forces can also trigger a nuclear explosion powerful enough to destroy the star from within. Matthieu Brassart and Jean-Pierre Luminet of the Observatoire de Paris in Meudon, France, carried out computer simulations of the final moments of such an unfortunate star's life, as it veered towards a supermassive black hole.When the star gets close enough, the uneven forces flatten it into a pancake shape. Some previous studies had suggested this flattening would increase the density and temperature inside the star enough to trigger intense nuclear reactions that would tear it apart. But other studies had suggested that the picture would be complicated by shock waves generated during the flattening process and that no nuclear explosion should occur.The new simulations investigated the effects of shock waves in detail, and found that even when their effects are included, the conditions favor a nuclear explosion. "There will be an explosion of the star — it will be completely destroyed," Brassart says. Although the explosion obliterates the star, it saves some of the star's matter from being devoured by the black hole. The explosion is powerful enough to hurl much of the star's matter out of the black hole's reach, he says.The devouring of stars by black holes may already have been observed, although at a much later stage. It is thought that several months after the event that rips the star apart, its matter starts swirling into the hole itself. It heats up as it does so, releasing ultraviolet light and X-rays.If stars disrupted near black holes really do explode, then they could in principle allow these events to be detected at a much earlier stage, says Jules Hatpern of Columbia University in New York, US. "It may make it possible to see the disruption of that star immediately if it gets hot enough," he says.Brassart agrees. "Perhaps it can be observed in the X-rays and gamma rays, but it's something that needs to be more studiedhe says. Supernova researcher Chris Fryer of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, US, says the deaths of these stars are difficult to simulate, and he is not sure whether the researchers have proven their case that they explode in the process.1.Something destructive could happen to a star that gets too close to a black hole. Which of the following destructive statements is NOT mentioned in the passage?2.According to the third paragraph, researchers differed from each other in the problem of（）.3.According to the fourth paragraph, which of the following is NOT true?4.What will happen several months after the explosion of the star?5.According to the context, the word "disruption" in Paragraph 6 means（）.

The geology of the Earth's surface is dominated by the particular properties of water. Present on Earth in solid, liquid, and gaseous states, water is exceptionally reactive. It dissolves, transports, and precipitates many chemical compounds and is constantly modifying the face of the Earth.Evaporated from the oceans,water vapor forms clouds, some of which are transported by wind over the continents. Condensation from the clouds provides the essential agent of continental erosion: rain. Precipitated onto the ground, the water trickles down to form brooks, streams, and rivers, constituting what is called the hydrographic network. This immense polarized network channels the water toward a single receptacle: an ocean. Gravity dominates this entire step in the cycle because water tends to minimize its potential energy by running from high altitudes toward the reference point that is sea level.The rate at which a molecule of water passes through the cycle is not random but is a measure of the relative size of the various reservoirs. If we define residence time as the average time for a water molecule to pass through one of the three reservoirs—atmosphere, continent, and ocean—we see that the times are very different. A water molecule stays, on an average, eleven days in the atmosphere, one hundred years on a continent and forty thousand years in the ocean. This last figure shows the importance of the ocean as the principal reservoir of the hydrosphere but also the rapidity of water transport on the continents.A vast chemical separation process takes place during the flow of water over the continents. Soluble ions such as calcium, sodium, potassium, and some magnesium are dissolved and transported. Insoluble ions such as aluminum, iron, and silicon stay where they are and form the thin, fertile skin of soil on which vegetation can grow. Sometimes soils are destroyed and transported mechanically during flooding. The erosion of the continents thus results from two closely linked and interdependent processes, chemical erosion and mechanical erosion. Their respective interactions and efficiency depend on different factors.1.According to the passage, clouds are primarily formed by water（）?2.The passage suggests that the purpose of the "hydrographic network" is to （）.3.What determines the rate at which a molecule of water moves through the cycle, as discussed in the third paragraph?4.All of the following are examples of soluble ions EXCEPT （）. 5.The word "efficiency" in last sentences is closest in meaning to（）.

The human ear contains the organ for hearing and the organ for balance. Both organs involve fluid-filled channels containing hair cells that produce electrochemical impulses when the hairs are stimulated by moving fluid.The ear can be divided into three regions: outer, middle, and inner. The outer ear collects sound waves and directs them to the eardrum separating the outer ear from the middle ear. The middle ear conducts sound vibrations through three small bones to the inner ear. The inner ear is a network of channels containing fluid that moves in response to sound or movement.To perform the function of hearing, the ear converts the energy of pressure waves moving through the air into nerve impulses that the brain perceives as sound. Vibrating objects, such as the vocal cords of a speaking person, create waves in the surrounding air. These waves cause the eardrum to vibrate with the same frequency. The three bones of the middle ear amplify and transmit the vibrations to the oval window, a membrane on the surface of the cochlea, the organ of hearing. Vibrations of the oval window produce pressure waves in the fluid inside the cochlea. Hair cells in the cochlea convert the energy of the vibrating fluid into impulses that travel along the auditory nerve to the brain.The organ for balance is also located in the inner ear. Sensations related to body position are generated much like sensations of sound. Hair cells in the inner ear respond to changes in head position with respect to gravity and movement. Gravity is always pulling down on the hairs, sending a constant series of impulses to the brain. When the position of the head changes—as when the head bends forward—the force on the hair cells changes its output of nerve impulses. The brain then interprets these changes to determine the head's new position.1.What can be inferred about the organs for hearing and balance?2.Hearing involves all of the following EXCEPT（）3.It can be inferred from Paragraphs 2 and 3 that the cochlea is a part of （）4.What can be inferred from Paragraph 4 about gravity?5.In this passage, the author mainly explains （）

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