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If asked to give one example of a successful innovation in the past 10 years, what would come to mind first? Apple’s shiny cool gadgets like the IPhone and the IPad? Or the emergence of social networking sites such as the Facebook and its various copycats?We admit these devices and applications have greatly changed our lifestyle. We have never before felt so connected and social networking sites are powerful tools in motivating people to take part in worthy social and civic causes.We chum out one nifty gadget after another, with bigger screens and less buttons. We tweak text and photo-sharing social networking sites to create a new product to share, perhaps audios and videos. All of these are wonderful, but what about truly groundbreaking and visionary endeavors that will profoundly change the world and human life?Or, is something wrong with our technological development? Steve Blank, writing in The Huffinton Post, blamed social networking and social media companies such as Face book for stifling innovation. Blank teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford, Columbia and the US National Science Foundation Innovation Corps. He advises people, especially venture capitalists (VC), who want to commercialize inventions.Blank argues that the success of Face book and other social networking and social media companies is diverting venture capital from serious research with a more uncertain payoff. He is talking about research that truly visionary VCs should be supporting.Instead of “investing in a blockbuster cancer drug that will pay them nothing for 15 years”, Blank says VCs are throwing their money at the latest and possibly greatest social-media idea that can run on smart phones or tablets in hopes of scoring a quick return when it goes big. ’’In the past," Blank wrote, "if you were a successful VC, you could make $100 million on an investment in five to seven years. Today, social media startups can return hundreds of millions or even billions in less than three years"A 1999 report in the Wire magazine predicted, “The convergence of mobile phones and the Internet, high-speed wireless data access, intelligent networks, and pervasive computing will shape how we work, shop, pay bills, keep appointments, conduct wars, keep up with our children, and write poetry in the next century.” Thirteen years later, we are already living in the world the report described. Perhaps it is time for us to ask: What now?

Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men—above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received. My peace of mind is often troubled by the depressing sense that I have borrowed too heavily from the work of other men.To ponder interminably over the reason for one’s own existence or the meaning of life in general seems to me, from an objective point of view, to be sheer folly. And yet everyone holds certain ideals by which he guides his aspiration and his judgment. The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort and happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.

About twice every century, one of the massive stars in our galaxy blows itself apart in a supernova explosion that sends massive quantities of radiation and matter into space and generates shock waves that sweep through the arms of the galaxy. The shock waves heat the interstellar gas, evaporate small clouds, and compress larger ones to the point at which they collapse under their own gravity to form new stars. The general picture that has been developed for the supernova explosion and its aftermath goes something like this. Throughout its evolution, a star is much like a leaky balloon. It keeps its equilibrium figure through a balance of internal pressure against the tendency to collapse under its own weight. The pressure is generated by nuclear reactions in the core of the star which must continually supply energy to balance the energy that leaks out in the form of radiation. Eventually the nuclear fuel is exhausted, and the pressure drops in the core. With nothing to hold it up, the matter in the center of the star collapses inward, creating higher and higher densities and temperatures, until the nuclei and electrons are fused into a super-dense lump of matter known as a neutron star.As the overlying layers rain down on the surface of the neutron star, the temperature rises, until with a blinding flash of radiation, the collapse is reversed. A thermonuclear shock wave runs through the now expanding stellar envelope, fusing lighter elements into heavier ones and producing a brilliant visual outburst that can be as intense as the light of 10 billion suns. The shell of matter thrown off by the explosion plows through the surrounding gas, producing an expanding bubble of hot gas, with gas temperatures in the millions of degrees. This gas will emit most of its energy at X-ray wavelengths, so it is not surprising that X-ray observatories have provided some of the most useful insights into the nature of the supernova phenomenon. More than twenty supernova remnants have now been detected in X-ray studies.Recent discoveries of meteorites with anomalous concentrations of certain isotopes indicate that a supernova might have precipitated the birth of our solar system more than four and a half billion years ago. Although the cloud that collapsed to form the Sun and the planets was composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, it also contained carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, elements essential for life as we know it. Elements heavier than helium are manufactured deep in the interior of stars and would, for the most part, remain there if it were not for the cataclysmic supernova explosions that blow giant stars apart. Additionally, supernovas produce clouds of high-energy particles called cosmic rays. These high-energy particles continually bombard the Earth and are responsible for many of the genetic mutations that are the driving force of the evolution of species.1.Which of the following titles best describes the content of the passage?2.According to the passage a neutron star is（） .3.It can be inferred from the passage that the meteorites mentioned by the author in Para.3 （）.4.According to the passage what is the first event in the sequence that leads to the occurrence of a supernova?5.The author implies that （）.

About a century ago, the Swedish physical scientist Arrhenius proposed a law of classical chemistry that relates chemical reaction rate to temperature. According to the Arrhenius equation, chemical reactions are increasingly unlikely to occur as temperatures approach absolute zero, and at absolute zero (zero degrees Kelvin, or minus 273 degrees Celsius) reactions stop. However, recent experimental evidence reveals that although the Arrhenius equation is generally accurate in describing the kind of chemical reaction that occurs at relatively high temperatures, at temperatures closer to zero a quantum-mechanical effect known as tunneling comes into play; this effect accounts for chemical reactions that are forbidden by the principles of classical chemistry. Specifically, entire molecules can ‘"tunnel” through the barriers of repulsive forces from other molecules and chemically react even though these molecules do not have sufficient energy, according to classical chemistry, to overcome the repulsive barrier.The rate of any chemical reaction, regardless of the temperature at which it takes place, usually depends on a very important characteristic known as its activation energy. Any molecule can be imagined to reside at the bottom of a so-called potential well of energy. A chemical reaction corresponds to the transition of a molecule from the bottom of one potential well to the bottom of another. In classical chemistry, such a transition can be accomplished only by going over the potential barrier between the wells, the height of which remain constant and are called the activation energy of the reaction. In tunneling, the reacting molecules tunnel from the bottom of one to the bottom of another well without having to rise over the barrier between the two wells. Recently researchers have developed the concept of tunneling temperature: the temperature below which tunneling transitions greatly outnumber Arrhenius transitions, and classical mechanics gives way to its quantum counterpart.This tunneling phenomenon at very low temperatures suggested my hypothesis about a cold prehistory of life: the formation of rather complex organic molecules in the deep cold of outer space, where temperatures usually reach only a few degrees Kelvin. Cosmic rays (high-energy protons and other particles) might trigger the synthesis of simple molecules, such as interstellar formaldehyde, in dark clouds of interstellar dust. Afterward complex organic molecules would be formed, slowly but surely, by means of tunneling. After I offered my hypothesis, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe argued that molecules of interstellar formaldehyde have indeed evolved into stable polysaccharides such as cellulose and starch. Their conclusions, although strongly disputed, have generated excitement among investigators such as myself who are proposing that the galactic clouds are the places where the pre-biological evolution of compounds necessary to life occurred.1.The author of the passage is primarily concerned with（） .2.According to the passage, classical chemical reactions and tunneling reactions are alike in which of the following ways?3.The author’s attitude toward the theory of a cold pre-history of life can best be described at（） .4.Which of the following best describes the hypothesis of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe as it is presented in the passage?5.Which of the following best describes the organization of the first two paragraphs of the passage?

The earliest controversies about the relationship between photography and art centered on whether photography’s fidelity to appearances and dependence on a machine allowed it to be a fine art as distinct from merely a practical art. Throughout the nineteenth century, the defense of photography was identical with the struggle to establish it as a fine art. Against the charge that photography was a soulless, mechanical copying of reality, photographers asserted that it was instead a privileged way of seeing, a revolt against commonplace vision, and no less worthy an art than painting.Ironically, now that photography is securely established as a fine art, many photographers find it pretentious or irrelevant to label it as such. Serious photographers variously claim to be finding, recording, impartially observing, witnessing events, exploring themselves—anything but making works of art. In the nineteenth century, photography’s association with the real world placed it in an ambivalent relation to art; late in the twentieth century, an ambivalent relation exists because of the Modernist heritage in art. That important photographers are no longer willing to debate whether photography is or is not a fine art, except to proclaim that their own work is not involved with art, shows the extent to which they simply take for granted the concept of art imposed by the triumph of Modernism: the better the art, the more subversive it is of the traditional aims of art.Photographers’ disclaimers of any interest in making art tell us more about the harried status of the contemporary notion of art than about whether photography is or is not art. For example, those photographers who suppose that, by taking pictures, they are getting away from the pretensious of art as exemplified by painting remind us of those Abstract Expressionist painters who imagined they were getting away from the intellectual austerity of classical Modernist painting by concentrating on the physical act of painting. Much of photography’s prestige today derives from the convergence of its aims with those of recent art, particularly with the dismissal of abstract art implicit in the phenomenon of Pop painting during the 1960’s. Appreciating photographs is a relief to sensibilities tired of the mental exertions demanded by abstract art. Classical Modernist painting—that is, abstract art as developed in different ways by Picasso, Kandinsky, and Matisse — presuppose highly developed skills of looking and a familiarity with other paintings and the history of art. Photography, like Pop painting, reassures viewers that art is not hard; photography seems to be more about its subjects than about art.Photography, however, has developed all the anxieties and self-consciousness of a classic Modernist art. Many professionals privately have begun to worry that the promotion of photography as an activity subversive of the traditional pretensions of art has gone so far that the public will forget that photography is a distinctive and exalted activity—in short, an art.1.In the passage, the author is primarily concerned with（） .2.Which of the following adjectives best describes ‘the concept of art imposed by the triumph of Modernism” as the author represents it in Para.2?3.The author introduces Abstract Expressionist painters (Para. 3) in order to （）.4.According to the passage, which of the following best explains the reaction of serious contemporary photographers to the question of whether photography is an art?5.It can be inferred from the passage that the author most probably considers serious contemporary photography to be a（） .

Conducting scientific research on this most challenging of groups can be compared to viewing a whale through a keyhole. The hulk of the animal glides past from time to time while we try desperately to figure out what on earth it is. In spite of lots of sparks and smoke, we have so far accomplished little more than a small enlargement of this keyhole. Someday— perhaps in the next hundred years we may have a picture-window-sized keyhole and will finally see what the whole whale looks like. But even then the enigma of the whale will stand, undecided, before us.I have been studying whales continuously since 1967. One of the delights of that experience has been discovering that there is no way to get a whale to adopt a human timescale. This is no more possible than it would be for a human to adopt a weasel's speed of living. Whales are unhurriable. It’s one of their most endearing trails. Nowhere is this more engagingly seen than in trying to figure out what a whale is doing when what you are watching is, for example, play, but you have not yet figured that out. The difficulty comes from the fact that one of the major clues to the function of a behavior pattern is the rhythm of its occurrence. Because we commonly associate play with quick motions, the key to being able to recognize play in whales is learning to think differently—in terms of long, slow rhythms, where things occur very lingeringly (it would be a comparable problem to learn to recognize play in snails, or sloths, or tortoises). To understand whales one must be deeply patient, must slow way down and be content to observe passively for a long time. Only at the end of a day may one say to oneself, “Now let me see; what did I see? Well, I saw the whale do this, and then it did this…and then this ....and then.... For heaven’s sake, it was play I was looking at.” In order to observe whales, you must be willing to set your metronome on adagio. Then, to understand what you have seen, you must fast-forward through your observations by setting your metronome to allegro.During the first ten years of my career in biology, I was an experimentalist. I worked in neurophysiology and behavior and did experiments on how bats determine the direction from which sound is coming, how owls locate their prey in total darkness by hearing it, and how moths determine the direction from which a bat is approaching (so they can make evasive maneuvers to avoid it). When I started studying whales—a group of species upon which it is all but impossible to experiment—I worried whether I would find the work stimulating enough or whether it would seen boring simply observing, without ever being able to manipulate anything or do an experiment. I had enjoyed experimental work—at that time of my life I liked manipulating things—yet I had very little idea of how to make good, passive field observations. But I soon appreciated the greater rewards of finding things out through passive observations. I soon realized that the constraints posed by passive observation can be more challenging than those posed by experimental work. It is rather like the constraints of the sonnet form, which make composing poetry exquisitely challenging. Passive observation requires a subtler way of thinking, and the result can be sonnets rather than ballads.1.The primary purpose of the passage is to （）.2.In Para. 1, the phrase "sparks and smoke" primarily serves to suggest （）.3.In Para. 2, the author treats play as（） .4.The reference to “The sonnet form" (line 57) primarily serves to（） .5.The last paragraph describes all of the following EXCEPT .

We are good at inventing way to enlarge our realm. Repeatedly we find methods of spreading farther. If an element is forbidding, we devise a means to master it. Reaching the continental shores, we developed ship-building and navigational skills in order to cross oceans. Shivering at arctic weather, we designed for clothing and snug shelters in order to edge northward. And, having first occupied much of the usable space in the world, we are filling its usable time. Although being wakeful at night flouted our natural rhythms, we developed artificial lighting that let us be active after dark.An era is now under way in which we are replacing our cyclic community with activities that never stop. There is widespread factory shift work. Airports, gasoline stations, hotels, restaurants and broadcasters operate incessantly. Data-processing departments of insurance companies and banks are astir all night. Meanwhile, isolated individuals bend over books and papers on desks in their homes, watch television after midnight, or walk in the streets and listen to the night breathe.This extension across all hours of the day resembles our spreading across the face of the Earth. Look at both trends from enough perspective in distance and time and they appear alike. Hover far above the planet and watch it as it spins throughout the eras. With the planet’s surface in daylight, little human settlements can be seen to grow larger as the years go by and small extensions appear at their outskirts. Watch the surface when it is in night and at first some pinpoints of light flicker for a while and then go out. After ages pass, those light become stronger; they stay on longer, and other glimmerings appear nearby. Day and night, over thousands of years, reveal to us widening networks of human settlements and illumination being prolonged after dark. The surface is not uniformly occupied. The hours are not uniformly lit. But both are advancing in order.Both forms of expansion are frontiers. A frontier is a new source of resources that people use for subsistence or for profit. It is also a safety valve for people who feel confined. They disperse in response to pressures at home and to appealing opportunities elsewhere.Now, venturing into the night, we have the same motives as our predecessors who migrated geographically. The daytime is too crowded. Its carrying capacity is being strained, and still it does not yield alt that the community wants. The chance to exploit facilities that are left idle also arouses our initiative to use more of the night. Using the same space more of the time is a way to multiply its capacity. Some people dislike the commotion of the day and crave the serenity of night. Others look to it to better themselves economically. It is no accident that personal motives for relief and opportunity are similar to the causes of expansion for the community as a whole. Those are the age-old forces behind all migrations.1.The primary purpose of the passage is to（） .2.The examples the author cites in Para.2 (“There is …night”)illustrate a blurring of（）3.In context, the use of “Look”, “Hover,” and “Watch”(in Para.3) is intended to（）.4.In Para. 3, "both" most directly refers to（） .5.Which of the following activities provides the best example of the "way to multiply" as discussed in the last paragraph?

The health-care economy is replete with unusual and even unique economic relationships. One of the least understood involves the peculiar roles of producer or "provider" and purchaser or "consumer" in the typical doctor-patient relationship. In most sectors of the economy, it is the seller who attempts to attract a potential buyer with various inducements of price, quality, and utility, and it is the buyer who makes the decision. Where circumstances permit the buyer no choice because there is effectively only one seller and the product is relatively essential, government usually asserts monopoly and places the industry under price and other regulations. Neither of these conditions prevails in most of the health-care industry.In the health-care industry, the doctor-patient relationship is the mirror image of the ordinary relationship between producer and consumer. Once an individual has chosen to see a physician一and even then there may be no real choice—it is the physician who usually makes all significant purchasing decisions: whether the patient should return “next Wednesday,” whether X-rays are needed, whether drugs should be prescribed, etc. It is a rare and sophisticated patient who will challenge such professional decisions or raise in advance questions about price, especially when the ailment is regarded as serious.This is particularly significant in relation to hospital care. The physician must certify the need for hospitalization, determine what procedures will be performed, and announce when the patient may be discharged. The patient may be consulted about some of these decisions, but in the main it is the doctor’s judgments that are final. Little wonder then that in the eyes of the hospital it is the physician who is the real “consumer”. As a consequence, the medical staff represents the "power center'* in hospital policy and decision-making, not the administration.Although usually there are in this situation four identifiable participants—the physician, the hospital, the patient, and the payer (generally an insurance carrier or government)—the physician makes the essential decisions for all of them. The hospital becomes an extension of the physician; the payer generally meets most of the bona fide bills generated by the physician/hospital; and for the most part the patient plays a passive role. In routine or minor illnesses, or just plain worries, the patient’s options are, of course, much greater with respect to use and price. In illnesses that are of some significance, however, such choices tend to evaporate, and it is for these illnesses that the bulk of the health-care dollar is spent. We estimate that about 75-80 percent of health-care expenditures are determined by physicians, not patients. For this reason, economy measures directed at patients or the general public is relatively ineffective.1.The author’s primary purpose is to （）.2. It can be inferred that doctors are able to determine hospital policies because（） .3.According to the author, when a doctor tells a patient to "return next Wednesday", the doctor is in effect （） .4.The author is most probably leading up to（）.5.The tone of the passage can best be described as（） .

How did a lanky Danish vegetarian who wears T-shirts to important meetings and votes only for left-wing politicians become the great Satan of environmentalism? By telling everyone he is an environmentalist but sounding like the opposite. “We are not running out of energy or natural resources,” writes Bjorn Lomborg, 37, an associate professor of statistics at Denmark's University of Aarhus and a former member of Greenpeace, in his 1998 book The Skeptical Environmentalist. “Air and water around us are becoming less and less polluted. Mankind's lot has actually improved in terms of practically every measurable indicator.”The book, which was published in English last year, became a best seller, and conservatives worldwide use its ideas to justify inaction on such issues as deforestation and global warming. "We should do something that actually does good and not sounds good,” he says of the expense of complying with the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. “For the cost of Kyoto for one year, we could give clean drinking water and sanitation to every human being on earth."Some scientists say they initially hoped to ignore Lomborg but in the wake of his book’s popularity have reacted with a fury rarely seen in academia. Peter Raven, chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, calls Lomborg “the prime example in our time of someone who distorts statistics and statements to meet his own political end.” A dozen esteemed environmental scientists, including Raven and Harvard’s Edward O. Wilson, are demanding that Lomborg’s publisher cut him loose. “We are deeply disturbed that Cambridge University Press would publish and promote an error-filled, poorly referenced and non-peer-reviewed work,” they write in a letter calling on Cambridge to transfer publishing rights to a popular, non-scholarly press.The problem is, Lomborg gets many of his facts right --- and provides 2,930 footnotes to make them easy to check. Some scientists and environmental advocates have made exaggerated claims about environmental doom, and it’s not surprising that they have finally been catalogued. Yet Lomborg is as guilty of exaggeration and selective use of data as those he criticizes. He is right that air and water quality and agricultural productivity have improved in much of the world. But to look at the data on global warming, biological diversity, marine depletion and deforestation and still say things are generally getting better takes a willful blindness. That’s why it’s a shame so many of the attacks on Lomborg rely on name calling. All that does is to avoid what could be a valuable debate on the substance of environmental policy—and, of course, help Lomborg sell books. “I'm making a fair amount of money from the book,’’ says Lomborg, ‘‘A lot more than Cambridge thought,1.Why is Bjorn Lamborg criticized by environmentalists?2.We can learn from the text that The Skeptical Environmentalist is a book that（） .3.Conservatives worldwide share with Lomborg the same view that deforestation and global warming are （）.4.The scientists, according to the text, demand that Cambridge University Press （） .5.What does the author think of the criticism against Lomborg's book?

A bus took him to the West End, where, among the crazy colored fountains of illumination, shattering the blue dusk with green and crimson fire, he found the cafe of his choice, a tea-shop that had gone mad and turned Babylonian, a white palace with ten thousand lights. It towered above the other building like a citadel, which indeed it was, the outpost of a new age, perhaps a new civilization, perhaps a new barbarism; and behind the thin marble front were concrete and steel, just as behind the careless profusion of luxury were millions of pence, balanced to the last halfpenny. Somewhere in the background, hidden away, behind the ten thousand lights and acres of white napery and bewildering glittering rows of teapots, behind the thousand waitresses and cash-box girls and black-coated floor managers and temperamental long-haired violinists, behind the mounds of cauldrons of stewed steak, the van-loads of ices, were a few men who went to work juggling with fractions of a farming, who knew how many units of electricity it took to finish a steak-and-kidney Pudding and how many minutes and seconds a waitress( five feet four in height and in average health) would need to carry a tray of given weight from the kitchen life to the table in the far corner. In short, there was a warm, sensuous, vulgar life flowering in the upper storeys, and a cold science working in the basement. Such was the gigantic tea-shop into which Turgis marched, in search not of mere refreshment but of all the enchantment of unfamiliar luxury, Perhaps he knew in his heart the men have conquered half the known world, looted whole kingdoms, and never arrived in such luxury. The place was built for him.It was built for a great many other people too, and, as usual, they were all there. It seemed with humanity. The marble entrance hall, piled dizzily with bonbons and cakes, was as crowded and bustling as a railway station. The gloom and grime of the streets, the raw air, all November, were at once left behind, forgotten: the atmosphere inside was golden, tropical, belonging to some high mid-summer of confectionery. Disdaining the lifts, Turgis, once more excited by the sight, sound, and smell of it all, climbed the wide staircase until he reached his favorite floor, where an orchestra, led by a young Jewish violinist with wandering lustrous eyes and a passion for tremolo effects, acted as a magnet to a thousand girls, scented air, the sensuous clamor of the strings; and, as he stood hesitating a moment, half dazed, there came, bowing, a sleek grave man, older than he was and far more distinguished than he could ever hope to be, who murmured deferentially: “For one, sir? This way please,’’ Shyly, yet proudly, Turgis followed him.1.That “behind the thin marble front were concrete and steel” in Para 1 suggests that（）.2.In its context the statement that “the place was built for him” means that the cafe was intended to（） .3.Which of the following statements about the second paragraph is NOT true?4.The following are comparisons made by the author in the second paragraph EXCEPT that（）5.The author’s attitude to the cafe is（） .

侵略行为似乎与许多生物结构和化学物质有关，如大脑中的下丘脑(hypothalamus)。很多动物在受到特定刺激时会表现出本能的侵略反应。下丘脑似乎与动物的这种本能反应有关：对许多动物的下丘脑中部分区域进行电激，会引发这一些它们的常见侵略行为。然而，人类的大脑要复杂的多，大脑的其他结构似乎可以抑制这种本性。社会生物学是生物学方法的一个分支，该理论认为侵略性对于人类而言是天生并且必要的。社会生物学认为，包括侵略行为在内的许多社会行为都是由遗传决定的。根据达尔文的进化论，他认为，个体存在的数量远远超过那些可以找到食物并且活到成年的个体数量。个体之间开始进行生存竞争，那些拥有竞争优势的个体更容易存活，并且会将它们有利于生存竞争的基因遗传给下一代。大部分物种所具有的竞争优势特质之一就是好斗性。拥有侵略特质的个体更容易存活和繁殖，因此，与侵略行为相关的各种基因遗传给下一代的可能性更大。该理论在众多方面遭到质疑，其一，人类拥有其他物种不具备的能力，这种并非侵略性质的能力才是人类生存下来的主要原因。其二，人类身上存在太多的变数，因此，我们无法相信人类会被侵略冲动主导或者支配。

当中国成为世界上最大的经济体时，我们会有什么感受？答案不用多久就会揭晓。几周前国际货币基金组织发布一项报告指出，中国将会在五年内成为世界第一大经济体。随着中国日益崛起成为超级经济大国，一国的财富与个人财富的联系正在被打破。中国既比西方国家富有，也比西方国家贫穷，它坐拥3万亿美元的外汇储备，然而如果按当前汇率来计算，美国的人均财力是中国的十倍。美国社会的相对富裕正是中国成为世界最大经济体之时却不能成为世界最强国的原因之一。人们习惯性地把美国当成是世界唯一超级大国，这也让美国的世界政治主导地位比其经济地位更加长久。美国在世界各大机构中都有根深蒂固的地位。有一个很重要的事实是，联合国，国际货币基金组织以及世界银行均坐落于美国。中国由于经济实力的崛起而引发的政治问题，其邻国的感受最为强烈。日本、南韩和澳大利亚发现它们的经济和战略利益正在日益分歧，这三个国家都与中国有非常重要的经济联系，同时它们与美国也有相当重要的军事联系。但是随着时间的推移，中国的不断增长的经济力量将会变得越来越举足轻重。

The supposed “consensus” on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge, after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years. The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century. Based on readings from more than 30.000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997. Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a "grand minimum" in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food. Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak. We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call "Cycle 24'— which is why last week's solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona ― derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun's surface — suggest that cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still. According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a 92 percent chance that both cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as peak as, or weaker than the "Dalton minimum” of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2°C. However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the “Maunder minimum" (after astronomer Edward Maundeo, between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the "Little Ice Age" when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.

By doubling the resolution of existing liquid-crystal displays (LCDS), IBM has created a monitor which, when viewed from 18 inches away or farther, shows images that the human eye finds indistinguishable from the real thing. LCDS work by sandwiching a thin sheet of liquid crystals—in this case, thin-film transistors---between two narrowly separated panes of glass. Typically, small glass spheres have held the two panes of glass apart, impairing by refraction the performance of the display. IBM has replaced the spheres with small posts, which are located in the interstices between pixels, and so do not disturb the light as it leaves the excited liquid crystal. In the past, attempts to achieve such high pixel rates have been stymied by the build-up of electrical static, which caused problems with the brightness of the screens. The IBM groups have solved this by using a laser to scan back and forth across the glass, preventing the build-up of static electricity. The new screen could also help petroleum engineers to speed up their analysis of where to drill from one month to one day. Similarly, the higher fidelity will allow CAD (computer-aided design) systems, especially in the motor and aerospace industries, to work faster --- because the detail revealed by the new monitor can cut out costly prototype-building exercises. RAM’S idea is that the new monitor will allow designers of all sorts to go straight from computer image to final product, eliminating many costly and time-consuming middle stages.

Virtual high schools, which allow students to take classes via PC, have emerged as an increasingly popular education alternative, particularly for on-the-go athletes. University of Miami Online High School (UMOHS) has more than 400 students enrolled, 56% of whom are athletes. Accredited by the 100-year-old Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, UMOHS offers honors and advanced-placement classes. All course material is online along with assignments and due dates. For help, says principal Howard Liebman, “A student may e-mail, instant message or call the teacher.”Dallas' mom Lori Bannon turned to another online school. Laurel Springs in Ojai, Calif, Bannon, Who has a medical degree from Harvard, didn’t want to compromise the education of her daughter Lindsay, 13, an elite gymnast who spends eight hours a day in the gym. “Regular school was not an option, ” says Bannon, “but I wanted to make sure she could go back at grade level if she quit gymnastics.” Laurel Springs' enrollment has increased 35% a year for the past four years to 1,800 students. At least 25% are either athletes or child entertainers.Educators are split on the merits of such schools. Paul Orehovec, an enrollment officer for the University of Miami, admits, “I was somewhat of a skeptic, but when I looked into their programs and accreditation, I was excited. UMOHS is the first online school to be granted membership in the National Honor Society.” Kevin Roy, Elite’s director of education, sees pitfalls and potential in virtual schools. “You will never have that wonderful teacher who inspires you for life,” says Roy. “But the virtual school offers endless possibilities. I don’t know where education’s imagination will take this.”

I think that, from a biological standpoint, human life almost reads like a poem. It has its own rhythm and beat, its internal cycles of growth and decay. It begins with innocent childhood, followed by awkward adolescence trying awkwardly to adapt itself to mature society, with its young passions and follies, its ideals and ambitions; then it reaches a manhood of intense activities, profiting from experience and learning more about society and human nature; at middle age, there is a slight easing of tension, a mellowing of character like the ripening of fruit or the mellowing of good wine, and the gradual acquiring of a more tolerant, more cynical and at the same time a kindlier view of life; then in the sunset of our life, the endocrine glands decrease their activity, and if we have a true philosophy of old age and have ordered our life pattern according to it, it is for us the age of peace and security and leisure and contentment; finally, life flickers out and one goes into eternal sleep never to wake up again. One should be able to set the beauty of this rhythm of life, to appreciate, as we do in grand symphonies, its main theme, its strains of conflict and the final resolution. The movements of these cycles are very much the same in a normal life, but the relic must be provided by the individual himself.

Astrophysicists wrestling with the study of a new kind of star, the flat, ‘two-dimensional” configurations known as accretion disks have recently gained new insights into the behavior of these stars. Accretion disks exist in a variety of situations where matters swirl around a compact star such as a white dwarf star or a neutron star. Accretion disks are also suspected of playing a part in more exotic situations, in which the central object is imagined to be a super massive black hole, the ultimate form of collapsed matter, rather than a compact star. The modeling of accretion disks is still in its infancy, a situation analogous to the days when ordinary stars were modeled by using elementary scaling laws without benefit of knowledge of the nuclear processes that power the stars. Similarly, the basic physics of the power by which accretion disks radiate, thought to originate in a form of turbulent friction, is known only at the crudest level.Accretion disks were first defined in the context of Cataclysmic variables. In these systems, matter from the outer layers of an ordinary star is attracted by the gravitational influence of a nearby orbiting white dwarf star, the matter lost from the ordinary star cannot strike the surface of the tiny white dwarf directly but settles into an orbit around the star. The viscosity in the disk thus formed causes heating, radiation, and a slow spiraling of disk matter onto the surface of the white dwarf.The rapid advances made in X-ray astronomy in the past decade have identified a second type of system in which accretion disks occur. In such a system, an accretion disk whirls about a neutron stat rather than a white dwarf. The inner reaches of the accretion disk extend deeply into the gravitational potential of the neutron star where very rapid motion is the rule. The energy released by friction and the actual raining of the material from the disk onto the surface of the neutron star is so great that radiation is given off in a powerful flood of x-rays. And in at least one case, X-ray astronomers believe that the object in the center of an accretion disk is a black hole, suggesting that a third system may exist.It had been assumed that portions of accretion disks would be unstable and that, as a result, clumping of their matter into rings would occur. There is no evidence from observation, however, that accretion disks do, in fact, suffer from these instabilities. In recent work, Abramowicz has shown that added gravitational effects due to general relativity may alter the expected Newtonian gravitational relationships in such a way that the disk remains stable, indicating that it is possible that these predicted instabilities do not occur. Further progress toward understanding accretion disks will involve defining and proposing solutions to restricted problems just as was done in this case and was done and continues to be done for ordinary stars. Abramowicz’ work is a valuable example of the care that must be taken before reaching conclusions regarding accretion disks.1.The author of the passage is primarily concerned with （）.2.The passage suggests which of the following about current scientific knowledge of the nuclear processes of ordinary stars?3.The passage suggests that Abramowicz’ work was motivated by which of the following assumptions?4.According to the passage, some accretion disks originated in（） .5.It can be inferred from the passage that the significance of Abramowicz' work is that it（）.

Nearly every writer on the philosophy of civil rights activist Martin Luther King, it makes a connection between King and Henry David Thoreau, usually via Thoreau’s famous essay.”Civil Disobedience" (1849). In his book Stride Toward Freedom (1958), King himself stated that Thoreau’s essay was his first intellectual contact with the theory of passive resistance to governmental laws that are perceived as morally unjust. However, this emphasis on Thoreau’s influence on King is unfortunate: first, King would not have agreed with many other aspects of Thoreau’s philosophy, including Thoreau's ultimate acceptance of violence as a form of protest; second, an overemphasis on the influence of one essay has kept historians from noting other correspondences between King's philosophy and transcendentalism. "Civil Disobedience" as the only example of transcendentalist writing with which King was familiar, and in many other transcendentalist writings, including works by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, King would have found ideas more nearly akin to his own. The kind of civil disobedience King had in mind was, in fact, quite different from Thoreau’s view of civil disobedience. Thoreau, like most other transcendentalists, was primarily interested in reform of the individual, whereas King was primarily interested in reform of society. As a protest against the Mexican War, Thoreau refused to pay taxes, but he did not hope by his action to force a change in national policy. While he encouraged others to adopt similar protests, he did not attempt to mount any mass protest action against unjust laws. In contrast to Thoreau, King began to advocate the use of mass civil disobedience to affect revolutionary changes within the social system.However, King’s writings suggest that, without realizing it, he was an incipient transcendentalist. Most transcendentalists subscribed to the concept of “higher law” and included civil disobedience to unjust laws as part of their strategy. They often invoked the concept of higher law to justify their opposition to slavery and to advocate disobedience to the strengthened Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. In his second major book, King’s discussion of just and unjust laws and the responsibility of the individual is very similar to the transcendentalists' discussion of higher law . In reference to how one can advocate breaking some laws and obeying others, King notes that there are two types of laws, just and unjust; he describes a just law as a “code that squares with the moral law” and an unjust law as a “code that is out of harmony with the moral law.” Thus, King’s opposition to the injustice of legalized segregation in the twentieth century is philosophically akin to the transcendentalists9 opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law in the nineteenth century.1.Which one of the following best states the man idea of the passage?2.Which one of the following statements about “Civil Disobedience” would the author consider most accurate?3.According to the passage, which one of the following is true of Emerson and Fuller?4.The passage suggests which one of the following about Thoreau?5.According to the passage, King differed from most transcendentalists in that he（） .

Geothermal energy is natural heat from the interior of the Earth that is converted to heat buildings and generate electricity. The idea of harnessing Earth’s internal heat is not new. As early as 1904, geothermal power was used in Italy. Today, Earth’s natural internal heat is being used to generate electricity in 21 countries, including Russia Japan, New Zealand, Iceland Mexico, Ethiopia, Guatemala El Salvador, the Philippines, and the United States. Total worldwide production is approaching 9,000 MW (equivalent to nine large modem coal burning or nuclear power plants)---double the amount in 1980. Some 40 million people today receive their electricity from geothermal energy at a cost competitive with that of other energy sources. In EL Salvador, geothermal energy is supplying 30% of the total electric energy used. However, at the global level, geothermal energy supplies less than 0.15% of the total energy supply. Geothermal energy may be considered a nonrenewable energy source when rates of extraction are greater than rates of natural replenishment. However geothermal energy has its origin in the natural heat production within Earth, and only a small fraction of the vast total resource base is being utilized today. Although most geothermal energy production involves the tapping of high heat sources, people are also using the low-temperature geothermal energy of groundwater in some applications.The average heat flow from the interior of the Earth is very low, about 0.06 W/m2. This amount is trivial compared with the 177 W/m2 from solar heat at the surface in the United States. However, in some areas, heat flow is sufficiently high to be useful for producing energy. For the most part, areas of high heat flow are associated with plate tectonic boundaries. Oceanic ridge systems (divergent plate boundaries) and areas where mountains are being uplifted and volcanic island arcs are forming (convergent plate boundaries) are areas where this natural heat flow is anomalously high.The environmental impact of geothermal energy may not be as extensive as that of other sources of energy, but it can be considerable. When geothermal energy is developed at a particular site, environmental problems include on-site noise, emissions of gas, and disturbance of the land at drilling sites, disposal sites, roads and pipelines, and power plants. Development of geothermal energy does not require large-scale transportation of raw materials or refining of chemicals, as development of fossil fuels does. Furthermore, geothermal energy does not produce the atmospheric pollutants associated with burning fossil fuels or the radioactive waste associated with nuclear energy. However, geothermal development often does produce considerable thermal pollution from hot waste-waters, which may be saline or highly corrosive, producing disposal and treatment problems.1.In paragraph 1, the author introduces the concept of geothermal energy by （）.2.In paragraph 2, the author states that geothermal energy is considered a nonrenewable resource because （）. 3.What is the meaning of the underlined sentence in Para. 2 (’’ Although most geothermal energy---in some applications"?4.In paragraph 4, the author mentions the atmospheric pollution and waste products for fossil fuel and nuclear power（）.5.What is true about geothermal energy production worldwide?

It is a devastating prospect. Terrorists electronically break into the computers that control the water supply of a large American city, open and close valves to contaminate the water with untreated sewage or toxic chemicals, and then release it in a devastating flood. As the emergency services struggle to respond, the terrorists strike again, shutting down the telephone network and electrical power grid with just a few mouse clicks. Businesses are paralysed, hospitals are overwhelmed and roads are gridlocked as people try to flee. This kind of scenario is invoked by doom-mongers who insist that stepping up physical security since the September 11 th attacks is not enough. Road-blocks and soldiers around power stations cannot prevent digital terrorism. "Until we secure our cyber-infrastructure, a few keystrokes and an Internet connection is all one needs to disable the economy and endanger lives," Lamar Smith, a Texas congressman, told a judiciary committee in February. He ended with his catchphrase: ’’A mouse can be just as dangerous as a bullet or a bomb.” Is he right? It is true that utility companies and other operators of critical infrastructure are increasingly connected to the Internet. But just because an electricity company's customers can pay their bills online, it does not necessarily follow that the company’s critical control systems are vulnerable to attack. Control systems are usually kept entirely separate from other systems, for good reason. They tend to be obscure, old-fashioned systems that are incompatible with Internet technology anyhow. Even authorized users require specialist knowledge to operate them. And telecoms firms, hospitals and businesses usually have contingency plans to deal with power failures or flooding.A simulation carried out in August by the United States Naval War College in conjunction with Gartner, a consultancy, concluded that an "electronic Pearl Harbor" attack on America’s critical infrastructure could indeed cause serious disruption, but would first need five years of preparation and $200m of funding. There are far simpler and less costly ways to attack critical infrastructure, from hoax photo calls to truck bombs and hijacked airliners. On September 18th Richard Clarke, America’s cyber-security tsar, unveiled his long-awaited blueprint for securing critical infrastructure from digital attacks. It was a bit of a damp squib, making no firm recommendations and proposing no new regulation or legislation. But its lily-livered approach might, in fact, be the right one. When a risk has been overstated, inaction may be the best policy.It is difficult to avoid comparisons with the "millennium bug” and the predictions of widespread computer chaos arising from the change of date to the year 2000. Then, as now, the alarm was sounded by technology vendors and consultants, who stood to gain from scare-mongering. But Ross Anderson, a computer scientist at Cambridge University, prefers to draw an analogy with the environmental lobby. Like eco-warriors, he observes, those in the security industry---be they vendors trying to boost sales, academics chasing grants, or politicians looking for bigger budgets—have a built-in incentive to overstate the risks.1.We learn from the first paragraph that（） .2.Speaking of the doom-mongers, the author implies that（）.3.In the view of Gartner consultant, （） .4.’’Lily-livered approach" (para.3) probably means an approach characterized by（） .5.We learn from the last paragraph that（）

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