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Directions: For this part, you are required to write a composition of 200 words on the following topic. You are to write in three parts, in the first part, state clearly what your view is. In the second part, support your view with appropriate reasons and measures. In the last part, bring what you have written to a natural concision. You should write your composition on the answering sheetWhat Can I Offer to Society?

Directions: For this part, you are required to summarize the main idea of the following passage in plain language in no more than 40 words. You should write your summary on the answering sheet.Are Firstborns Better?Freud, Kant, Beethoven, Dante, Einstein and Julius Caesar ― what do they have in common? All of these eminent men were firstborn children. Although many later-born children also become famous, certain studies hint that a first child is more likely to excel. For example, more firstborns become National Merit Scholars, earn Doctor's degrees and are mentioned in Who’s Who.Researchers suggest several explanations for the higher achievement of firstborns.Some believe that the reason is simply that firstborns are more likely than other children to attend college. They argue that economic factors alone could account for this difference, although firstborns typically get high grades before college as well.Others suggest that firstborn children have a higher need to achieve. This need to achieve may be an outcome of the special relationship between firstborn children and their parents. Firstborns have their parents’ exclusive attention and seem to interact more with parents than other children. Parents of firstborns also seem to expect more of them. As a result, firstborns may seek approval by conforming to adult standards, including standards of achievement.Firstborn children spend about 3,000 more hours of quality time with their parents during childhood than the next-oldest child, new research suggests. The study found that in two-child households, the elder children typically got between 20 and 30 minutes more quality time with each parent each day between the ages of 4 and 13. The findings may help explain why firstborn children tend to have higher IQs, perform better in school, and earn more money as adults.Whatever the reason, firstborn children do tend to be more conforming, shyer, more anxious than their siblings — and more likely to outdo them.

刺绣（Embroidery），又称丝绣，是中国优秀的民族传统工艺之一，有3000年以上的历史。中国是世界上发现与使用蚕丝最早的国家，其刺绣工艺几乎遍及全国。由于刺绣主题和产地的不同，刺绣工艺品作为一种商品形成了各自的特色。苏州的苏绣、湖南的湘绣、四川的蜀绣和广东的粤绣被誉为中国的四大名绣。这些刺绣既是很好的家居实用品，也是漂亮的装饰品。

Despite the web, we watch more television than ever.In the chaos of today’s media and technology brawl - iPod vs. Zune, Google vs. Yahoo, Windows vs. Linux, Intel vs. AMD - we can declare one unlikely winner. Standing tall in a field of new tech wonders, it’s a geezer technology that are invented in the 1920s and commercialized in the 1940s, and it’s still more powerful than any thing created since. As you try to figure out where consumer info-tech is going, and what it means for society, remember this big, central reality: People just want more television.If you doubt it, look at today’s biggest news in tech. It continually centers on new ways to bring consumers the thing they crave above all else. Sony flooded the recent Consumer Electronics Show with products that put internet video on your TV set, as did almost every other consumer electronics company. At the simultaneous Macworld Expo, Apple chief Steve Jobs introduced Apple TV, which does the same thing. Verizon said it will soon offer live TV on cellphone screens. It will also sell full-length programs for viewing whenever you want. Put it all together, and we have achieved a nirvana that didn’t exist even a year ago: unlimited television available 24/7 on every screen you own.It’s no surprise, of course. Ever since the basic facts of steadily multiplying processor power and bandwidth became apparent, seers have confidently predicted this day. They just as confidently predicted what it would mean: traditional television’s demise. Once the World Wide Web appeared in the mid-1990s, the future looked very clear. Boring old TV, the scheduled programs that come to you through a coaxial cable or satellite dish or antenna, would fade away. Which is exactly the opposite of what has happened. Despite many Net Age alternatives, we Americans today watch more boring old TV than ever, which is saying something. How can that be? My theory is the Two-Liter Coke Principle. The Coca-Cola company discovered long ago that if it could get people to bring home bigger bottles of Coke, those people would drink more than they used to. Just getting more Coke in front of them increased their consumption. It seems to be the same with TV. Put more of it in front of people — over 100 channels in many homes — and people will watch more.Seen from this perspective, the latest announcements of new TV-related technology look simply like additional ways to put more TV in front of American consumer. The supposed threat from the Internet was that we’d cut back on TV as we spent more time on MySpace or in Second Life. We may well spend more time on such new Net attractions, but we’re unlikely to take that time away from video viewing. We’re more likely to cut back on things we consider less important, like sleep.No one has evaluated TV better than the great New Yorker essayist E.B White, who in 1938 wrote, “We shall stand or fall by television, of that I am sure.” We still don’t know which it will be, but his assessment looks truer than ever.

Ever since its discovery, Pluto has never really fitted in. After the pale and glowing giant Neptune, it is little more than a cosmic dust mite, swept through the farthest reaches of the solar system on a plane wildly tilted relative to the rest of the planets. It is smaller than Neptune's largest moon, and the arc of its orbit is so oval that it occasionally crosses its massive blue neighbor’s path.For years, it has been seen as our solar system's oddest planet. Yesterday, however, scientists released perhaps the most convincing evidence yet that Pluto, in fact, is not a planet at all. For the first time, astronomers have peered into a belt of rocks beyond Pluto unknown until 10 years ago — and found a world that rivals Pluto in size. The scientists posit that larger rocks must be out there, perhaps even larger than Pluto, meaning Pluto is more likely the king of this distant realm of space detritus than the tiniest of the nine planets.When discovered in 1930, ’’Pluto at that point was the only thing (that far) out there, so there was nothing else to call it but a planet," says Mike Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “Now it just doesn't fit.” In one sense, the question of Pluto’s planetary status is arcane, the province of pocket-protected scientists and sun-deprived pen pushers determined to decide some official designation for a ball of dust and ice 3 billion miles away.Yet it is also unquestionably something more. From science fair dioramas to government funding, planets hold a special place in the public imagination, and how Pluto is eventually seen —by kids and Congress alike — could shape what future generations learn about this mysterious outpost on the edge of the solar system. The debate has spilt the astronomical community for decades. Even before the distant band of rocks known as the Kuiper Belt was found, Pluto's unusual behavior made it suspicious.Elsewhere, the solar system fit into near families: the rocky inner planets, the asteroid belt, the huge and gaseous outer planets. Pluto, though, was peculiar. With the discovery of the Kuiper Belt ~ countless bits of rock and ice left unused when the wheel of the solar system first formed — Pluto suddenly seemed to have cousins. Yet until yesterday, it held to its planetary distinction because it was far larger than anything located there.The rub now is Quaoar (pronounced KWAH-oar), 1 billion miles beyond Pluto and roughly half as large. Named after the creation force of the tribe that originally inhabited the Los Angeles basin, Quaoar forecasts problems for the erstwhile ninth planet, says discoverer Dr. Brown: "The case is going to get a lot harder to defend the day somebody finds something larger than Pluto."To some, the problem is not with Pluto, but the definition of "planet". In short, there is none. To the Greeks, who coined the term, it meant ’wanderer”, describing the way that the planets moved across the night sky differently from the stars behind them. Today, with our more nuanced understanding of the universe, the word no longer has much scientific meaning.New York’s Hayden Planetarium caused a commotion two years ago by supposedly demoting Pluto, lumping it with the Kuiper Belt objects in its huge mobile of the solar system. “In reality, however, the planetarium was making a much broader statement，’’ says Nell Degrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist there. The textbooks of the future should focus more on families of like objects than ”planets，’. The discovery of Quaoar strengthens this idea: "Everyone needs to rethink the structure of our solar system," he says, “We've just stopped counting planets."Still, many are loath to part with the planet Pluto. They note that Pluto, in fact, is distinct from many Kuiper Belt objects. It has a thin atmosphere, for one. It reflects a great deal of light, while most Kuiper Belt objects are very dark. And unlike all but a handful of known Kuiper Belt objects, it has a moon. ”Maybe Pluto, then, should be representative of a new class of planets," says Mark Sykes, an astronomer at the University of Arizona in Tucson, nIt*s the first example, and we are just beginning to find this category?'1.Which of the following is true according to the passage?2.From when was Pluto seriously questioned about its planetary status?3.The sentence "In short, there is none." (Para. 7) can be paraphrased as which of the following?4.Which of the following does NOT support the statement that Pluto is our ”solar system’s oddest planet”?5.The word ’’commotion” in the expression "New York’s Hayden Planetarium caused a commotion two years ago” (Para. 8) can be replaced by（）.

Food and drink play a major role in Christmas celebrations in most countries, but in few more so than in Mexico. Many families over the festive season will do little more than cook and ingest a seemingly constant cycle of tortillas, fried beans, meat both roasted and stewed, and sticky desserts for days on end. Thus does the extended family keep on extending—further and further over their collective waistlines.Lucky them, you might think. Except that Mexico’s bad eating habits are leading to a health crisis that most Mexicans seem blissfully unaware of. Obesity and its related disorder, diabetes, are now major health concerns in a country where large rural regions are still concerned more with under-nourishment than with over-nourishment. In its perennial rivalry with the United States, Mexico has at last found an area in which it can match its northern neighbor —mouthful for mouthful.The statistics are impressive, and alarming. According to the OECD, Mexico is now the second fattest nation in that group of 30 countries. A health poll in 1999 found that 35% of women were overweight, and another 24% technically obese, Juan Rivera, an official at the National Institute of Public Health, says that the combined figure for men would be about 55%, and that a similar poll to be carried out next year will show the fat quotient rising.Only the United States, with combined figures of over 60%, is a head.That situation also varies geographically. Although Mexicans populate the north of their country more sparely than the south, they make up for it weight-wise. A Study published by the Pan-American Health Organization a month ago showed that in the mostly Hispanic population that lives on either side of the American-Mexican border, fully 74% of men and 70% of women are either overweight or obese.Moreover, even experts have been surprised by how rapidly the nation has swollen. Whereas the 1999 poll showed 59% of women overweight or obese, only 11 years previously that figure was just 33%. Nowhere is the transformation more noticeable than in the prevalence of diabetes, closely linked to over-eating and obesity. In 1968, says Joel, Rodriguez of the Mexican Diabetes Federation, the disease was in 35th place as a direct cause of mortality in Mexico, but now it occupies first place, above both cancer and heart disease. With about 6.5 million diabetics out of a population of 100 million, Mexico now has a higher rate than any other large country in the world. Not surprisingly, Mr. Rodriguez argues that Mexico is in the grip of an "epidemic".Nor does it tax the brain much to work out that the causes of these explosions in obesity and diabetes are the Mexican diet and a lack of exercise. For most Mexicans, food consumption, not just at Christmas but all year round, is an unvarying combination of refried beans tortillas, meat and refrescos, or fizzy drinks; they consume 101 liters of cola drinks per person per year, just a little less than Americans and three times as much as Brazilians.Meanwhile, the lack of exercise, Mr. Rivera argues, is a symptom of rapid urbanization over the past 30 years. Obesity and diabetes rates remain slightly lower in rural areas, indicating that manual labor endures as an effective way to stave off weight gain. In Mexico City, though, pollution and crime have progressively driven people out of the parks and the streets, so most now walk as little as possible—preferably no further than from the valet-parking service to the restaurant. To combat the fat, health professionals say that the country must first realize that it is indeed in the grip of an epidemic. Other diseases, such as AIDS and cancer, have captured most of the publicity in recent years; obesity and diabetes have been comparatively neglected.1.The phrase "on end" in the first paragraph can be replaced by（）.2.Which of the following sentences is TRUE according to the passage?3.The word "perennial" in the second paragraph probably means （）. 4.Which is the most significant cause of mortality in Mexico?

One of the good things for men in women's liberation is that men no longer have to pay women the old-fashioned courtesies.In an article on the new manners, Ms. Holmes says that a perfectly able woman no longer has to act helplessly in public as if she were a model. For example, she doesn’t need help getting in and out of cars. ”Women get in and out of cars twenty times a day with babies and dogs. Surely they can get out by themselves at night just as easily".She also says there is no reason why a man should walk on the outside of a woman on the sidewalk "Historically the man walked on the inside so he caught the garbage thrown out of a window. Today a man is supposed to walk on the outside. A man should walk where he wants to. So should a woman. If, out of love and respect, he actually wants to take the blows, he should walk on the inside — because that’s where attackers are all hiding these days".As far as manners are concerned, I suppose I have always been a supporter of women’s liberation. Over the years, out of a sense of respect, I imagine, I have refused to trouble women with outdated courtesies.It is usually easier to follow rules of social behavior than to depend on one's own taste. But rules may be safely broken, of course, by those of us with the gift of natural grace. For example, when a man and woman are led to their table in a restaurant and the waiter pulls out a chair, the woman is expected to sit in the chair. That is according to Ms. Ann Clark, I have always done it the other way according to my wife.It came up only the other night. I followed the hostess to the table, and when she pulled the chair out, I sat on it quite naturally since it happened to be the chair I wanted to sit in."Well," my wife said, when the hostess had gone, "you did it again?'"Did what ? ’，I asked, utterly confused"Took the chair"Actually, since I'd walked through the restaurant ahead of my wife, it would have been awkward. I should think, not to have taken the chair. I had got there first after all.Also, it has always been my custom to get in a car first, and let the woman get in by herself. This is a courtesy I insist on as the stronger sex, out of love and respect. In times like these, there might be attackers hidden about. It would be unsuitable to put a woman in a car then shut the door on her, leaving her at the mercy of some bad fellow who might be hiding in the back seat.1.It can be concluded from the passage that（）.2.By saying "you did it again”, the author's wife means that （）. 3.Which of the following is NOT the reason why the author gets into a car before a woman?

Jan Hendrik Schon’s success seemed too good to be true, and it was. In only four years as a physicist at Bell Laborites, Schon, 32, had co-authored 90 scientific papers— one every 16 days —dealing with new discoveries in superconductivity, lasers, nanotechnology and quantum physics. This output astonished his colleagues, and made them suspicious. When one co-worker noticed that the same table of data appeared in two separate papers—which also happened to appear in the two most prestigious scientific journals in the world, Science and Nature—the jig was up. In October 2002, a Bell Labs investigation found that Schon had falsified and fabricated data. His career as a scientist was finished. Scientific scandals, which are as old as science itself, tend to follow similar patterns of presumption and due reward.In recent years, of course, the pressure on scientists to publish in the top journals has increased, making the journals much more crucial to career success. The questions are whether Nature and Science have become too powerful as arbiters of what science reach to the public, and whether the journals are up to their task as gatekeepers.Each scientific specialty has its own set of journals. Physicists have Physical Review Letters, neuroscientists have Neuron, and so forth. Science and Nature, though, are the only two major journals that cover the gamut of scientific disciplines, from meteorology and zoology to quantum physics and chemistry. As a result, journalists look to them each week for the cream of the crop of new science papers. And scientists look to the journals in part to reach journalists. Why do they care? Competition for grants has gotten so fierce that scientists have sought popular renown to gain an edge over their rivals. Publication in specialized journals will win the acclaims from academics and satisfy the publish-or-perish imperative, but Science and Nature come with the added bonus of potentially getting your paper written up in The New York Times and other publications.Scientists tend to pay more attention to the big two than to other journals. When more scientists know about a particular paper, they’re more apt to cite it in their own papers. Being oft-cited will increase a scientist's “Impact Factor’’，a measure of how often papers are cited by peers. Funding agencies use the "Impact Factor'* as a rough measure of the influence of scientists they’re considering supporting.1.The achievements of Jan Hendrik Schon turned out to be（）.2.To find why scientific scandals like Schon’s occur, people have begun to raise doubt about the two top journals for （）. 3.The expression ’’the cream of the crop” in Paragraph 3 likely means（）.

In his typically American open style of communication, Mr. Hayes confronted Isabeta about not looking at him. Reluctantly, she explained why. As a newcomer from Mexico, she had been taught to avoid eye contact as a mark of respect to authority figures, teachers, employers, parents. Mr. Hayes did not know this. He then informed her that most Americas interpret lack of eye contact as disrespect and deviousness. Ultimately, he convinced Isabela to try and change her habit, which she slowly did.People from many Asian, Latin American, and Caribbean cultures also avoid eye contact as a sign of respect. Many African Americas, especially from the South, observe this custom, too. A master’s thesis by Samuel Avoian, a graduate student at Central Missouri State University, tells how misinterpreting eye-contact customs can have a negative impact when white football coaches recruit African American players for the teams.He reports that, when speaking, white communicators usually look away from the listener, only periodically glancing at them. They do the opposite, when listening they are expected to look at the speaker all the time.Many African Americas communicate in an opposite way. When speaking, they tend to constantly stare at the listener; when listening, they mostly look away. Therefore, if white sports recruiters are not informed about these significant differences, they can be misled about interest and attentiveness when interviewing prospective African American ball players.In multicultural America, issues of eye contact have brought about social conflicts of two different kinds in many urban centers; non-Korean customers became angry when Korean shopkeepers did not look at them directly. The customers translated the lack of eye contact as a sign of disrespect, a habit blamed for contributing to the open confrontation taking place between some Asians and African Americas in New York, Texas, and California. Many teachers too have provided stories about classroom conflicts based on their misunderstanding Asian and Latin American children’ lack of eye contact as being disrespectful.On the other hand, direct eye contact has now taken on a new meaning among the younger generation and across ethnic borders. Particularly in urban centers, when one teenager looks directly at another, this is considered a provocation, sometimes called mad-dogging, and can lead to physical conflict.Mad-dogging has become the source of many campus conflicts. In one high school, it resulted in a fight between Cambodian newcomers and African-American students. The Cambodians had been staring at the other students merely to learn how Americans behave, yet the others misinterpreted the Cambodians' intentions and the fight began.Mad-dogging seems to be connected with the avoidance of eye contact as a sign of respect. Thus, in the urban contemporary youth scene, if one looks directly at another, this disrespects, or "disses" that person. Much like the archaic phrase "I demand satisfaction”，which became the overture to a duel, mad-dogging may become a prelude to a physical encounter. At the entrances to Universal Studio’s "City Walk" attraction in Los Angeles, they have posted Code of Conduct signs. The second rule warns against "physically over bally threatening any person, fighting, annoying others through noisy or boisterous activities or by unnecessary staring..."1.Many African Americans from the South（）.2.When listening to the others, white communicators tend to （）. 3.Many customers in American cities are angry with Korean shopkeepers because（）. 4.Mad-dogging refers to （）. 5.The archaic phrase, "I demand satisfaction" （）.

The most exciting kind of education is also the most personal. Nothing can（1）the joy of discovering for yourself something that is really important to you! It may be an idea or a bit of information you （2）accidentally or a sudden（3）, fitting together pieces of information or working through a problem. Such personal （4）are the "payoff' in education. A teacher may（5）you to learning and even encourage you in it, but no teacher can make the excitement or the joy happen. That's（6） to you.A research paper,（7）in a course and perhaps checked at various stages by an instructor;（8） you beyond classrooms, beyond the texts for classes and into a （9）where the joy of discovery and learning can come to you many times. Preparing the research paper is an active and individual process, and an（10） learning process. It provides a structure （11）which you can make exciting discoveries, of knowledge and of self, that are basic to education. The research paper also gives you a chance to individualize a school assignment, to （12）a piece of work to your own interests and abilities, to show others （13） you can do. Writing a research paper is （14）than just a classroom exercise. It is an experience in searching out, understanding and synthesizing, which forms the basis of many skills （15）to both academic and nonacademic tasks. It is, in the fullest sense, a discovery, and an education. So, to produce a good research paper is both a useful and a thoroughly （16）experience!To some, the thought of having to write an assigned number of pages, often more than ever produced before, is disconcerting. （17）the very idea of having to work （18）is threatening. But there is no need to approach the research paper assignment with （19）, and nobody should view the research paper as an obstacle to overcome. （20）consider it a goal to accomplish, a goal within reach and you will find great pleasure in it.

Directions: For this part, you are required to write a composition of 150 words on the following topic. You are to write in three parts.(1) In the first part, state clearly what your view is.(2) In the second parts, support your view with appropriate reasons and measures.(3) In the last part, bring what you have written to a natural conclusion.You should write your composition on the answering sheet.The Trend of Thrift (节俭)

Directions: For this part, you are required to summarize the main idea of the following passage in plain language in about 60 words. You should write your summary on the answering sheet. Now elsewhere in the world, Iceland may be spoken of, somewhat breathlessly, as western Europe’s last pristine wilderness. But the environmental awareness that is sweeping the world had bypassed the majority of Icelanders. Certainly they were connected to their land, the way one is complicatedly connected to, or encumbered by, family one can't do anything about. But the truth is, once you’re off the beaten paths of the low-lying coastal areas where everyone lives, the roads are few, and they’re all bad, so Iceland’s natural wonders have been out of reach and unknown even to its own inhabitants. For them the land has always just been there, something that had to be dealt with and, if possible, exploited — the mind-set being one of land as commodity rather than land as, well, priceless art on the scale of the “Mona Lisa."When the opportunity arose in 2003 for the national power company to enter into a 40-year contract with the American aluminum company Alcoa to supply hydroelectric power for a new smelter, those who had been dreaming of something like this for decades jumped at it and never looked back. For the longest time, life here had meant little more than a sod hut, dark all winter, cold, no hope, children dying left and right, earthquakes, plagues, starvation, volcanoes erupting and destroying all vegetation and livestock, all spirit — a world revolving almost entirely around the welfare of one's sheep and, later, on how good the cod catch was. In the outlying regions, it still largely does.Ostensibly, the Alcoa project was intended to save one of these dying regions ~ the remote and sparsely populated east ~ where the way of life had steadily declined to a point of desperation and gloom. After fishing quotas were imposed in the early 1980s to protect fish stocks, many individual boat owners sold their allotments or gave them away, fishing rights ended up mostly in the hands of a few companies, and small fishermen were virtually wiped out. Technological advances drained away even more jobs previously done by human hands, and the people were seeing everything they had worked for all their lives turn up worthless and their children move away.The contract with Alcoa would infuse the region with foreign capital, an estimated 400 jobs, and spinoff service industries. It also was a way for Iceland to develop expertise that potentially could be sold to the rest of the world; diversify an economy historically dependent on fish; and, in an appealing display of Icelandic can-do verve, perhaps even protect all of Iceland, once and for all, from the unpredictability of life itself."We have to live," Halldor said in his sad, sonorous voice. Halldor, a former prime minister and longtime member of parliament from the region, was a driving force behind the project “We have a right to live.”

Translate the following paragraph in the following passage into English. 在中国，笔(brush)、墨(ink stick)、纸、砚(ink slab),就是人们所说的“文房 (the study)四宝”，在中华文明的传承中起了重要作用。作为文化艺术工具，以其独特性能催生了汉字特有的书法艺术，也促使中国画形成了独特的风格。文房四宝不仅有实用价值，它们本身也是供人观赏的艺术品，并逐步成为收藏品。在当今时代，使用笔、墨、纸、砚进行学习和写作的人越来越少了，但是在中国的书法，绘画，收藏以及修身养性活动中，它们仍起着不可替代的作用。

Samsung issued an apology to Chinese consumers on Wednesday after China’s state-run media criticized the Korean electronics giant for selling handsets with allegedly faulty memory chips. The company offered to provide free repairs and extended warranties on seven models after a broadcast on the influential China Central Television on Tuesday reported how Samsung handsets, including the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note series, crash several times a day due to the memory chips. The report said the issue could be resolved with a $100 chip upgrade that was not covered under current warranties.In a statement posted to Samsung’s China Web site, the electronics giant apologized for the inconvenience, which it blamed on “management problems”. It also pledged to repair affected devices, refunds on previously repaired devices, and replacement handsets in some cases Samsung is not the first tech coming to come under CCTV scrutiny for its warranty practices. In April, Apple CEO Tim Cook issued an apology over its warranty policies in China and promised improved services. The initial report claimed Apple repaired only broken or otherwise faulty parts within its products for customers in China, versus providing new replacements in other countries.Cook’s apology came during Apple’s continuing efforts to land an iPhone distribution deal with the world’s largest mobile carrier. Support from China Mobile, which has about 745 million customers, would open up a vast number of new customers for Apple.Meanwhile. Samsung hopes its apology goes a long way toward helping it maintain its lead position in China’s smart phone market. The company sold 30 million devices in the country last year for a 17.7 percent market share, outpacing the 11 percent share commanded by No. 3 Apple.

Over the past century, all kinds of unfairness and discrimination have been condemned or made illegal. But one insidious form continues to thrive: alphabetism. This, for those as yet unaware of such a disadvantage, refers to discrimination against those whose surnames begin with a letter in the lower half of the alphabet.It has long been known that a taxi firm called AAAA cars has a big advantage over Zodiac cars when customers thumb through their phone directories. Less well known is the advantage that Adam Abbott has in life over Zoe Zysman, English names are fairly evenly spread between the halves of the alphabet. Yet a suspiciously large number of top people have surnames beginning with letters between A and K.Thus the American president and vice-president have surnames starting with B and C respectively; and 26 of George Bush's predecessors (including his father) had surnames in the first half of the alphabet against just 16 in the second half. Even more striking, six of the seven heads of government of the G7 rich countries are alphabetically advantaged (Berlusconi, Blair, Bush, Chirac, Chretien and Koizumi). The world's three top central bankers (Greenspan, Duisenberg and Hayami) are all close to the top of the alphabet, even if one of them really uses Japanese characters. As are the world's five richest men (Gates, Buffett, Allen, Ellison and Albrecht).Can this merely be coincidence? One theory, dreamt up in all the spare time enjoyed by the alphabetically disadvantaged, is that the rot sets in early. At the start of the first year in infant school, teachers seat pupils alphabetically from the front, to make it easier to remember their names. So short-sighted Zysman junior gets stuck in the back row, and is rarely asked the improving questions posed by those insensitive teachers. At the time the alphabetically disadvantaged may think they have had a lucky escape. Yet the result may be worse qualifications, because they get less individual attention, as well as less confidence in speaking publicly.The humiliation continues. At university graduation ceremonies, the ABCs proudly get their awards first; by the time they reach the Zysmans most people are literally having a ZZZ. Shortlists for job interviews, election ballot papers, lists of conference speakers and attendees: all tend to be drawn up alphabetically, and their recipients lose interest as they plough through them.1.What does the author intend to illustrate with AAAA cars and Zodiac cars?2.What can we infer from the first three paragraphs?3.The 4th paragraph suggests that（）.4.What does the author mean by ’’most people are literally having a ZZZ” (Lines 2-3, Paragraph 5)?5.Which of the following is TRUE according to the text?

“In every known human society the male’s needs for achievement can be recognized. In a great number of human societies men's sureness of their sex role is tied up with their right, or ability, to practice some activity that women are not allowed to practice. Their maleness in fact has to be underwritten by preventing women from entering some field or performing some feat.”This is the conclusion of the anthropologist Margaret Mead about the way in which the roles of men and women in society should be distinguished.If talk and print are considered it would seem that the formal emancipation of women is far from complete. There is a flow of publications about the continuing domestic bondage of women and about the complicated system of defenses which men have thrown up around their hitherto accepted advantages, taking sometimes the obvious form of exclusion from types of occupation and sociable groupings, and sometimes the more subtle form of automatic doubt of the seriousness of women’s pretensions to the level of intellect and resolution that men, it is supposed, bring to the business of running the world.There are a good many objective pieces of evidence for the erosion of men's status. In the first place, there is the widespread postwar phenomenon of the woman Prime Minister, in India, Sri Lanka and Israel.Secondly, there is the very large increase in the number of women who work, especially married women and mothers of children. More diffusely there are the increasingly numerous convergences between male and female behavior: the approximation to identical styles in dress and coiffure, the sharing of domestic tasks, and the admission of women to all sorts of hitherto exclusively male leisure-time activities.Everyone carries round with him a fairly definite idea of the primitive or natural conditions of human life. It is acquired more by the study of humorous cartoons than of archaeology, but that does not matter since it is not significant as theory but only as an expression of inwardly felt expectations of people's sense of what is fundamentally proper in the differentiation between the roles of the two sexes. In this rudimentary natural society men go out to hunt and fish and to fight off the tribe next door while women keep the fire going. Amorous initiative is firmly reserved to the man, who sets about courtship with a club.1.The phrase “men’s sureness of their sex role” in the first paragraph suggests that they（）.2.The third paragraph does NOT claim that men （）. 3.At the end of the last paragraph the author uses humorous exaggeration in order to （）. 4.The usual idea of the cave man in the last paragraph （）. 5.The opening quotation from Margaret Mead sums up a relationship between man and woman which the author（）.

My bones have been aching again, as they often do in humid weather. They ache like history: things long done with, that still remain as pain. When the ache is bad enough it keeps me from sleeping. Every night I yearn for sleep, I strive for it; yet it flutters on ahead of me like a curtain. There are sleeping pills, of course, but the doctor has warned me against them.Last night, after what seemed hours of damp turmoil, I got up and crept slipperless down the stairs, feeling my way in the faint street light that came through the window. Once safely arrived at the bottom, I walked into the kitchen and looked around in the refrigerator. There was nothing much I wanted to eat: the remains of a bunch of celery, a blue-tinged heel of bread, a lemon going soft. I've fallen into the habits of the solitary; my meals are snatched and random. Furtive snacks, furtive treats and picnics. I made do with some peanut butter, scooped directly from the jar with a forefinger: why dirty a spoon?Standing there with the jar in one hand and my finger in my mouth, I had the feeling that someone was about to walk into the room ~ some other woman, the unseen, valid owner ~ and ask me what in hell I was doing in her kitchen. I’ve had it before, the sense that even in the course of my most legitimate and daily actions — peeling a banana, brushing my teeth ― I am trespassing.At night the house was more than ever like a stranger's. I wandered through the front room, the dining room, the parlour, hand on the wall for balance. My various possessions were floating in their own pools of shadow, denying my ownership of them. I looked them over with a burglar’s eye, deciding what might be worth the risk of stealing, what on the other hand I would leave behind. Robbers would take the obvious things ~ the silver teapot that was my grandmother’s, perhaps the hand-painted china. The television set. Nothing I really want.1.The author could not fall asleep because（）.2.The author did not like the food in the refrigerator because it was NOT（）.

Large animals that inhabit the desert have evolved a number of adaptations for reducing the effects of extreme heat.One adaptation is to be light in color, and to reflect rather than absorb the Sun's rays. Desert mammals also depart from the normal mammalian practice of maintaining a constant body temperature. Instead of trying to keep down the body temperature deep inside the body, which would involve the expenditure of water and energy, desert mammals allow their temperatures to rise to what would normally be fever height, and temperatures as high as 46 degrees Celsius have been measured in Grant’s gazelles. The overheated body then cools down during the cold desert night, and indeed the temperature may fall unusually low by dawn, as low as 34 degrees Celsius in the camel. This is an advantage since the heat of the first few hours of daylight is absorbed in warming up the body, and an excessive buildup of heat does not begin until well into the day.Another strategy of large desert animals is to tolerate the loss of body water to a point that would be fatal for non-adapted animals. The camel can lose up to 30 percent of its body weight as water without harm to itself, whereas human beings die after losing only 12 to 13 percent of their body weight. An equally important adaptation is the ability to replenish this water loss at one drink. Desert animals can drink prodigious volumes in a short time, and camels have been known to imbibe over 100 liters in a few minutes. A very dehydrated person, on the other hand, cannot drink enough water to rehydrate at one session, because the human stomach is not sufficiently big and because a too rapid dilution of the body fluids causes death from water intoxication. The tolerance of water loss is of obvious advantage in the desert, as animals do not have to remain near a water hole but can obtain food from grazing sparse and far-flung pastures. Desert-adapted mammals have the further ability to feed normally when extremely dehydrated, it is a common experience in people that appetite is lost even under conditions of moderate thirst.1.What is the main topic of the passage?2.The author uses Grant's gazelle as an example of（）.3.What does the author imply about desert-adapted mammals?

She’s cute, no question. Symmetrical features, flawless skin, looks to be 22 years old-entering any meat-market bar, a woman lucky enough to have this face would turn enough heads to stir a breeze. But when Victor Johnston points and clicks, the face on his computer screen changes into a state of superheated, crystallized beauty. “You can see it. It’s just so extraordinary,” says Johnston, a professor of biopsychology at New Mexico State University who sounds a little in love with his creation.The transformation from pretty woman to knee-weakening babe is all the more amazing because the changes wrought by Johnston’s software are, objectively speaking, quite subtle. He created the original face by digitally averaging 16 randomly selected female Caucasian faces. The changing program then exaggerated the ways in which female faces differ from male faces, creating, in human-beauty-science field, a “hyper-female". The eyes grew a bit larger, the nose narrowed slightly and the lips plumped. These are shifts of just a few millimeters, but experiments in this country and Scotland are suggesting that both males and females find “feminized” versions of averaged faces more beautiful.Johnston hatched this little movie as part of his ongoing study into why human beings find some people attractive and others homely. He may not have any rock-solid answers yet, but he is far from alone in attempting to apply scientific inquiry to so ambiguous a subject. Around the world, researchers are marching into territory formerly staked out by poets and painters to uncover the underpinnings of human attractiveness.The research results so far are surprising and humbling. Numerous studies indicate that human beauty may not be simply in the eye of the beholder or an arbitrary cultural artifact. It may be ancient and universal, wrought through ages of evolution that rewarded reproductive winners and killed off losers. If beauty is not truth, it may be health and fertility: Halle Berry's flawless skin may fascinate moviegoers because, at some deep level, it persuades us that she is parasite-free.Human attractiveness research is a relatively young and certainly contentious field—the allure of hyper-females, for example, is still hotly debated — but those on its front lines agree on one point: We won't conquer “looks-ism” until we understand its source. As psychologist Nancy Etcoff puts it: “The idea that beauty is unimportant or a cultural construct is the real beauty myth. We have to understand beauty, or we will always been enslaved by it.”1.The woman described in the very beginning of the text is（）.2.Victor Johnston synthesized a new face by combining the features of 16 （）. 3.Though a few tiny changes made by Johnston, the synthesized face became even more （）. 4.Victor Johnston has produced such an attractive face in order to （）. 5.Paragraph 4 suggests that human beauty may be（）.

Given the advantages of electronic money, you might think that we would move quickly to the cashless society in which all payments are made electronically. （1）, a true cashless society is probably not around the comer. Indeed, predictions of such a society have been（2）for two decades but have not yet come to fruition. For example, Business Week predicted in 1975 that electronic means of payment “would soon revolutionize the very（3）of money itself,” only to （4）itself several years later. Why has the movement to a cashless society been so （5） in coming?Although electronic means of payment may be more efficient than a payment system based on paper, several factors work （6）the disappearance of the paper system. First, it is very（7）to set up the computer, card reader, and telecommunications networks necessary to make electronic money the （8）form of payment. Second, paper checks have the advantage that they （9） receipts, something that many consumers are unwilling to（10）. Third, the use of paper checks gives consumers several days of “float” -- it takes several days（11）a check is cashed and funds are （12）from the issuer’s account, which means that the writer of the check can earn interest on the funds in the meantime. （13）electronic payments are immediate, they eliminate the float for the consumer.Fourth, electronic means of payment may（14）security and privacy concerns. We often hear media reports that an unauthorized hacker has been able to access a computer database and to alter information（15）there. Because this is not an（16） occurrence, unscrupulous persons might be able to access bank accounts in electronic payments systems and （17）funds by moving them from someone else’s accounts into their own. The（18）of this type of fraud is no easy task, and a whole new field of computer science has developed to （19）security issues. A further concern is that the use of electronic means of payment leaves an electronic（20） that contains a large amount of personal data on buying habits. There are worries that government, employers, and marketers might be able to access these data, thereby encroaching on our privacy.

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