Nancy Jeschkes sleeping difficulties began on vacation a few summers ago. She blamed the n

ference concerns the distribution of land and water. The northern Arctic regions are ice-covered sea, almost completely surrounded by land. The pole itself is in deep water. In the south, Antarctic is a huge continent which is surrounded by a great ocean. Because of this basic difference other differences occur. The Arctic has a varied climate, while the Antarctic climate varies little; the Arctic has much plant life, but the Antarctic is an empty desert. And whereas the Arctic has been exploited economically for centuries, trade has never really touched Antarctic. Interest in the Arctic began when America was discovered, and explorers tried to find a western sea route to India and China. In their search to find the "North-West Passage" the main problem facing the explorers was how to avoid the ice. One explorer, Nansen, found a unique answer to this problem. He intentionally became struck in the ice and traveled with it across the Arctic Ocean! But although many explorers tried, it was not until 1903 that the Arctic polar region was crossed by sea. Antarctic exploration begins with Ptolemy. He believed that all the oceans were surrounded by land, and therefore, there was huge continent somewhere in the south. His idea led to centuries of search, and again trade played its part. The real discoverers of Antarctic were the hunters who traveled far south to catch seals. One reason for the present interest in both polar regions is that world may soon be short of fresh water. In fact, over 85% of the earths entire fresh water is found in the polar ice. If we could find a way of carrying this ice to other parts of the world, this would solve all our fresh water problems.

Trade, according to the passage, has never really touched Antarctic because Antarctic is

A．a land surrounded by a great ocean

B．an empty desert and has no plant life

C．not open to public

D．different from the Arctic

tically (图表式的) by means of an urban map and block pan. What is the shape of the city and how does it define itself? The original container has completely disappeared: the sharp division between city and country no longer exists...One can pick out no definite shapes except those formed by nature: one beholds rather a continuous shapeless mass, here bulging (凸起, 膨胀) or ridged with building, there broken by a patch of green or an unwinding ribbon of concrete... Failing to divide its social chromosomes (染色体) and split up into new cells...the city continues to grow inorganically, indeed cancerously, by a continuous breaking down of old tissues and an overgrowth of formless new tissues. Here the city has absorbed villages and little towns, reducing them to place names ...; there it has, more happily, left the organs of local government and the vestiges (遗迹, 残余) of an independent life, even assisted their revival ...; it has nevertheless enveloped those urban areas in its physical organization and built up the open land that once served to ensure their identity and integrity. Sometimes the expanding street system forms an orderly pattern; sometimes it produces only a crazy network. The difference between one type of order and another is merely a difference in the degree of sprawl, confusion, de-building. As one moves away from the center, the urban growth becomes ever more aimless and discontinuous, more diffuse and unfocused, except where some surviving town has left the original imprint of a more orderly life.

The citys original container appears to have______.

A．enlarged itself

B．disappeared totally

C．decided the city"s present shape

D．marked the limits of the city"s expansion

ears ago. It must be lasting and easy to recognize, to divide, and to carry about. When we think of money today, we picture it either as round, flat piece of metal which we call coins, or as printed paper notes. But there are still parts of the world today where coins and notes are of no use. They will buy nothing, and a traveler might starve if he had none of the particular local "money" to exchange for food. Among isolated peoples, who are not often reached by traders from outside, commerce usually means barter. There is direct exchange of goods. Perhaps it is fish for vegetables, or meat for grain. For this kind of simple trading money is not needed, but there is often something that everyone wants and everybody can use, such as salt to flavor food, shells for ornament, or iron and copper to make tools and vessels. These things—salt, shells or metals—are still used as money in out-of-the-way parts of the world today. Salt may seem rather a strange substance to use as money, but in countries where the food of the people is mainly vegetable, it is often an absolute necessity. Cakes of salt, stamped to show their value, were used as money in Tibet until recent times, and cakes of salt will still buy goods in Borneo and parts of Africa. Sea shells have been used as money at some time or another over the greater part of the Old World. Metal, valued by weight, preceded coins in many parts of the world. Nowadays, coins and notes have replaced nearly all of the picturesque (独特的) form. of money, and although in one or two of the remote countries people still store it for future use on ceremonial occasions such as weddings and funerals, examples of primitive money will soon be found in museums.

The following are qualities of money summed up by Aristotle EXCEPT______.

A．distinct

B．divisible

C．portable

D．precious

results. Dont overload your electrical points; the ideal is "one appliance, one socket". Dont use an electric underblanket over you or an overblanket under you. An underblanket, unless of the low voltage type, MUST be switched off before you get into bed. Never let furniture or clothing get close to a lighted fire. Make sure that there is a suitable guard for the room heater. Keep aerosol type containers (喷雾器) away from heat and NEVER burn or puncture (刺穿) them. Dont dim a table lamp by covering it: buy a low wattage bulb. Pyjamas and nightdresses, especially for children and elderly people, should be made from flame resistant material. IF CUT OFF BY FIRE Close the door of the room and any fanlight or other opening and block up any cracks with bedding, etc. Go to the window and try to attract attention. If the room fills with smoke, lean out of the window unless prevented by smoke and flame coming from a room below or nearby. If you cannot lean out of the window, lie close to the floor where the air is clearer until you hear the fire brigade. If you have to escape before the fire brigade arrives, make a rope by knotting together sheets or similar materials and tie it to a bed or another heavy piece of furniture. If you cannot make a rope and the situation becomes intolerable, drop cushions or bedding from the window to break your fall, get through the window feet first, lower yourself to the full extent of your arms and drop. If possible drop from a position above soft earth. If above the first floor, drop only as a last resort

According to the instructions, fires in the bedroom can be caused by______.

A．one appliance, one socket

B．smoking in bed

C．underblankets of the low voltage type

D．all of the above mentioned points

on, having outgrown the available food supplies. Today, a century and a half later, there are still experts who forecast the same global disaster—unless urgent measures are taken to prevent it. By the end of the present century there may well be over five thousand million people living on this globe, an increase of over fifty percent on todays figure. In order to keep pace with this increase in mankind the farmers of the world will have to step up their production of food by at least two percent every year. Such a rate of increase has never been maintained in any country by conventional methods of agriculture, despite modern mechanization and the widespread use of fertilizers. There are no large worthwhile reserves of potential farmland remaining, and good fertile land is continually being changed into industrial use. Moreover, erosion of the soil takes a constant toll (损失). Intensive research, carried out over many years in all manners of climate conditions, has produced a revolutionary method of growing crops without using any soil at all. Hydroponics (水栽 法), as this technique is called, may well be the answer to all our food worries; already it has accomplished wonders in producing huge crops. Hydroponics was once a complicated and expensive business, now it is well out of the experimental stage. Labor costs are far lower than when normal methods of agriculture are employed. In fact, it is a completely automatic system. There is no hard manual work, no digging or ploughing, and no weeding to speak of. Yields can be far higher than they are in soil.

Which of the following best sums up the whole passage?

A．Malthus" prediction has been proved to be correct by modern experts.

B．Hydroponics is a new development in agriculture.

C．Hydroponics may be the answer to the world food shortage in the future.

D．Conventional methods of agriculture should be improved so as to step up food production by two percent every year.

ee, "Im more of a creature to polish my mind than polish my furniture. The house takes second place while I put the studying first. " "I was very happy at school and had wonderful teaching. I passed the university entrance examination and was ready to go to university but with World War I went into banking. I was paid 1 pound a week. Manchester University kept my place open for three years but I was enjoying the money and the freedom so I turned it down. " Mrs. Sephton is now in the second year of her Open University course and is finding it hard work. She underestimates her ability. "Im feeling tired more frequently. I cant do more than an hours work at a time. The memorys shocking. Im supposed to be revising and I look up notes I did earlier this year and think, Have you read this before? So Im doing it very slowly—one credit a year, so itll take six years. " "At the moment the greatest reward is simply the increase in knowledge—and the discipline. I had an essay failed this week. The professor said I hadnt answered the question. Ive been thinking about it all week. I know I havent got the facility for essay construction. I just let myself go and get excited. I feel more emotionally than I do mentally. Im very ordinary really. " Claiming to be ordinary and lazy, Mrs. Sephton is still working hard daily at her assignments. Mrs. Sephton sees her studies as keeping her fit and independent. "Because of my life Ive been self-sufficient. Its not a very nice characteristic. It means I dont care enough about people. I cant say I find comfort in what Ill be learning, so Ill be interested to see if theres a life ahead. "

When Florence said "Im more of a creature to polish my mind than polish my furniture" (Line 2, Para. 1) , she meant that______.

A．she was tired of learning

B．she was thirsty for knowledge

C．she was more suitable for doing housework

D．she didn"t have enough time to keep the house clean

, cheques and plastic credit cards. Then theres the whole interesting history of the monetary system. If youre something of a philosopher, however, you may be more interested in peoples attitude to money. Consider the difference between those who always manage to live within their income , and those who—no matter how much they earn—always need to spend more. The philosophies people have about money are reflected in the way they spend it. Two families earning the same salary may use their money in different ways. One familys consumer goods may be anothers ticket to a foreign country. In the radio series The Cost of Living, English people are heard discussing many different aspects of money. The programmers make me think of a particular Englishman—one who is not featured in the series. Francis Bacon was born in 1560, a few years before Shakespeare, and died in 1626. As a boy he displayed a remarkable intelligence, and by the age of thirteen was a student at Cambridge University. He studied law, then had a highly successful career. By 1617 he was Prime Minister of England. He had also published some important philosophical and literary works which are still read today. Why should a series of programmes about money make me think of Lord Bacon? Briefly, because it was his attitude to money which controlled, and ultimately ruined, his life. He was a man who spent much more than he could earn. To support his luxurious life-style. he borrowed money from anyone who was foolish enough to lend it to him, then carefully avoided his creditors. Far worse, he abused his position of authority, accepting bribes in return for favors. For that he was eventually sent to prison. He spent the last years of his life in disgrace.

This selection is probably taken from______.

A．a newspaper editorial

B．a history textbook

C．an essay on money

D．a personal record

al games for the disabled were started at Stoke Mandeville, England in 1948 by Sir Ludwig Gutt-mann, the situation began to change. Sir Ludwig Guttmann, who had been driven to England in 1939 from Nazi Germany, had been asked by the British government to set up an injuries centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital near London. His ideas about treating injuries included sport for the disabled. In the first games just two teams of injured soldiers took part. The next year, 1949, five teams took part. From those beginnings, things have developed fast. Teams now come from abroad to Stoke Mandeville every year. In 1960 the first Olympics for the Disabled were held in Rome, in the same place as the normal Olympic Games. Now every four years the Olympic Games for the Disabled are held, if possible, in the same place as the normal Olympic Games, although they are organized separately. In other years Games for the Disabled are still held at Stoke Mandeville. In the 1984 Wheelchair Olympic Games, 1 064 wheelchair athletes from about 40 countries took part. Unfortunately, they were held at Stoke Mandeville and not in Los Angeles, along with the other Olympics. The Games have been a great success in promoting international friendship and understanding, and in proving that being disabled does not mean you cant enjoy sport. One small source of disappointment for those who organize and take part in the games, however, has been the unwill-ingness of the International Olympic Committee to include disabled events at the Olympic Games for the able-bodied. Perhaps a few more years are still needed to convince those fortunate enough not to be disabled that their disabled fellow athletes should not be excluded.

The first games for the disabled were held______after Sir Ludwig Guttmann arrived in England.

A．9 years

B．10 years

C．21 years

D．40 years

promote native language literacy among Indians. Indians were to be taught to read and write in their native language before being taught English. Studies in many cultures around the world demonstrate that children learn to read best in their mother tongue. Bilingual reading books and other educational materials were prepared in Navaho, Hopi, Siouan, Pueblo, and Papago languages. The difficulties were tremendous because many American Indian languages are distinctively different in structure from all other languages in the world. They do not have "words" in the sense that other languages do—as independent meaningful sound sequences that combine into "sentences". Their "sentences" are made by combining prefixes, infixes, and suffixes into what looks like one long word but is essentially the equivalent of our sentence. It is impossible, in other words, to make an Indian utterance that is not a sentence. In our sense, Indian languages do not have parts of speech, conjugations etc. The sentence is the smallest structure available to speakers of the language. Therefore bridging the translation gap between English and such language is a massive feat. In most cases, Indian children need to be bilingual though not necessarily be literate. That is, they need to speak their native language to participate fully in their home and tribal affairs. But, they do not need to read and write that language. On the other hand, they also need a reading, writing, and speaking knowledge of English, not only to get their due in this country but, ironically, also to preserve their heritage.

In the first sentence "literacy" means______.

A．freedom

B．concerning literature

C．quality

D．being able to read and/or write

uld free housewives of drudgery (单调沉闷的工作) and fill factories with tireless work force. But in many ways, the brainwave has been a washout. Robots can paint cars, salvage (收集) nuclear fuel and even assist in brain surgery, but theyre still pretty dumb. Mr. Reddy says robots are dumb "because we havent taken the trouble to put the pieces together, not because we dont know how. That takes money and time and effort, and we dont have the money". But today robots can recognize forms and shapes and measure distances. They can hear and speak by using computers that recognize thousands of words. Their sensors can detect smoke or fumes. They can move about rolling on wheels or walk with as many as eight legs like a spider on uneven terrain (地面,地带). In addition, they can recognize texture and the force of a movement, such as pressing. Many robots have one or two of these abilities to some degree, but creating a competent robot that combines most or all of them has been difficult. Scientists have also found it difficult to match human abilities that most people take for granted such as the fingers dexterity (灵巧,熟练) or the ability to identify objects. "The list of things that robots can do better than humans is much shorter than the list of things robots cannot," says Tom Smith from the Cambridge Mellon Institute.

Which of the following best expresses the ideas of the passage?

A．Robots still have a long way to go.

B．What can robots do today.

C．How to improve the abilities of robots.

D．Difficulties in creating a competent robot.