Boxing for Fitness （健身)When it comes to boxing, most people think of two strong athlet

When it comes to the slowing economy, Ellen Spero isn't biting her nails just yet. But the 47-year-old manicurist isn't cutting, filling or polishing as many nails as she'd like to, either. Most of her clients spend $12 to $50 weekly, but last month two longtime customers suddenly stopped showing up. Spero blames the softening economy. "I'm a good economic indicator", she says. "I provide a service that people can do without when they're concerned about saving some dollars". So Spero is downscaling, shopping at middle-brow Dillard's department store near her suburban Cleveland home, instead of Neiman Marcus. "I don't know if other clients are going to abandon me, too", she says.

Even before Alan Greenspan's admission that America's red-hot economy is cooling, lots of working folks had already seen signs of the slowdown themselves. From car dealerships to Gap outlets, sales have been lagging for months as shoppers temper their spending. For retailers, who last year took in 24 percent of their revenue between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the cautious approach is coming at a crucial time. Already, experts say, holiday sales are off 7 percent from last year's pace. But don't sound any alarms just yet. Consumers seem only mildly concerned, not panicked, and many say they remain optimistic about the economy's long-term prospects, even as they do some modest belt-tightening.

Consumers say they're not in despair because, despite the dreadful headlines, their own fortunes still feel pretty good. Home prices are holding steady in most regions. In Manhattan, "there's a new gold rush happening in the $4 million to $10 million range, predominantly fed by Wall Street bonuses", says broker Barbara Corcoran. In San Francisco, prices are still rising even as frenzied overbidding quiets. "Instead of 20 to 30 offers, now maybe you only get two or three", says John Tealdi, a Bay Area real-estate broker. And most folks still feel pretty comfortable about their ability to find and keep a job.

Many folks see silver linings to this slowdown. Potential home buyers would cheer for lower interest rates. Employers wouldn't mind a little fewer bubbles in the job market. Many consumers seem to have been influenced by stock-market swings, which investors now view as a necessary ingredient to a sustained boom. Diners might see an upside, too. Getting a table at Manhattan's hot new Alain Ducasse restaurant used to be impossible. Not anymore. For that, Greenspan Co. may still be worth toasting.

By "Ellen Spero isn't biting her nails just yet" (Line 1, Para. 1), the author means______.

A．Spero can hardly maintain her business

B．Spero is too much engaged in her work

C．Spero has grown out of her bad habit

D．Spero is not in a desperate situation

When it comes to the economy, pessimism is in and good old American optimism is out. From the headlines in the newspapers to the coffee shop chatter, it seems that there is little good to say about the economy. Bad enough that the news about Iraq, winter storms and the escalation of terror alerts continue to keep people on edge. Reports of state budget deficits and threats of major cutbacks in services such as education, health care and police also' make people nervous.

The latest USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll reflects the new pessimism. Asked early this past week how they would rate economic conditions in the country today, just one in three--34%--said they consider it good. That's down 10 percentage points from December, when 44% rated the economy good and 20 points lower than September when 54% said they thought economic conditions were good. Moreover,' when asked to look ahead a year from now, those people willing to say things will get better are also dwindling in numbers. A thin majority of 55% said they expected economic conditions to be better by this time next year. Not bad on the surface. But looking back just two months to December, 65%--or two of three--believed that things would improve in a year. And going back six months to September, 71% expressed optimism for economic improvement.

So the seeds of discontent are out there and they could set off a political firestorm for President Bush if economic conditions don't start getting better soon. Or more importantly, if the American people don't start feeling better soon. Regardless of what the statistics say about how good the economy might be getting, the American people have to feel it. And often, feelings lag behind numbers. Indeed, most people believe that the economy is in recession. Statistically it is not. Case in point: On Friday, the U.S. Commerce Department reported that the economy grew at a 1.4% rate in the final quarter of last year--twice as fast as the government first estimated. Major factors in the upward revision in the gross domestic product were stronger investment by businesses in building up stockpiles of unsold goods and a slight boost to consumer spending, the main force keeping the economy going.

But while that report is interesting, and perhaps a source of hope that things aren't as bad as they seem, more tangible examples of economic improvement are needed--solid gains in the stock market, rehiring by plants that have been laying off workers, new business expansion.

The USA TODAY poll further shows that nervousness about Iraq and a still-sluggish economy are taking a political toll on Bush: His job approval rating is 57%, his lowest since before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Surely, what happens with Iraq will be a major factor in the president's political fortunes next year, but if people continue to be pessimistic about the economy when Bush is in the midst of running for a second term, it will be difficult to be optimistic about his chances of winning.

The phrase "keep people on edge" (Paragraph 1) probably means to ______.

A．upset people

B．keep people alert

C．disappoint people

D．make people pessimistic

When it comes to foods, America is not just the fattest country on earth but probably the most schizophrenic as well--home to the Big Mac and Weight Watchers, the super model and the couch potato.

The love-hate relationship with food was examined in the documentary "Fat" which aired on November 3, and if there is any comfort for the more than 90 million overweight Americans it's that the rest of the world is also getting fatter.

"There is an enormous pressure on people to be thin and to be physically fit but at the same time there is a tremendous pressure and inducement to eat, "Or Kelly Brownell, professor of psychology at Yale University and a participant in the programme, said in an interview. "You will see a Baskin Robbins next to Weight Watchers. You'll see a Family Circle magazine with a delicious chocolate cake on the cover beside a diet article, "said Brownell. "At the same time as we have record levels of obesity, we have record levels of eating disorders too," he said.

The desire to eat fatty food came from a primitive survival instinct to store enough energy in good times to ensure survival when food was scare. But in a modern urban society, where fast food chains appear on almost every block, the instinct to eat far has begun to work against us.

The documentary claims that nowhere is the exposure to junk food more prevalent than in the United States, where the problem has been compounded by the increasingly sedentary modern lifestyle. It also says that members of Arizona's Pima Indian tribe are the fattest people in the fattest country on earth. Until recently the tribe lived a simple life, but in 1984 when the tribe won a gaming stream. Today the tribe is plagued by obesity, high blood pressure and heart disease. Just 800 kms south in Mexico, another branch of the Pima tribe continues to live a traditional life and eats a traditional diets. These Pima have none of the problems of their American counterparts, who are on average 27kgs heavier.

Part of the problem, according to Brownetl, is the intense advertising of junk food in the United States. The average American child sees thousands of TV commercials each year, most of which advertise fast food, candy and sodas.

The food environment has become so "toxic" according to the documentary, that some US schools even offers fast food such as McDonald's and Burger King in school cafeterias.

"If there is any comfort for the more than 90 million overweight Americans it's that the rest of the world is also getting fatter." What does this sentence mean?

A．Overweight Americans will be glad to see the rest of he world is getting fatter.

B．Actually there is no comfort at all for overweight Americans.

C．The rest of the world had sympathy on overweight Americans.

D．Overweight Americans dislike thin person.

Where Do Dreams Come from?

Do you often dream at night? Most people do. When they wake in the morning they say to themselves, "What a strange dream I had! I wonder what made me dream that."

Sometimes dreams are frightening. Terrible creatures threaten and pursue us. Sometimes, in dreams, wishes come true. We can fly through the air or float from mountain-tops. At other times we are troubled by dreams in which everything is confused. We are lost and can't find our way home. The world seems to have been turned upside-down and nothing makes sense.

In dreams we act very strangely. We do things which we would never do when we're awake. We think and say things we would never think and say. Why are dreams so strange? Where do dreams come from?

People have been trying to answer this since the beginning of time. But no one has produced a more satisfying answer than a man called Sigmund Freud. One's dream-world seems strange and unfamiliar, he said, because dreams come from a part of one's mind which one can neither recognize nor control. He named this the "unconscious mind."

Sigmund Freud was born about a hundred years ago. He lived most of his life in Vienna, Austria, but ended his days in London, soon after the beginning of the Second World War.

Freud was one of the great explorers of our time. But the new worlds he explored were inside man himself. For the unconscious mind is like a deep well, full of memories and feelings. These memories and feelings have been stored there from the moment of our birth—perhaps even before birth. Our conscious mind has forgotten them. We do not suspect that they are there until some unhappy or unusual experience causes us to remember, or to dream dreams. Then suddenly we see a face we had forgotten long ago. We feel the same jealous fear and bitter disappointments we felt when we were little children.

This discovery of Freud's is very important if we wish to understand why people act as they do. For the unconscious forces inside us are at least as powerful as the conscious forces we know about. Why do we choose one friend rather than another? Why does one story make us cry or laugh while another story doesn't affect us at all? Perhaps we know why. If we don't, the reasons may lie deep in our unconscious minds.

When Freud was a child he wanted to become a great soldier and win honor for his country. At that time Austria and Germany were at war with each other. His father used to take Sigmund down to the railway station to watch the trains come in from the battle-fields. The trains were full of wounded soldiers. There were men who had lost an eye, an arm or a leg fighting in the war. Many of the soldiers were suffering great pain.

Young Sigmund watched the wounded men as they were moved from the trains into the hay-carts that carried them to the hospital. He was very sorry for them. He pitied them so much that he said to the teacher at his school, "Let us boys make bandages for the poor soldiers as our sisters in the girls' school do."

Even then, Freud cared about the sufferings of others, so it isn't surprising that he became a doctor when he grew up. Like other doctors he learned all about the way in which the human body works. But he became more and more curious about the human mind. He went to Paris to study with a famous French doctor, Chareot. Chareot's special study was diseases of the mind and nerves.

At that time it seemed that no one knew very much about the mind. If a person went mad, or 'out of his mind', there was not much that could be done about it. There was little help or comfort for the madman or his family. People didn't understand at all what was happening to him. Had he been possessed by a devil or evil spirit? Was God punishing him for wrongdoing? Often such people were shut away from the company of ordinary civilized

A．Y

B．N

C．NG

When a person sneeze, others would say "God bless you." It comes of which of the following beliefs?

A．A sneeze makes devils come into one's body.

B．Telling the name of God can get devils out of one's body.

C．God may help people sneeze.

D．Both Ａ and Ｂ.

Women are, on the whole, more verbal than men. They are good at language and verbal reasoning, while men tend to be skilled at tasks demanding visual spatial abilities. In fact, along with aggression, these are the most commonly accepted differences between the sexes.

Words are tools for communicating with other people, especially information about people. They are mainly social tools. Visual and spatial abilities are good for imagining and manipulating objects and for communicating information about them. Are these talents programmed into the brain? In some of the newest and most controversial research in neurophysiology, it has been suggested that when it comes to the brain, males are specialists while women are generalists.

But no one knows what, if anything, this means in terms of the abilities of the two sexes. Engineering is both visual and spatial, and it's true that there are relatively few women engineers. But women become just as skilled as men at shooting a rifle or driving a car, tasks that involve visual spatial skills. They also do equally well at programming a computer, which is neither visual nor spatial. Women do, however, seem less likely to fall in love with the objects themselves. We all know men for whom machines seem to be extensions of their identity. A woman is more likely to see her car, rifle, or computer as a useful tool, but not in itself fascinating.

According to the passage, women are usually good at ______.

A．body language

B．logical reasoning

C．tasks demanding for the use of words

D．both A and B

Which of the following is true?

A．Most of Australia is too dry for people to live in and it is the same with the USA.

B．Some of the Australian farms are very large.

C．The people on the farms don’t have neighbors because they live far away from each other.

D．The Australian children don't like to go to school at all.

Which of the following is true?

A．Most of Australia is too dry for people to live in and it is the same with the USA.

B．Some of the Australian farms are very large.

C．The people on the farms don't have neighbors because they live far away from each other.

D．The Australian children don't like to go to school at all.

下面的短文后列出了7个句子，请根据短文的内容对每个句子做出判断：如果该句提供的是正确信息，请选择A；如果该句提供的是错误信息，请选择B；如果该句的信息文中没有提及，请选择C.

Scotland:A Land of Wisdom

In the 1740s,the famous French philosopher Voltaire said"We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilization."That's not a bad advertisement for any country when it comes to attracting people to search for a first-class education.

According to the American author Arthur Herman,the Scots invented the modern world itself.He argues that Scottish thinkers and intellectuals worked out many of the most important ideas on which modern life depends-everything from the scientific method to market economics.Their ideas did not just spread among intellectuals,but to those people in business,government and the sciences who actually shaped the Western world.

It all started during the period that historians call the Scottish Enlightenment（启蒙运动）,which is usually seen as taking place between the years 1740 and 1800.Before that,philosophy was mainly concemed with religion.For the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment,the proper study of humanity was mankind itself.

Their reasoning was practical.For the philosopher David Hume,humanity was the right subject for philosophy because we can examine human behavior. and so find real evidence of how people think and feel.And from that we can make judgments about the societies we live in and make concrete suggestions about how they can be improved,for universal benefit.

Hume's enquiry into the nature of knowledge laid the foundations for the scientific method-the pursuit of truth through experiment.His friend and fellow resident of Edinburgh,Adam Smith,famously applied the study of mankind to the ways in which mankind does business.Trade,he argued,was a form. of infrmation.In pursuing our own interests through trading in markets,we all come to benefit each other.

Smith's idea has dominated modern views of economics.It also has wide applications.He was one of the philosophers to point out that nations can become rich,free and powerful through peace,trade and invention.

Although the Scottish Enlightenment ended a long time ago,the ideas which evolved at that time still underpin（构成……的基础）our theories of human exchange and enquiry.It also exists in Scotland itself in an educational tradition that combines academic excellence with orientation（方向）.

16.Scotland is the right place to receive a first-class education.

A.Right B.Wrong C.Not mentioned

What do we know about the people of the baby-boom generation?

A．Most of them become parents in their twenties.

B．Most of them prefer to live with their children.

C．They are willing to take care of their aging parents.

D．They have a higher employment rate than their kids.