Atmospheric deposition industrial waste water, sewage and solid waste disposal sites are the .

The U.S. generates about four billion tons of solid waste a year. More than 90 percent is composed of agricultural and mining wastes. About 3 percent is from industrial wastes. 250 million tons of garbage and refuse come out from homes, schools, office buildings, stores and hospitals.

This mass of metals, paper, food, plastic, rubber and glass which is all mixed together seems of no earthly use to anyone.

Or is it? Scattered efforts across the country indicate that new technology, properly applied, might someday turn these millions of tons of refuse into an excellent source of raw materials for new uses.

Several new projects are carried out to study the possibility of treating wastes through pyrolysis (高温分解)--a system of reducing refuse to basic chemicals, liquids and gases which have commercial value. In Florida, a special tube system provides automatic transport of refuse to a central collection building.

In short, many new ideas are being tested, and many will be needed, since no one method is likely to prove suitable everywhere.

However, many difficult economic and social questions must be answered before real progress can be made. Can recovered materials compete with new materials? What will be needed as encouragement to make resource recovery work? Will citizens pay the costs of changing our waste system?

The article suggests that garbage and refuse from homes and public places ______.

A．make up the largest percentage of solid wastes

B．make up a small percentage of solid wastes

C．are not really considered in the solid waste problem

D．are considered of no use to the earth

Shyness is a nearly universal human trait. Almost everyone has bouts of it, and half of those surveyed describe themselves as shy. Perhaps because it's so widespread, and because it suggests vulnerability, shyness is often an endearing trait: Princess Diana, for example, won millions of admirers with her "Shy Di" manner. The human species might not even exist if not for an instinctive wariness of other creatures. In fact, the ability to sense a threat and a desire to flee are lodged in the most primitive regions of the brain.

But at some life juncture, roughly 1 our of every 8 people becomes so timid that encounters with others turn into a source of overwhelming dread. The heart races, palms sweat, mouth grows dry, words vanish; thoughts become cluttered, and an urge to escape takes over. This is the face of social phobia (also known as "social anxiety disorder"), the third most common mental disorder in the United States, behind depression and alcoholism. Some social phobics can hardly utter a sentence without obsession over the impression they are making. Others refuse to use public restrooms or talk on the telephone. Sometimes they go mute in front of the boss or a member of the opposite sex. At the extreme, they built a hermitic life, avoiding contact with others.

Though social anxiety's symptoms have been noted since the time of Hippocrates, the disorder was a nameless affliction until the late 1960s and didn't make its way into psychiatry manuals until 1980. As it became better known, patients previously thought to suffer panic disorder were recognized as being anxious only in social settings. A decade ago, 40 percent of people said they were shy, but in today's "nation of strangers" --in which computers and ATMs make face-to-face relations less and less common--that number is nearing 50 percent. Some psychologists are convinced that the Internet culture, often favored by those who fear human interaction, greases the slope from shyness to social anxiety. If people were slightly shy to begin with, they can now interact less and less, and that will make the shyness much worse.

According to Paragraph 1, shyness is ______.

A．against human nature

B．completely an endearing trait

C．so widespread that a problem may arise

D．essential to the survival of the human species

In the early 1950s,historians who studied pre-industrial Europe (which we may define here as Europe in the period from roughly 1300 to 1800) began, for the first time in large numbers, to investigate more of the pre-industrial European population than the 2 or3 per cent who comprised the political and social elite' the kings, generals, judges, nobles, bishops, and local magnates who had hitherto usually filled history books. One difficulty, however, was that few of the remaining 97 percent recorded their thoughts or had them chronicled by contemporaries. Faced with this situation, many historians based their investigations on the only records that seemed to exist: birth, marriage, and death records. As a result, much of the early work on the non-elite was aridly statistical in nature; reducing the vast majority of the population to a set of numbers was hardly more enlightening than ignoring them altogether. Historians still did not know what these people thought or felt.

One way out of this dilemma was to turn to the records of legal courts, for here the voices of the non-elite can most often be heard, as witnesses, plaintiffs, and defendants. These documents have acted as" a point of entry into the mental world of the poor. "Historians such as Le Roy Ladurie have used the documents to extract case histories, which have illustrated the attitudes of different social groups (these attitudes include, but are not confined to, attitudes toward crime and the law) and have revealed how the authorities administered justice. It has been societies that have had a developed police system and practiced Roman law, with its written depositions, whose court records have yielded the most data to historians. In Anglo-Saxon countries hardly any of these benefits obtain, but it has still been possible to glean information from the study of legal documents.

The extraction of case histories is not, however, the only use to which court records may be put. Historians who study pre-industrial Europe have used the records to establish a series of categories of crime and to quantify indictments that were issued over a given number of years. This use of the re cords does yield some information about the non-elite, but this information gives us little insight into the mental lives of the non-elite. We also know that the number of indictments in pre-industrial Europe bears little relation to the number of actual criminal acts, and we strongly suspect that the relationship has varied widely over time. In addition, aggregate population estimates are very shaky, which makes it difficult for historians to compare rates of crime per thousand in one decade of the pre-industrial period with rates in another decade. Given these inadequacies, it is clear why the case history Use of court records is to be preferred.

How is in the investigations carried out by historians in 1950s different from previous studies?

A．They had new findings.

B．They expanded the period defined as pre-industrial Europe.

C．They investigated the common people who took up the majority of the population.

D．The investigations were on the kings, generals ,judges, nobles, bishops, and local magnates.

The climatic phenomenon that is being blamed for floods hurricanes and early snowstorms also deserves credit for encouraging plant growth and helping to control the pollutant linked to global warming, a new study shows.

El Nino—the periodic warming of eastern Pacific Ocean waters—causes a burst of plant growth throughout the world, and this removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, researchers have found.

(112) The new study shows that natural weather events such as the brief warming caused by El Nino, have a much more dramatic effect than previously believed on how much carbon dioxide is absorbed by plants and how much of the gas is expelled by the soil.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide, or CO2, has been increasing steadily for decades. This is thought to be caused by an expanded use of fossil fuels and by toppling of tropical forests. Scientists have linked the CO2 rise to global warming, a phenomenon known as the greenhouse effect. (113) Alarmed nations of the world now are drawing up new conservation policies to reduce fossil fuel burning, in hopes of reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

But David Schimel of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a co-author of the new study, says that before determining how much to reduce fossil fuel burning we should consider the effects of natural climate variations on the ability of plants to absorb CO2.

Schimel said satellite measurements of CO2, plant growth and temperature show that natural warming events such as El Nifio at first cause more CO2 to be released into the atmosphere, probably as the result of accelerated decay of dead plant matter in the soil. But later, within two years, there is an explosion of growth-in forests and grasslands, which means plants suck more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

"We think that there is a delayed response in vegetation and soil to the warming effects of such phenomena as El Nifio, and this leads to increased plant growth," said Schimel.

(114) However, be said, it is not clear whether the warming by El Nino causes a net decrease in the buildup of CO2 over the long haul. "We don't really know that yet," said Schimel. What the study does show, however, is that the rise and fall of CO2 in the atmosphere is strongly influenced by natural changes in global temperature, said B. H. Braswell of the University of New Hampshire, another co-author of the study.

Braswell said that in years when the global weather is cooler than normal, there is a decrease in both the decay of dead plants and in new plant growth. This causes an effect that is the opposite of El Nino warming: CO2 atmosphere levels first decline and later increase.

(115) "I think we have demonstrated that the ecosystem has a lot more to do with climate change than was previously believed," said Braswell, "Focusing on the role of human activity in climate change is important, but man made factors are not the only factors."

(81)

The Price of Idleness

1．Electrical devices such as CD players, vidoes and burglar alarms are consuming more energy in standby mode than when they are actually being used.

2．Maria Sanchez and her colleagues from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, tested more than 50 small electrical applicances, from computers to doorbells, electric mowers, VCRs, and pool pumps. In the current issue of Energy Policy, they report that about half of all consumer electronics energy is used in standby mode. This costs American consumers ＄1 billion a year in wasted energy.

3．The researchers say that while electronic devices are lying dormant(休眠状态),running their clocks, maintaining internal memories or displaying their settings, they consume aroud 40 terawatt hours of electricity in the U.S. every year--enough to power a city such as Chicago or London. Many machines use almost as much power on standby as when working. For example, it takes 15 watts to play a typical CD, but an average of 11 watts to keep it on standby. Satellite TV systems use 14 watts when active and 14 watts on standby. Given the long hours these systems spend idling, each uses far more power in standby mode than when actually working.

4．"Bad design is largely to blame," says Sanchez. In a separate survey of CD players last year, her colleague Wolfgang Huber found that two machines with similar features used 28 watts and 2 watts respectively on standby. "For most products, we believe that standby power can be reduced to one watt or less," says Sanchez.

5．She backs proposals to set up a national labeling system to promote machines that meet this standard. Such a system could reduce standby power consumption in the U.S. by 50 per cent, says coauthor Alan Meier--more than 20 terawatt hours per year. Last month, electronics company Philips announced the launch of a device that can dramatically reduce the power used in standby mode.

A Factors Leading to Energy Waste

B Home Appliances

C Propsals to Cut Energy Consumption

D Energy Consumption Test

E Terawatt Hours

F Nonessential Electricity Use

Paragraph 2 ______

The Industrial Revolution marked a major turning point in humans relationship with their environment. It【C1】______changed every aspect of human life and lifestyles. The【C2】______on the worlds psyche would not【C3】______much attention till the early 1960s. From human development, health and life longevity to public health, energy usage and sanitation, the effects were【C4】______. It wasnt【C5】______the Industrial Revolution became an irresistible force overnight. It started in the mid-1700s in Great Britain when machinery began to replace manual labor. Fossil fuels replaced wind, water and wood, used【C6】______for the manufacture of textiles and the development of iron making processes. The full impact would not begin to be realized until about 100 years later in the 1800s,【C7】______the use of machines to replace human labor spread throughout Europe and North America. This transformation is【C8】______as the industrialization of the world. These processes【C9】______sweeping increases in production capacity and were to affect all basic human needs. Not only did society develop the【C10】______to have more things faster, but it would be able to develop better things. These industrialization processes continue today and are likely to be long-lasting.

【C1】

A．dramatically

B．scarcely

C．ethnically

D．absurdly