When polygons or histograms are constructed, which axis must show the true zero or "origin"？

Anyone who lives in the eastern part of the United States or Canada and gazed skyward on Tuesday evening may have noticed something strange in their west-northwest sky.

At around 9 p.m. ET, a small, bright, silvery circular cloud of light suddenly appeared. Over the next 25 minutes, the cloud appeared to gradually expand and fade, finally becoming invisible to the unaided eye. Those who saw it, wondered exactly what it might have been.

John Bottle, a well-known amateur astronomer with over four-decades of experience of sky observing first caught sight of the cloud at 9:03 p. m. from his home in Stormville, New York. Initially, he thought the cloud was as bright as zero or first magnitude and upon examining it carefully with binoculars, thought that it "... resembled the petals of a day lily." By 9:30 p. m. , he reported that the cloud had faded completely from his view.

From the North Fork of Long Island, Bill Bogardus and his wife were out observing when they took note of the cloud "... about the size of the moon" in the northwest sky. "It was a roundish, yet not all that round, object drifting towards our location very slowly, slower than most satellites because it took at least twenty minutes to move from where we first saw it to pretty much our zenith."

After studying it for a while through an 8-inch telescope, Bogardus noticed two points of light, "... like a satellite would appear, in line and above a jet of gas that seemed to come from them."

Observing from Ithaca, New York, Joseph Storch used 7×50 binoculars on the cloud and reported a star-like point or nucleus and four butterfly shaped petals radiating outward. Other reports, received as far west as Toronto, tell of people who initially thought that what they were seeing was the moon behind a cloud. Typical was the comment: "For a second I thought it was the moon, then I realized the moon was in the east."

What was it?

Quite a few people who saw this strange, expanding cloud thought that it might have been an atmospheric experiment sent aloft by a sounding rocket. Over the years, those living along the East Coast have been accustomed to occasionally seeing unusual brightly colored clouds caused when exotic chemicals such as barium and trimethylaluminum were released into the Earth's ionosphere by rockets launched from NASA’s Wallops Island, Virginia site.

NASA was indeed responsible for the unusual cloud formation on Tuesday night, but it was not part of a planned experiment.

It was, in reality, a fuel dump of the Centaur stage involved in the NRO-1 satellite launch from Cape Canaveral late Tuesday afternoon. Dumping excess fuel is the usual practice for all Centaur-booster assisted launches. It happens after spacecraft separation; the fuel bleeding off from a Centaur upper rocket stage on its second orbit after launch. Being just after nightfall, the cloud of fuel was still sunlit at that altitude.

And those who were fortuitously outside when the dump occurred, were the ones who saw this very unusual sight!

According to the passage, people in ______ places are reported to have seen the unusual sight.

A．6

B．5

C．4

D．3

158 The Pareto Principle is a technique used by quality managers to determine which quality control problems of a particular service or manufacturing process should be corrected. Which of the following statements represents the philosophy of the principle?

A. In order to minimize financial losses from quality control problems, all problems which have a measurable cost associated with them should be corrected.

B. the majority of defects are caused by a small percentage of the identifiable problems. Improvements efforts should be reserved for these vital few problems.

C. in order to achieve zero defects, all quality control problems, including those which do not have a direct financial cost should be corrected.

D. generally, 80 % of the quality control problems are justifiable for correction via cost-benefit analysis. The remaining 20% are not financially worthy of improvement efforts.

E. A and D

Earthquake

1．Every year earthquakes are responsible for a large number of deaths and a vest amount of destruction in various parts of the world．Most of these damaging earthquakes occur either in a narrow belt which surrounds the Pacific Ocean or in a line which extends from Burma to the Alps in Europe．Some of the destruction is directly caused by the quakes itself．An example of this is the collapse of buildings as a result of the quake itself,0ther damages result from landslides or major fires which are initiated by the quake．

2．There are about a million quakes a year．Fortunately，however，not all of them are destructive．The intensity of an earthquake is measured on the Richter Scale，which goes from zero upwarD．The highest scale recorded to date is 8. 9. Major damage generally occurs from quakes ranging upwards from 6.0.

3. The actual cause of the quake itself is the breaking of rocks at or below the earth' s surface. This is produced by pressure which scientists believe may be due to a number of reasons, two of which are the expansion and contraction of the earth's crust and continental drift.

4. In order to limit the damage and to prevent some of the suffering resulting from earthquakes, scientists are working on ways to enable accurate prediction. Special instruments are used to help people record, for example, shaking of the earth. Scientists are trying to find methods that will enable them to indicate the exact time, location and size of an earthquake.

5. Certain phenomena have been observed which are believed to be signs of imminent earthquakes. These include strange behaviors of some animals, the changes in the content of mineral water, etC． The magnetic properties of rocks may also display special, pattern before major earthquakes happen.

第 23 题 Paragraph 2_________

A．Earthquake forecast

B．Historical records of earthquakes

C．Intensities of earthquakes

D．Cause of earthquakes

E．Indications of earthquakes

F．Damaging earthquakes

A customer’s interaction with the system involves logging in, making withdrawal requests, deposit requests, and balance inquiry requests. If the customer logs in, there is a possibility (although rare) that the system will confiscate the card (for example, if the login is incorrect or if the bank determines that the customer’s balance is significantly under zero). Card confiscation involves triggering an alert, which will be received by the branch manager of the bank. If the customer does a balance inquiry, this of course causes the system to check the balance. Checking the balance is also done when the customer requests a withdrawal, since the system must verify that enough money is in his account. In principle, checking the balance is a function that may be performed to support many use cases throughout the system..

READING PASSAGE 2

You should about 20 minutes on Questions 14-17 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Wheel of Fortune

Emma Duncan discusses the potentiaI effects on the entertainment industry of the digital revolution

A

Since moving pictures were invented a century ago，a new way of distributing entertainment to consumers has emerged about once every generation．Each such innovation has changed the industry irreversibly；each has been accompanied by a period of fear mixed with exhilaration．The arrival of digital technology, which translates music．pictures and text into the zeros and ones of computer language，marks one of those periods．

B

This may sound familiar, because the digital revolution，and the explosion of choice that would go with it, has been heralded for some time．In 1992，John Malone，chief executive of TCI，an American cable giant．welcomed the '500-channel universe'．Digital television was about to deliver everything except pizzas to people's living rooms．When the entertainment companies tried out the technology, it worked fine-but not at a price that people were prepared to pay．

C

Those 500 channels eventually arrived but via the Internet and the PC rather than through television．The digital revolution was startinq to affect the entertainment business in unexpected ways．Eventually it will chanqe every aspect of it，from the way cartoons are made to the way films are screened to the way people buy music．That much is clear．What nobody is sure of is how it will affect the economics of the business．

D

New technologies always contain within them both threats and opportunities．They have the potential both to make the companies in the business a great deal richer, and to sweep them away．Old companies always fear new technology．Hollywood was hostile to television，television terrified by the VCR．Go back far enough，points out Hal Varian．an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, and you find publishers complaining that' circulating libraries' would cannibalise their sales．Yet whenever a new technology has come in，it has made more money for existing entertainment companies. The proliferation of the means of distribution results，gratifyingly, in the proliferation of dollars，pounds， pesetas and the rest to pay for it.

E

All the same，there is something in the old companies' fears．New technologies may not threaten their lives．but they usually change their role．Once television became widespread，film and radio stopped being the staple form. of entertainment．Cable television has undermined the power of the broadcasters．And as power has shifted the movie studios，the radio companies and the television broadcasters have been swallowed up．These days，the grand old names of entertainment have more resonance than power．Paramount is part of Viacom，a cable company; Universal，part of Seagram, a drinks-and-entertainment company; MGM，once the roarinq lion of Hollywood，has been reduced to a whisper because it is not Dart of one of the giants．And RCA，once the most important broadcasting company in the world，is now a recording label belonging to Bertelsmann，a large German entertainment company．

&n

A. Oracle uses statistical relevance to determine when an adaptive threshold has been breached for the metric.

B. The statistics for the metric values observed over the baseline time period are not examined to determine threshold values.

C. Oracle determines when an adaptive threshold has been breached based on the maximum value captured by the baseline.

D. The total concurrent number of threshold violations, which must occur before an alert is raised for the metric, has been set to zero.

Q1 Minimax Consider the zero-sum game tree shown below. Triangles that point up, such as at the top node (root), represent choices for the maximizing player; triangles that point down represent choices for the minimizing player. Outcome values for the maximizing player are listed for each leaf node, represented by the values in squares at the bottom of the tree. Assuming both players act optimally, carry out the minimax search algorithm. Enter the values for the letter nodes in the boxes below the tree.Input Answers Here A:

As shown, object A and B with mass of m1 and m2 are put on a smooth surface of a table and they are connected through a light spring. Another two objects C and D are on objects A and B, and the frictional factors between A and C, B and D are not equal to zero. An external force pushes on A and B along the horizontal direction and the spring is compressed. As removing the external force during the process of A and B being apart away， for the system of A, B, C, D and the spring we have（ ）

A、Both momentum and mechanical energy are conserved;

B、Momentum is not conserved while mechanical energy is conserved;

C、Both momentum and mechanical energy are not conserved;

D、Momentum is conserved , while mechanical energy is not necessarily conserved.

Unwanted sound, or noise, such as that produced by airplanes, traffic, or industrial machinery, is considered a form. of pollution. Noise pollution is at its worst in densely populated areas. It can cause hearing loss, stress, high blood pressure, sleep loss, distraction (注意力分散), and lost productivity!

Sounds are produced, by objects that vibrate (振动), at a rate that the ear can detect. This rate is called frequency and is measured in hertz (赫兹), or vibrations per second. Most humans can hear sounds between 20 and 20,000 hertz, while dogs can hear high pitched sounds (高频声音) up to 50,000 hertz. While high frequency sounds tend to be more hazardous (危险的) and more annoying to heating than low frequency sounds, most noise pollution damage is related to the intensity of the sound. Measured in decibels (分贝), noise intensity can range from zero, the quietest sound the human ear can detect, to over 60 decibels. Conversation takes place at around 40 decibels, a subway train is about 80 decibels, and a rock concert is from 80 to 100 decibels. The intensity of a nearby jet taking off is about 110 decibels. 120 decibels axe the limit at which human beings will be aware of pain, and suffer from potential heating loss. Long lasting, high intensity sounds are the most damaging to heating and produce the most stress in humans.

Solutions to noise pollution include adding insulation and sound proofing (隔音) to doors, walls, and ceilings; using ear protection, particularly in industrial working areas; planting vegetation to absorb and screen out noise pollution; and zoning urban areas to maintain a separation between residential areas and zones of excessive noise.

Noise pollution can cause ______.

A．lower productivity

B．lower blood pressure

C．sound sleep

D．less stress