The Erie Canal was the first important national waterway built in the US. It crossed New York from Buffalo on Lake Erie Troy to Albany on the Hudson River. It joined the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean. The canal served as a route over which industrial goods could flow into the west, and materials could pour into the east. The Erie Canal helped New York develop into the nation’s largest city.
The building of the canal was paid for entirely by the state of New York. It cost $ 7 143 789, but it soon gained its price many times over. Between 1825, when the canal was opened, and 1882, when toll charges(过运河费) were stopped, the state collected $121 461 891.
For a hundred years before the Erie was built, people had been talking about a canal which could join the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean. The man who planned the Erie Canal and carried the plan through was De Witt Clinton. Those who were against the canal laughingly called it “Clinton’s Ditch(沟)”. Clinton talked and wrote about the canal and drew up plans for it. He and Governor Morris went to Washington in 1812 to ask for help for the canal, but they were unsuccessful.
Clinton became governor of New York in 1817, and shortly afterwards, on July 4, 1817, broke ground for the canal in Rome, N.Y. The first part of the canal was completed in 1820. As the canal grew, towns along its course developed fast. The length of the canal is 363 miles.We can see that the Erie Canal ________.
| A．joined the Great Lakes together |
| B．crossed New York from north to south |
| C．played an important part in developing New York City |
| D．was the first waterway built in the US |
It can be inferred that ________ into the Atlantic Ocean.
| A．the Great Lakes flow | B．the Hudson River flows |
| C．Lake Erie flows | D．the Erie Canal flows |
Which of the following is true according to the passage?
| A．The Erie Canal brought profits of over $114, 000, 000. |
| B．It’s 363 miles from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. |
| C．The West was more advanced than the East when the canal was built. |
| D．Many other states helped New York built the canal. |
Which of the following is true according to the passage?
| A．Clinton broke ground for the canal at both ends. |
| B．Clinton started building the canal before he became governor. |
| C．All parts of the canal were completed at the same time. |
| D．Construction of the canal took eight years. |
I learnt about the Pygmalion effect (皮格玛丽翁效应) when I was 7 years old at Riverdale School in Palmerston North and I copied Melissa Crawford's answers in a spelling test. Before that I was average at school but after that, because Melissa Crawford was smart, and I got all the right answers, I got put in all the smart kids groups.
From then I did really well at school because it was believed by the teachers that I would and I also got grouped with the smart kids. This experience that occurred at my primary school shows just how important the Pygmalion effect is in terms of being around mentors (导师) that expect that you're going to do well and also being around people who are smart.
The Pygmalion effect is one principle you want to use if you want to make money fast. Have mentors that expect you will make money fast and as an extra boost hang around, copy and learn from other people who are also making money fast.
Yesterday this site had over 5, 000 unique visitors and the traffic to it is increasing all the time. A year ago I contacted a group of people who got lots of traffic in their sites and I learnt from them. Truthfully I don't know if they expected me to start getting decent traffic to websites but I imagined they did so they might as well have.
So there you have it—the Pygmalion effect.
P. S. My grammar and spelling are not that great nowadays but that's actually completely irrelevant (不相关的) when it comes to getting lots of visitors to your site.When did the author learn about the Pygmalion effect?
| A．Before he took the spelling test. |
| B．After he cheated in the spelling test. |
| C．When he did badly in exams. |
| D．After he finished primary school. |
The author got grouped with the smart kids because __________.
| A．he was an average pupil at school |
| B．he did better than all the others at school |
| C．Melissa Crawford was smart |
| D．he did better than expected |
What does the underlined word "contacted" mean in the passage?
| A．got in touch with |
| B．made friends with |
| C．lost touch with |
| D．was concerned about |
From the passage we can infer that __________.
| A．the author was busy meeting visitors every day |
| B．there was lots of traffic in his city |
| C．the author opened a website himself |
| D．the author's grammar was poor at school |
You just think you know what will make you happy. Researchers in the new science of happiness know better. They have evidence that married people on average end up being no happier than they were before the wedding. Winning the lottery (彩票) will probably reduce your pleasure in ordinary events that used to make you happy. And being in good health isn't as much of a factor as the right genes when it comes to satisfaction.
Soligman and Diener studied 222 Illinois college students to find out what the happiest 10% had in common. It turned out they were extroverts (外向的人), had more friendships and romantic relationships, but didn't exercise more and didn't feel they had more good events in their lives than those who weren't as happy.
Some of the results come as a surprise. A classic study of lottery winners and people with spinal (脊骨) cord injuries, for instance, found that neither event changed their lives as much as observers thought they would.
Gilbert is looking into how accurately people predict what will make them happy, which turns out, not accurately at all. What we think will bring us pleasure—a new car, the home team winning the NCAA championship, a move to California—usually doesn't bring us as much as we expected, and the positive impact doesn't last as long. The good news is that we also overestimate the impact of catastrophic (悲惨的) events. Even with data from research pouring in, scientists still don't have an easy answer to what we all want to know: How do I get long-term life satisfaction? The answers they do have are often the same ones that philosophers and priests have been giving us for centuries. It's just nice to have them backed up with hard data.What does the passage mainly discuss?
| A．A research on happiness. |
| B．The level of happiness. |
| C．The secrets of happiness. |
| D．The prediction of happiness. |
The happiest people have the following characters except that __________.
| A．they are rich |
| B．they are outgoing |
| C．they are very sociable |
| D．they don't pay more attention to exercise |
According to the passage, we can know if the hurricane happens, it will cause __________.
| A．more suffering than people expect |
| B．as much suffering as people expect |
| C．less suffering than people expect |
| D．nothing is mentioned about it |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．We ourselves know what makes us happy the best. |
| B．The happiest 10% in the world have nothing incommon. |
| C．People can predict the things that make them happy accurately. |
| D．We just need to do what the philosophers and priests tell us to keep happy. |
A spiraling (成螺旋形的) tower made from thousands of books in dozens of languages is the later landmark in Buenos Aires, named the World Book Capital this year.
Called the Tower of Babel, the 25-meter high tower by Argentina's artist Marta Minujin is made from 30, 000 books, donated by readers, libraries and more than 50 embassies.
Climbing up its seven floors, visitors to the tower hear music composed by Minujin and the voice of the artist repeating the word "book" in scores of languages.
"Building this tower is really a wonder," Minujin said, standing before the structure as curious passersby looked at a downtown city square. "A hundred years from now, people will say 'there was a Tower of Babel in Argentina... and it didn't need translation because art needs no translation'."
Minujin, who worked with US artist Andy Warhol, built a full-scale mode of the Parthenon in Buenos Aires in 1983, using books banned by the military dictatorship (专政) that ended that year.
This year's book tower marks Buenos Aires' naming as the 2011 World Book Capital by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
"We've been laying books for 10 days straight, " said Sebastian Atienza, 26, who works for the company that built the tower under Minujin's command. "But it's worth it. It's where all languages come together."
When the exhibit ends later this month, Minujin said literature lovers will be allowed to come and pick one book each. The rest will be brought down to start a new archive (档案馆) that has already been named The Library of Babel, the name of a story by Argentina's most famous author, Jorge Luis Borges.According to the passage, the Tower of Babel __________.
| A．is made from 30，000 books from nearly 50 countries |
| B．is designed by American artist Matte Minujin |
| C．will hold the book exhibition for 10 days |
| D．has a height of twenty-five meters |
After the book exhibition, most books will be __________.
| A．handed out among visitors |
| B．donated to UNESCO |
| C．sent to Argentina's new archive |
| D．bought by Jorge Luis Borges |
The passage is probably taken from a (n) __________.
| A．advertisement |
| B．tourism guide |
| C．textbook |
| D．newspaper |
The research carried out by the University of Bari in Italy could help prove hospitals who are accused of wasting money on art and decoration as it suggests a pleasant environment helps patients ease discomfort and pain.
A team headed by Professor Marina de Tommaso at the Neurophysiopathology Pain Unit asked a group of men and women to pick the 20 paintings they considered most ugly and most beautiful from a selection of 300 works by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli. They were then asked to look at either the beautiful paintings, or the ugly painting, or a blank panel while the team zapped(照射) a short laser pulse at their hand, creating a sensation as if they had been stuck by a pin. The subjects rated the pain as being a third less intense while they were viewing the beautiful paintings, compared with when looking at the ugly paintings or the blank panel. Electrodes measuring the brain's electrical activity also confirmed a reduced response to the pain when the subject looked at beautiful paintings.
While distractions, such as music, are known to reduce pain in hospital patients, Prof de Tommaso says this is the first result to show that beauty plays a part.
The findings, reported in New Scientist, also go a long way to show that beautiful surroundings could aid the healing process.
"Hospitals have been designed to be functional, but we think that their artistic aspects should be taken into account too," said the neurologist. "Beauty obviously offers a distraction that ugly paintings do not. But at least there is no suggestion that ugly surroundings make the pain worse. " "I think these results show that more research is needed into the field how a beautiful environment can alleviate suffering."
Pictures they liked included Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh and Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Pictures they found ugly included works by Pablo Picasso, the Italian 20th century artist Anonio Bueno and Columbian Fernando Botero. "These people were not art experts so some of the pictures they found ugly would be considered masterpieces by the art world," said Prof de Tommaso.The underlined word "alleviate" in the fifth paragraph probably means"__________"
| A．cure |
| B．ease |
| C．improve |
| D．kill |
How many artists have been mentioned in the passage?
| A．4. |
| B．5. |
| C．6. |
| D．7. |
Which of the following is TURE about the view of Prof de Tommaso's?
| A．Beautiful surroundings could help to heal sufferings completely. |
| B．Hospitals must take their artistic aspects into consideration first. |
| C．Ugly surroundings will surely make the pain worse. |
| D．Both music and beauty can reduce pain in hospital patients. |
From the last paragraph, we know that __________.
| A．some artists' paintings were beautiful, so they were masterpieces |
| B．only art experts could judge they were masterpieces or not, though ugly |
| C．the artists mentioned above were not really art masters |
| D．some of them were art masters, while otherswere not |
Which of the following is the suitable title for the passage?
| A．Beautiful Surroundings can Ease Pain. |
| B．Ugly Paintings could be Masterpieces. |
| C．More Research should be Done in the Field. |
| D．Latest Environmental Research. |
(Nanowerk News) A villa designed to resist earthquakes with "self healing" cracks in its walls, thanks to nanotechnology applications with selfhealing polymers (聚合物), is to be built on a Greek mountainside. The villa's walls will include special particles that turn into a liquid when squeezed under pressure, flow into cracks, and then harden to form a solid material.
The Nano Manufacturing Institute (NMI) ， based in Leeds University, will play a key role in an EU project to construct the home by December 2010. The project, called "Intelligent Safe and Secure Buildings" (ISSB) is funded under the EU's Sixth Framework program. This potentially life saving scheme is led by German building manufacturer Knauf. The villa will be built in Amphilochia, in western Greece, where Knauf currently runs a manufacturing plant. If the experiment is successful, more tremor resistant (防震) homes could be built in earthquake zones across the globe. NMI chief executive Professor Terry Wilkins said, "What we're trying to achieve here is very exciting. We're looking to use polymers in much tougher situations than ever before on a larger scale." Monitors contained in the villa's walls will be able to collect vast amounts of data about the building over time. Wireless sensors will record any stresses and vibrations, as well as temperature, humidity and gas levels.
The walls are to be built from novel load bearing steel frames and high strength gypsum board. Prof Wilkins said, "If there are any problems, the intelligent sensor network will be able to alert residents immediately so they have time to escape. If whole groups of houses are so constructed, we could use a larger network of sensors to get even more information. If the house falls down, we have got handheld devices that can be used over the rubble to pick out where the embedded (嵌入的) sensors are hidden to get some information about how the villa collapsed. "Also, we can get information about anyone who may be around, so it potentially becomes a tool for rescue.The aim of the passage is to __________.
| A．report a piece of interesting news |
| B．promote tremor resistant homes |
| C．inform us of the nanotechnology development |
| D．tell us about a tremor resistant home |
The villa can resist earthquakes because __________.
| A．it will be built on a special place |
| B．the cracks in its walls can be healed by the polymers |
| C．the special particles can make its walls stronger |
| D．the intelligent sensor network can tell people where there is a crack |
If the tremor resistant home falls down, __________.
| A．no one can be hurt in the earthquake |
| B．the intelligent sensor network will stop working |
| C．rescue work can be done more quickly and accurately |
| D．a warning signal will be given to other residents |
What Prof Wilkins said suggests that __________.
| A．he is doubtful about the project |
| B．he thinks the tremor resistant home is perfectly designed |
| C．he is confident in the tremor resistant home |
| D．the tremor resistant home still needs to be tested in a real situation |
It can be inferred from the passage that tremor resistant home __________.
| A．is still being tried out |
| B．is already under construction |
| C．has been in wide use |
| D．will be put into wide use soon |