On March 5, 2009, Michael Jackson stood in front of crowds of fans. Before screaming fans, he pronounced with pumping arms: “This is it!”
A few months later, Jackson was dead. With the late pop star’s return to radio, television and the cultural events, Forbes judges that Jackson has made $90 million since his death June 25. This figure is based on his royalties（版税） from album sales, radio play, rights to his name and royalties from his stock in the Sony/ATV music catalog (编目权).
Jackson’s music was his most easily-seen source in the last months. “Nothing increases the value of an artist than death ... an untimely death,” says Barry Massarsky, a music industry economist.
The music’s immediate value was clear. Since June, Jackson has sold more than 5.9 million albums in the U.S. and another 4.5 million overseas. In the first weeks after his death, there were 5.6 million single downloads across North America, Europe and Australia. Jackson recently has three of the top 20 best-selling albums of the year in the US, according to Nielsen SoundScan. His 2003 hits album Number Ones is the best seller of the year, beating Taylor Swift’s Fearless.
More than 500,000 Jackson ringtones and 100,000 music videos were sold. In the week following his death, songs by The Jackson 5, The Jacksons and Michael were played over 100,000 times on the radio, according to Nielsen BDS.
Jackson’s estate（遗产）will likely see more money by the end of this year, as it has rights to some of the profits from This Is It as well as the two-disc album of the same name. The estate will share 90% of the film profits with AEG.
Ticket sales from an exhibit opening in London will also contribute a likely profit. Hundreds of Jackson’s personal belongings－his L.A. Rolls Royce etc－will remain on show for three months at the O2 for fans willing to shell out $25 for a view.
The pop singer bought ATV Publishing, for $47.5 million in 1985. Ten years later, he sold the catalog to Sony for $95 million and took a 50% stock in Sony/ATV, which is now worth about $1.7 to $2 billion. So he still owned half the Sony/ATV catalog at his death.
Jackson’s future earning potential is based on his stock in valuable music and as well as the value of his image（肖像）. As many musicians, actors and artists before him, Jackson’s fame could have a long tail on the market with allowable products, advertising and entertainment events.
What do Barry Massarsky’s words in Paragraph 3 imply?
| A．Jackson died at the time as expected. |
| B．Only at death can an artist become famous. |
| C．Jackson became more famous at death than when he was alive. |
| D．Jackson’s unexpected death raised his value as an artist immediately. |
All the following is true EXCEPT that _____.
A. “This is it” is the last concert that Jackson gave
B. Jackson has sold 10.4 million albums since June
C. Jackson’s L.A. Rolls Royce is now for show and will finally be sold
D. Jackson’s stock in music and his image will keep on earning money in the futureWhat can be inferred from the passage?
| A．Jackson’s album Number Ones beat Taylor Swift’s Fearless in 2003. |
| B．Taylor Swift’s Fearless is the second best seller of music albums of 2009. |
| C．AEG takes in more film profits from “This is it” than Jackson’s estate. |
| D．More Jackson’s music videos were sold than his ringtones right after his death. |
What can we know about the Sony/ATV catalog?
| A．Jackson sold ATV catalog to Sony in 1985. |
| B．Jackson had half right of ATV Publishing at his death. |
| C．Jackson sold ATV catalog to Sony for $ 47.5 million in 1995. |
| D．Jackson’s stock in Sony/ATV now has a value of about $ 1.7 billion to 2 billion. |
What is the main idea of the passage?
| A．Why Michael Jackson’s music is so popular all over the world. |
| B．How Michael Jackson has earned $90 million in the months since his death. |
| C．What Michael Jackson’s future earning potential is based on. |
| D．How much Michael Jackson earned in the first few months after his death. |
Food safety will become the food industry’s key target as the nation tries to adopt international food standards. The National Development and Reform Commission, the Standardization Administration of China, the Ministry of Agriculture and six other departments announced their 2004-05 development programme for national food standards over the weekend.
China is conducting a rectification (整顿) within two years. Inspectors will search for all known banned materials in food production. To reduce trading barriers, China will raise the ratio of adopting international standards in the food industry to 55 percent from today’s 23 percent. “Safety is the first consideration for anything entering people’s mouth followed by its nutritious value,” said Hao Yu, secretary-general of the National Food Industry Standardization Technique Committee. He added the usage of food addictives (添加剂) will be a major field for consideration in setting the new standards. On-the-spot checks during the past two years have shown the abuse (滥用) or misuse of addictives in food production and processing has become the biggest threat to food safety. In one case, talcum (滑石粉) powder was found in flour products, which is outlawed according to national food standards.
“At present there are no methods or standards to test the content of talcum powder in flour,” said Shang Yan’e, an official with the national watchdog on grain and oil inspections. Under the guidelines, all banned addictives will be recorded as inspections increase, Relevant departments have allocated (分配) funds to conduct risk evaluations on current food addictives to fix the limits of their usage. China will adopt international advanced techniques and standards so as to find out the harmful materials in food within a shortest period.China will raise the ratio of adopting international standards in the food industry by _____.
| A．55% | B．32% | C．23% | D．78% |
_________ is the second consideration for anything people eat according to the passage.
| A．Safety | B．Value | C．Nutrition | D．Addictives |
What does the passage mainly talk about?
| A．Addictives are dangerous to people’s health. |
| B．Chinese food will be as safe as foreign food. |
| C．New food safety standards are to be fixed. |
| D．Food safety is a major concern in present China. |
Far from the land of Antarctica (南极洲), a huge shelf of ice meets the ocean. At the underside of the shelf there lives a small fish, the Antarctic cod.
For forty years scientists have been curious about that fish. How does it live where most fish would freeze to death? It must have some secret. The Antarctic is not a comfortable place to work and research has been slow. Now it seems we have an answer.
Research was begun by cutting holes in the ice and catching the fish. Scientists studied the fish’s blood and measured its freezing point.
The fish were taken from seawater that had a temperature of -1.88℃ and many tiny pieces of ice floating in it. The blood of the fish did not begin to freeze until its temperature was lowered to -2.05℃. That small difference is enough for the fish to live at the freezing temperature of the ice-salt mixture.
The scientists’ next research job was clear: Find out what in the fish’s blood kept it from freezing. Their search led to some really strange thing made up of a protein (蛋白质) never before seen in the blood of a fish. When it was removed, the blood froze at seawater temperature. When it was put back, the blood again had its antifreeze quality and a lowered freezing point.
Study showed that it is an unusual kind of protein. It has many small sugar molecules (分子) held in special positions within each big protein molecule. Because of its sugar content, it is called a glycoprotein. So it has come to be called the antifreeze fish glycoprotein, or AFGP. What is the text mainly about?
| A．The terrible conditions in the Antarctic. |
| B．A special fish living in freezing waters. |
| C．The ice shelf around Antarctica. |
| D．Protection of the Antarctic cod. |
Why can the Antarctic cod live at the freezing temperature?
| A．The seawater has a temperature of - l.88℃ |
| B．It loves to live in the ice-salt mixture. |
| C．A special protein keeps it from freezing. |
| D．Its blood has a temperature lower than -2.05℃ |
What does the underlined word “it” in Paragraph 5 refer to?
| A．A type of ice-salt mixture. | B．A newly found protein |
| C．Fish blood. | D．Sugar molecule. |
What does “glyco-” in the underlined word “glycoprotein” in the last paragraph mean?
| A．sugar | B．ice | C．blood | D．molecule |
Which is sillier: denying we ever went to the moon or trying to convince the true non-believers?
Once upon a time—July 20, 1969, to be specific – two men got out of their little spaceship and wandered around on the moon for a while. Ten more men walked on the moon over the next three and a half years. The end.
Unfortunately, not quite. A fair number of Americans think that this whole business of moon landings really is a fairy tale. They believe that the landings were a big hoax (骗局) staged in the Mojave Desert, to convince everyone that U.S. technology was the “best” in the whole wide world.
Which is the harder thing to do: Send men to the moon or make believe we did? The fact is that the physics behind sending people to the moon is simple. You can do it with computers whose entire memory capacities can now fit on chips the size of postage stamps and that cost about as much as, well, a postage stamp. I know you can because we did.
However, last fall NASA considered spending $15,000 on a public-relations campaign to convince the unimpressed that Americans had in fact gone to the moon. That idea was mostly a reaction to a Fox television program, first aired in February 2001, that claimed to expose the hoax. The show’s creator is a publicity hound (猎狗) who has lived up to the name in more ways than one by hounding Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon. Mr. X (as I will call him, thereby denying him the joyous sight of his name in print) recently followed Buzz Aldrin around and called him “a thief, liar and coward” until the 72-year-old astronaut finally lost it and hit the 37-year-old Mr. X in the face.
Anyway, NASA’s publicity campaign began to slow down. The nonbelievers took the campaign as NASA’s effort to hide something while the believers said that $15,000 to convince people that the world was round — I mean, that we had gone to the moon — was simply a waste of money. (Actually, the $15,000 was supposed to pay for an article by James E. Oberg, an astronomy writer who, with Aldrin, has contributed to Scientific American.)
If NASA’s not paying Oberg, perhaps it could put the money to good use by hiring two big guys to drag Neil Armstrong out of the house. Armstrong is an extremely private man, but he is also the first man on the moon, so maybe he has a duty to be a bit more outspoken about the experience. Or NASA could just buy Aldrin a commemorate plaque (纪念匾) for his recent touch on the face of Mr. X.We can learn from Paragraphs 2 and 3 that some Americans believe _______.
| A．moon landings were invented |
| B．U.S. technology was the best |
| C．moon landing ended successfully |
| D．the Mojave Desert was the launching base |
According to the writer, which of the following is to blame for the story about the hoax?
| A．NASA’s publicity campaign. | B．The Fox television program. |
| C．Buzz Aldrin. | D．James E. Oberg. |
The believers think that NASA’s publicity campaign is ________.
| A．proof to hide the truth |
| B．stupid and unnecessary |
| C．needed to convince the non-believers |
| D．important to develop space technology |
What is implied in the last paragraph?
| A．NASA should not bother with the non-believers. |
| B．Armstrong was a very private and determined person. |
| C．Armstrong should be as outspoken as Buzz Aldrin. |
| D．NASA should send more astronauts to outer space. |
In Wiltshire, England, volunteers are being sought to visit a nature protection area to count the butterflies living there and on surrounding fields. The project is promoted by all environmental protection organization, which has contributed to improving the living environment for wild animals. Recently, the organization has issued an appeal to help it observe environmental changes based on the record of butterflies and protect the environment.
In the area, the local people have planted many special flowers with the help of the organization, aiming to see whether these flowers will interest the rare and beautiful butterflies. The project officer Sarah Marshall says,“It will be a suitable habitat (栖息地) for butterflies. They are great‘indicator species’ as they are easily affected by climate changes so they make a brilliant early-warning system for the environment.” She also points out that volunteers are needed to record the number or species of butterflies, and based on the change happening to the butterflies, the hidden environmental problems in the area can be found out in time.
The organization is seeking volunteers to help monitor butterflies from April through to September. They will walk a fixed route and record the different butterflies they encounter along the way. Each visit should take no more than two hours, and each volunteer is expected to visit once a month to count the wildlife. “Staff will provide back up, so if the weather is poor on the day you are to visit (butterflies don’t like to fly in the rain, wind or if it’s too cloudy) we can have someone else do your job,” Sarah points out.
No previous experience is necessary as training and support will be provided, but a keen interest is essential. If you are interested please contact Sarah on (01380) 725670, ext 278, email—sarahm @ wiltshirewildlife. org. According to Paragraph 1, what is the purpose of the Project?
| A．To appeal to more visitors |
| B．To protect the environment |
| C．To control butterfly population |
| D．To expand the area for wildlife |
Butterflies are called “indicator species” because _______.
| A．they can provide support for visitors |
| B．they can give information to other species |
| C．they are not easily found out in their habitats |
| D．they are very sensitive to environmental changes |
Volunteers are required to do the things EXCEPT __________.
| A．having some special previous experience |
| B．being interested in protecting the environment |
| C．walking a regular route and do some recordings |
| D．visiting the nature protection area once a month |
What is the text mainly about?
| A．Visitors are being trained to identify butterflies. |
| B．Wildlife areas are being protected by butterflies. |
| C．Volunteers are being needed to count butterflies. |
| D．Organizations are being put up to protect butterflies. |
Have you ever lost your temper? Did you yell or scream at those around you, even people you like or love? Did you want to break something or hit someone?
Everyone gets angry. We have lots of emotions. At different times, we may be happy, sad or jealous. .
It’s perfectly okay to be angry at time--- in fact, it’s important to get angry sometimes. Anger can even be a good thing. When we are treated unfairly, anger can help us stand up for ourselves.
_____ some people keep their anger buried deep inside. If you do this, you might get a headache or your stomach might start to hurt. You may just feel crummy (糟糕的) about yourself or start to cry. It’s not good to hide your anger, so you should find a way to let it out without hurting yourself or others.
When you start to feel angry, you can count to 10, draw a picture of anger, play a video game, run as fast as you can or do something active. An effective way is to talk to a friend you can trust. .
Instead, admit to yourself that you are angry and try to figure out why you are angry and what you can do to keep the situation from happening again.
Never getting angry is impossible. But, you should always remember that how you act when you’re angry can make the situation better or worse.Take charge of it!
| A． Once you talk about anger, those bad feelings usually start to go away. |
| B． Taking it out on others never solves anything. |
| C． Anger is just another way we feel. |
| D． Here is an important way to deal with anger. |
E. But anger must be released in the right way.
F. Every coin has two sides.
G. Don’t let anger be the boss of you.