Investors soon will be able to own shares of Facebook stock. The world’s biggest social media network presented documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. The documents are required before the company can make its initial public offering（首次公开募股）or IPO. A date for the stock sale has yet to be announced.
Experts say Facebook could raise about five billion dollars. That would be one of the biggest IPO sales ever. And it would be much bigger than Google’s first public stock sale in 2004. At that time, the Internet search company raised almost two billion dollars.
Facebook has 800 million users around the world. It is the second most visited website after Google. Now, experts say the social media network is in a position to become one of the most valuable Internet companies.
Stock expert Anupam Palit at Greencrest Capital says that among social media sites, Facebook is in a class by itself.
“It is the biggest company in this space and we believe what makes it very unique from every other company that went public last year in this space is that it is very, very profitable.” said Anupam Palit.
Early estimates place the total value of the social network between 75 and 100 billion dollars. That includes earlier investments by other companies. David Kirkpatrick wrote the book The Facebook Effect. He says Facebook’s IPO will be historic.
The stock sale could also make Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg one of the world’s youngest billionaires. He is only 27.
Investment companies are likely to buy Facebook stock first. But investment manager Jim O’Shaugnessy says that is not so bad. He says the prices of some IPO stocks are too high and fall not long after they first go on sale.
Recently, share prices of some Internet businesses have fallen after their stocks were first offered. For example, stocks of Linkedln, Groupon and Zynga, dropped in price by as much as 25% after going public.
There were similar questions eight years ago when Google first sold stock to the public. Today, Google is one of the world’s most valuable technology companies.Which of the following is true about Google?
| A．Google’s first public stock sale began in 2005. |
| B．Google is the world’s most valuable company. |
| C．Google’s share price rose after its stock was first offered. |
| D．Google raised almost two billion dollars from its first public stock sale. |
According to the passage, we can know Facebook ________.
| A．has 800 million users in the USA | B．has announced the date for its first stock sale |
| C．is the most visited website today | D．is the world’s biggest social media network |
We can infer from the passage that ________.
| A．Facebook stock is being sold very well |
| B．Mark Zuckerberg will get much money from the stock sale |
| C．Mark Zuckerberg was only 27 when Facebook was founded |
| D．investment companies have bought many Facebook shares |
Which would be the best title for this passage?
| A．Facebook and Its IPO | B．The Difference Between Facebook and Google |
| C．The Founder of Facebook | D．A Book Called The Facebook Effect |
D
As public playgrounds grow increasingly worn and shabby, the for-profit centers offer clean, safe, supervised activity as well as a variety of challenging exercises to develop youngsters’ physical fitness, usually for a fee of around $5 an hour. “Playgrounds are dirty, not supervised,” says Dick Guggenheimer, owner of the two-month-old Discovery Zone in Yonkers, N.Y., part of a Kansas City-based chain. “We’re indoors; we’re padded(铺上软垫); parents can feel their child is safe.”
Discovery Zone has sold 120 outlets in the past 14 months, boasting sandboxes full of brightly colored plastic balls, mazes(迷宫), obstacle courses, slides and mountains to climb. Now McDonalds is getting into the act. The burger giant is test-marketing a new playground, Leaps&Bounds, in Naperville, Ill. Phys Kids of Wichita has opened one center and has plans to expand.
American parents are rightly worried about their kids leisure life. There are 36 million children in the U.S. aged 2 to 11 who watch an average of 24 hours of TV a week and devote less and less energy to active recreation. Nationwide decrease in education budgets are making the problem worse, as gym classes and after-hours sports time get squeezed. Says Discovery Zone president Jack Gunion: “we have raised a couple of pure couch potatoes.”
In an attempt to attract more people , the new facilities cater to the concerns of two-earner families, staying open in the evenings, long after traditional public playground have grown dark and unusable. At Naperville’s Leaps&Bounds, families can play together for $4.95 per child, parents free. Fresh-faced assistants, dressed in colorful sport pants and shirts, guide youngsters to appropriate play areas for differing age group.
These new playground are not meant to be day-care facilities; parents are expected to stay and play with their kids rather than drop them off. But several also provide high-tech baby-sitting services. At some of the Discovery Zones, parents can register their children in special supervised programs, then leave them and slip away for a couple of hours to enjoy a movie or dinner.
The most fun of all, though, is getting to do what parents used to do in the days before two-career families and two-hour commutes: play with their kid. That, at least, is old-fashioned, even at per-hour rates.
68. What is this article mainly talking about?
A. Children can play in the public playground without parents’ care.
B. The fast development of Discovery Zone.
C. A new type of playground for kids.
D. The decay of outdoor playground.
69. According to the article, which of the following is true to the new playground?
A. The cost is high for a family.
B. It’s a place where kids can watch TV while eating potatoes.
C. It doesn’t allow parents to leave their kids.
D. It’s a place where parents can play together with their kids.
70. What does the writer mean by saying “old-fashioned”?
A. The so-called new playground is outdated.
B. the new playground offers a fashion which is popular in the past.
C. The new playground is also enjoyed by old people.
D. The new playground is actually enjoyed by parents
71. What is the writer’s attitude toward the new playground?
A. Agreeable. B. Indifferent. C. Objective. D. Neutral.
C
Not even Dan Brown and his Da Vinci code—breakers(密码破译者)dared deal with the mystery of Mona Lisa，s smile．But Nicu Sebe，a computer expert the University of Amsterdam，the Netherlands，did．He used’emotion recognition’software to process the famous painting and found Mona Lisa happy(83 per cent)and slightly disgusted(厌烦的)(9 per cent)．
Faces show emotions. Psychology，computer science，and engineering researchers are joining forces to teach machines to read expressions．If they succeed，your computer may one day“read”your mood．Machines equipped with emotional skills could also be used in teaching，gaming，mind－reading，etc.
“Mind Reader”，a system developed by Rosalind Picard at MIT(the Massachusetts Institute of Tech’nology)in the US, uses input from a video camera to do real—time analysis of facial expressions. It reports on whether you seem“interested”or“agreeable”or if you’re“confused”．The system can help people recognize others’emotions．Picard says this means we could teach a machine to be as sensitive as a human．In fact，a machine can be even smarter than people since it can tell if a person is lying or just“performing”by analyzing one’s facial movements．
Jeffrey Cohn，a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh，uses the Facial Action Coding System to recognize human emotions．The system sorts more than 40 action units(AUs)of the face to tell people’s real emotions．He studied a videotape of a criminal who said to be sad about the murder of several family members and tried to pin the blame on someone else．But Cohn saw no real sadness in the woman’s face.
Sadness is a group of AUs that is difficult to do at the same time．You have to pull down the woman’s of your lips while bringing your eyebrows together and raising them．What the woman did was raise her cheeks to make a lip cud(撇嘴)。Her brows stayed smooth．
64．The best title of this passage is“ ________ ”．
A．The emotion on your faceB．Look at your face
C．Your face tells a story D．Telling a lie
65．The missing sentence“This means，even though your mouth lice，your face doesn’t，and the machine will know it all. ”should be put at the end of ___________．
A．Paragraph 2 B．Paragraph 3C．Paragraph 4 D．Paragraph 5
66．How many facial emotion analyses are mentioned in this passage?
A．Four． B．Three． C．Two． D．One
67．The underlined word“it”refers to________．
A．MIT B．the video camera
C．one’s face emotion D．the real—time analysis
B
Lions are opportunists. They prefer to eat without having to do too much work. When resting in the shade, they are also watching the sky to see what is flying by, and even in the heat of the day they will suddenly start up and run a mile across the plains to find out what is going on. If another animal has made a kill, they will drive it off and take the dill for themselves. A grown lion can easily eat 60 pounds of meat at a single feeding. Often they eat until it seems painful for them to lie down.
The lioneases (母狮) , being thinner and faster, are better hunters (猎手) than the males (雄狮). But the males don’t mind. After the kill they move in and take the test share.
Most kills are made at night or just before daybreak. We have seen many, many daylight attempts but only ten kills. Roughly, It’s about twenty daytime attempts for one kill.
When lions are hiding for an attack by a water hole, they wait patiently and can charge at any second. The kill is the exciting moment in the day-to-day life of the lion, since these great animals spend most of their time, about 20 hours a day, sleeping and resting.
Lions are social cats, and when they are having a rest, they love to touch each other. After drinking at a water hole, a lioness rests her head on another’s back. When walking, young lions often touch faces with older ones, an act of close ties imong members of the group.
60. By describing lions as “opportunists” in the first paragraph, the author means to say that lions_____.
A. are cruel animals B. are clever animals
C. like to take advantage of other animals D. like to take every chance to eat
61. According to the text, which of the following is true?
A. Lions make most kills in the daytime.
B. Males care more about eating than active killing.
C. Lions are curious about things happening around them.
D. It doesn’t take lions too much time to make a kill.
62. How can we know that lions are social animals?
A. They depend on each other. B. They look after each other well.
C. They readily share what they have. D. They enjoy each other’s company.
63. What would be the best tiltle for the text?
A. Powerful Lions B. Lions at Work and Play
C. Lions, Social Cats D. Lions, Skilled Hunters
第三部分：阅读理解（共20小题，每题2分，满分40分）阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项。
A
Reading poems is not exactly an everyday activity for most people. In fact, many people never read a poem once they get out of high school.
It is worth reminding ourselves that this has not always been the case in America. In the nineteenth century, a usual American activity was to sit around the fireside in the evening and read poems aloud. It is true that there was no television at the time, nor movie theaters, nor World Wide Web, to provide diversion. However, poems were a source of pleasure, of self-education, of connection to other people or to the world beyond one’s own community. Reading them was a social act as well as an individual one, and perhaps even more social than individual. Writing poems to share with friends and relations was, like reading poems by the fireside, another way in which poetry has a place in everyday life.
How did things change? Why are most Americans no longer comfortable with poetry, and why do most people today think that a poem has nothing to tell them and that they can do well without poems?
There are, I believe, three culprits(肇事者)：poets, teachers, and we ourselves. Of these, the least important is the third: the world surrounding the poem has betrayed us more than we have betrayed the poem. Early in the twentieth century, poetry in English headed into directions unfavorable to the reading of poetry. Readers decided that poems were not for the fireside or the easy chair at night, that they belonged where other difficult-to-read things belonged.
Poets failed the readers, so did teachers. They want their students to know something about the skills of a poem, they want their students to see that poems mean something. Yet what usually occurs when teachers push these concerns on their high school students is that young people decide poems are unpleasant crossword puzzles.
56．Reading poems is thought to be a social act in the nineteenth century because___________.
A．it built a link among people B．it helped unite a community
C．it was a source of self-educationD．it was a source of pleasure
57． The underlined word “diversion”(in Paragraph 2) most probably means “________”.
A．concentration B．change C．amusements D．stories
58．According to the passage, what is the main cause of the great gap between readers and poetry?
A．Students are becoming less interested in poetry.
B．Students are poorly educated in high school.
C．TV and the Internet are more attractive than poetry.
D．Poems have become difficult to understand.
59．In the last paragraph, the writer questions_______.
A．the difficulty in studying poems B．the way poems are taught in school
C．students’ wrong ideas about poetry D．the techniques used in writing poems
（D）
Between ten and midnight the United States is politically leaderless——there is no center of information anywhere in the nation except in the New York headquarters of the great broadcasting companies and the two great wire services．No candidate and no party can afford the investment on election night to match the news-gathering resources of the mass media; and so, as every citizen sits in his home watching his TV set or listening to his radio, he is the equal of any other in knowledge．There is nothing that can be done in these hours, for on one can any longer direct the great strike for America’s power; the polls have closed．Good or bad, whatever the decision．America will accept the decision——and cut down any man who goes against it, even though for millions the decision runs contrary to their own votes．The general vote is an expression of national will, the only substitute for violence and blood．Its decision is to be defended as one defends civilization itself．
There is nothing like this American expression of will in England or France, India or Russia or China．Only one other major nation in modern history has ever tried to elect its leader directly by mass, free, popular vote．This was the Weimar Republic of Germany, which modeled its unitary vote for national leaders on the American practice．Out of its experiment with the system it got Hitler．Americans have had Lincoln, Wilson and two Roosevelts．Nothing can be done when the voting returns are flooding in; the White House and its power will move to one or another of the two candidates, and all will know about it in the morning．But for these hours history stops．
76．Between ten p．m．and midnight, the United States has no leader because________．
A．the President has resigned
B．the strike for power has ended
C．the polls have closed and the results are not in
D．there has been a revolution
77．“The great strike for America’s power” in paragraph 1 refers to_________．
A．the strike of the mass media B．the great coal strike
C．striking while the iron is hot D．the election campaign
78．According to the author only one other major modern nation ever tried to elect its leader by mass, free, popular vote．That nation was___________．
A．India B．Germany C．Russia D．England
79．The author believes the decision at the polls will．
A．lead to anarchy B．result in men being cut down
C．cause violence and blood D．be defended by all Americans