About this time every year, I get very nostalgic(怀旧的). Walking through my neighborhood on a fall afternoon reminds me of a time not too long ago when sounds of children filled the air, children playing games on a hill, and throwing leaves around in the street below. I was one of those children, carefree and happy. I live on a street that is only one block long. I have lived on the same street for sixteen years. I love my street. One side has six houses on it, and the other has only two houses, with a small hill in the middle and a huge cottonwood tree on one end. When I think of home, I think of my street. Only I see it as it was before. Unfortunately things change. One day, not long ago, I looked around and saw how different everything has become. Life on my street will never be the same because neighbors are quickly grown old, friends are growing up and leaving, and the city is planning to destroy my precious hill and sell the property to contractors.
It is hard for me to accept that many of my wonderful neighbors are growing old and won’t be around much longer. I have fond memories of the couple across the street, who sat together on their porch swing almost every evening, the widow next door who yelled at my brother and me for being too loud, and the crazy old man in a black suit who drove an old car. In contrast to those people, the people I see today are very old neighbors who have seen better days. The man in the black suit says he wants to die, and another neighbor just sold his house and moved into a nursing home. The lady who used to yell at us is too tired to bother any more, and the couple across the street rarely go out to their front porch these days. It is difficult to watch these precious people as they near the end of their lives because at once I thought they would live forever.
The “comings and goings” of the younger generation of my street are now mostly “goings” as friends and peers move on. Once upon a time, my life and the lives of my peers revolved around home. The boundary of our world was the gutter at the end of the street. We got pleasure from playing night games or from a breathtaking ride on a tricycle. Things are different now, as my friends become adults and move on. Children who rode tricycles now drive cars. The kids who once played with me now have new interests and values as they go their separate ways. Some have gone away to college like me, a few got married, two went into the army, and one went to prison. Watching all these people grow up and go away makes me long for the good old days.
Perhaps the biggest change on my street is the fact that the city is going to turn my precious hill into several lots for now homes. For sixteen years, the view out of my kitchen window has been a view of that hill. The hill was a fundamental part of my childhood life; it was the hub of social activity for the children of my street. We spent hours there building forts, sledding, and playing tag. The view out of my kitchen window now is very different; it is one of tractors and dump trucks tearing up the hill. When the hill goes, the neighborhood will not be the same. It is a piece of my childhood. It is a visual reminder of being a kid. Without the hill, my street will be just another pea in the pod.
There was a time when my street was my world, and I thought my world would never change. But something happened. People grow up, and people grow old. Places changes, and with the change comes the heartache of knowing I can never go back to the times I loved. In a year or so, I will be gone just like many of my neighbors. I will always look back to my years as a child, but the place I remember will not be the silent street whose peace is interrupted by the sounds of construction. It will be the happy, noisy, somewhat strange, but wonderful street I knew as a child.The writer calls up the memory of the street _____________.
| A.every year when autumn comes |
| B.in the afternoon every day |
| C.every time he walks along his street |
| D.now that he is an old man |
The writer finds it hard to accept the fact that _____________.
| A.many of his good neighbors are growing old |
| B.the lady next door who used to yell at him and his brother is now a widow |
| C.the life of his neighbors has become very boring |
| D.the man in his black suit even wanted to end his own life |
The writer thinks of the past all the more when he sees those who had grown up with him _____________.
| A.continue to consider home to be the center of their lives |
| B.leave the neighborhood they grew up in |
| C.still enjoy playing card games in the evenings |
| D.develop new interests and have new dreams |
The biggest change on the writer's street is _____________.
| A.removing the hill to make way for residential development |
| B.the building of new homes behind his kitchen window |
| C.the fact that there are much fewer people around than in the past |
| D.the change in his childhood friends' attitude towards their neighborhood |
What does the writer mean by saying “my street will be another pea in the pod”?
| A.his street will be very noisy and dirty |
| B.his street will soon be crowded with people |
| C.his street will have some new attractions |
| D.his street will be no different from any other street |
Which could be a good title for the passage?
| A.The Past of My Street will Live Forever |
| B.Unforgettable People and Things of My Street |
| C.Memory Street Isn't What It Used to Be |
| D.The Big Changes of My Street |
The idea of being able to walk on water has long interested humans greatly. Sadly, biological facts prevent us ever accomplishing such a thing without artificial aid--we simply weigh too much, and all our mass pushes down through our relatively small feet, resulting in a lot of pressure that makes us sink.
However, several types of animals can walk on water. One of the most interesting is the common basilisk. Basilicus, a lizard (蜥蜴) native to Central and South America. It can run across water for a distance of several meters, avoiding getting wet by rapidly hitting the water's surface with its feet. The lizard will take as many as 20 steps per second to keep moving forward. For humans to do this, we'd need huge feet that we could bring up to our ears in order to create adequate "hitting. “
But fortunately there is an alternative: cornflour. By adding enough of this common thickening agent to water (and it does take a lot), you can create a "non-Newtonian" liquid that doesn't behave like normal water. Now, if the surface of the water is hit hard enough, particles(微粒) in the water group together for a moment to make the surface hard. Move quickly enough and put enough force into each step, and you really can walk across the surface of an adequately thick liquid of cornflour.
Fun though all this may sound, it's still rather messy and better read about in theory than carried out in practice, if you must do it, then keep the water wings handy in case you start to sink--and take a shower afterward!Walking on water hasn't become a reality mainly because humans _______.
| A.are not interested in it |
| B.have biological limitations |
| C.have not invented proper tools |
| D.are afraid to make an attempt |
What do we know about Basilicus from the passage?
| A.It is light enough to walk on water. |
| B.Its huge feet enable it to stay above water. |
| C.It can run across water at a certain speed. |
| D.Its unique skin keeps it from getting wet in water |
What is the function of the cornflour according to the passage?
| A.To create a thick liquid. |
| B.To turn the water into solid. |
| C.To help the liquid behave normally. |
| D.To enable the water to move rapidly. |
What is the author's attitude toward the idea of humans' walking on water?
| A.It is risky but beneficial. |
| B.It is interesting and worth trying. |
| C.It is crazy and cannot become a reality. |
| D.It is impractical though theoretically possible. |
When the swim season began, my 11-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, and I cut a deal. She would go to practice three times a week, and I wouldn’t make her compete in swim meets.
Elizabeth does not like swim meets. She gets horribly nervous because she is afraid that she will do something wrong and let everyone down. She started to talk about quitting swimming, which broke my heart because she loves swimming. So I came up with the deal.
Recently, Elizabeth’s team announced a T-shirt relay, which works like this: One person from each relay team puts on a T-shirt and a pair of socks and swims 50 meters. She takes off the clothes and put them on the next person, who then swims 50 meters. This continues until everyone on the team has completed a lap.
It wasn’t exactly a meet, because it would involve only team members. But Elizabeth thought it was. I told Elizabeth I really wanted her to go. She fought back angrily but finally agreed.
When the day for the T-shirt relay arrived, Elizabeth was nervous. She was chosen to swim the anchor leg (最后一棒).By the last leg, Elizabeth’s team had built up a narrow lead. Then it was Elizabeth’s turn to swim.
Approaching the halfway mark, she was still in the lead. Then somebody noticed that one of Elizabeth’s socks had fallen off and was floating in the pool. “She has to get that sock on before the end of the race,” a swimming official told Elizabeth’s team, “or you will be disqualified.”
Everybody on her team started shouting, “Elizabeth! Get the sock!” But she couldn’t hear them. Meanwhile, a girl in lane two was gaining on Elizabeth. Just then, a girl on my daughter’s team jumped in the pool, grabbed the sock, swam after Elizabeth and put the sock on Elizabeth.
With the sock finally on, Elizabeth swam her heart out for the last 15 meters and won! There was much celebration. And, for a few minutes, Elizabeth was the hero.
On the ride home, she relived her moment of glory again and again. She told me that if the T-shirt relay was an Olympic event, her team would win the gold medal, I told her that in my professional opinion, she was absolutely right.What do we know about the T-shirt relay?
| A.Elizabeth was eager to attend it. |
| B.Elizabeth made full preparations for it. |
| C.Elizabeth thought she was sure to fail the relay. |
| D.Elizabeth agreed to attend it after a lot of persuasion. |
What happened to Elizabeth when she was swimming the anchor leg?
| A.The girl on the other team swam faster than her. |
| B.She was disqualified for breaking the rule. |
| C.She was too nervous to swim. |
| D.One of her socks fell off. |
We can infer from the last paragraph that Elizabeth_____.
| A.believed she was the best of her team. |
| B.hoped to take part in the Olympics. |
| C.overcame her fear of swim meets. |
| D.was grateful for the girl’s help. |
What would be the best title for the text?
| A.Born to be a swimmer | B.Swimming in socks |
| C.The swim season | D.Never give up! |
Three Japanese tourists taking a holiday in Australia got stuck when their GPS told them they could drive from the mainland to an island, failing to mention the 15 kilometres of water and mud in between.
As they drove their hired car from Moreton Bay to nearby North Stradbroke Island, they started to notice the firm surface they were driving on giving way to the well-known bay mud. However, being confident that their GPS would direct them to a road soon, they decided to drive on, managing to travel around 500 metres before their car was up to its tires in mud. To make matters worse, the tide(潮汐) started to come in and soon forced them to seek help and abandon the vehicle. Just four hours later the car was trapped in two metres of water — to the great amusement of onlookers on the shore and passengers on passing boats and ferries.
Yuzu Noda, 21, said she was listening to the GPS and “it told us we could drive down there. It kept saying it would navigate(导航) us to a road. But we got stuck…there’s lots of mud.” She and her travel companions Tomonari Saeki, 22, and Keita Osada, 21, instead had to give up their plans for a day trip to the island and headed back to the Gold Coast of a lift from the RACQ tow truck(吊车) driver who was called to the trapped car. No such luck for the hired car though – after assessing the situation, no attempt was made to recover it. The students from Tokyo, who are due to return home tomorrow, said the experience would not put them off returning to Australia for another visit. Mr. Tomonari said, “It has rained every day on our six day holiday. Hopefully next time we come back, it will be sunny.”
The car was covered by insurance, but the tourists will have to pay up to about $1500 in extra charges.The three Japanese tourists got stuck because___________.
| A.there was no way to the island |
| B.their GPS was broken during their journey |
| C.their GPS had given the wrong information |
| D.their car was not made in Japan |
They didn’t abandon their car until _________.
| A.some onlookers went to save them |
| B.they got stuck in the mud |
| C.there came the tide |
| D.they managed to travel around 500 metres |
How did these Japanese students get back?
| A.They had to walk back to their living place. |
| B.They had to take a lift from the tow truck driver. |
| C.They had to repair their GPS and drove back. |
| D.They had to turn to passengers on boats and ferries. |
For some years the big drugmakers have been worrying about an approaching "patent cliff"—a fall in sales as the patents on their most popular pills expire or are struck down by legal challenges, with few new potential blockbusters to take their place. This week the patent on the best-selling drug in history expired—Lipitor, an anti-cholesterol pill which earned Pfizer nearly $11 billion in revenues last year.In all, pill like Lipitor with a combined $170 billion in annual sales will go off-patent by the end of 2015.
What is supposed to happen now is that lots of copycat firms rush in with "generic" (ie, chemically identical) versions of Lipitor at perhaps one-fifth of its price.Patients and health-care payers should reap the benefit.Pfizer's revenues should suffer. The same story will be repeated many times, as other best-selling drugs march over the patent cliff
But generics makers may face delays getting their cheaper versions to market.Ranbaxy, a Japanese-owned drugmaker, struggled to get regulators' approval for its generic version of Lipitor, and only won it on the day the patent expired.More importantly, research-based drug firms are using a variety of tactics to make the patent cliff slope more gently. Jon Leibowitz, chairman of America's Federal Trade Commission (FTC), is concerned by drugmakers filing additional patents on their products to put off the day when their protection expires.
Another tactic(策略) is "pay-for-delay", in which a drugmaker facing a legal challenge to its patent pays its would-be competitor to put off introducing its cheaper copy. In the year to October the FTC identified what it believes to be 28 such settlements. American and European regulators are looking into these deals. However, legal challenges against them have been delayed, and a bill to ban them is stuck in Congress.
To encourage generics makers to challenge patents on drugs, and introduce cheaper copies,
an American law passed in 1984 says that the first one to do so will get a 180-day exclusivity period,in which no other generics maker can sell versions of the drug in question, as Ranbaxy supposedly won with Lipitor.
However, Pfizer is exploiting a loophole(空子) in the 1984 law, which lets it appoint a second, authorised copycat—in this case, Watson, another American firm.According to BernsteinResearch, under the deal between the two drugmakers Pfizer will receive about 70% of Watson's revenues from its approved copy of Lipitor.More unusual, Pfizer has cut the price of its original version, and will keep marketing it vigorously. So Ranbaxy faces not one, but two competitors.
All this may raise Pfizer's sales by nearly $500m in the last half of 2015 compared with what they would otherwise have been, says Tim Anderson of BernsteinResearch, with revenues then falling after the 180 days are over. Others fear that Pfizer's tactics , if copied, will make the 180-day exclusivity period worth far less, and thus discourage generic firms from challenging patents in the first place.The underlined word “blockbusters” in Paragraph 1 refers to “_______’
| A.pills that sell very well |
| B.new patents to appear |
| C.drugmakers to compete with Pfizer |
| D.challenges which Pfizer has to face |
What is the tactic mentioned in Paragraph 4?
| A.Legal challenges against expired patents have been paid for putting off the cheaper copy. |
| B.Bills to prohibit generic makers have been stuck in Congress. |
| C.Drugmakers try to spend money delaying filing additional patents on popular pills |
| D.Patent-holders give possible competitors money to prevent more losses. |
Pfizer exploit a loophole in the 1984 law mainly by ________.
| A.marketing Lipitor more actively |
| B.making the price of Lipitor go up |
| C.cooperating with Watson to beat Ranbaxy |
| D.encouraging Watson to produce cheaper copies |
How many tactics are adopted by patent-holders in the passage?
| A.Two | B.Three | C.Four | D.Five |
Which of the following might be the best title for the passage?
| A.Drugmakers’ struggle |
| B.Generic makers’ dilemma |
| C.Laws concerning patent protection |
| D.Popular pills of Pfizer |
Concepts from science and nature are filled with our language’s common phrases , idioms and spoken expressions. The unbelieving expression “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle” has its origin in bitter disbelief over Darwin’s writings on evolution. These colourful expressions bring spice(趣味) to our language.
Yet certain well-used phrases from science are just plain wrong! Some are obvious, yet we use them anyhow. For example, a person who acutely shakes her head and says “ A watched pot never boils” while you are waiting second after tiring second for test results to arrive or job offers to come in knows that if she sat down and watched a pot containing water on a stove over high heat for long enough, the water will eventually boil.
However, a few phrases have less obvious scientific inaccuracies. Here are a few for you to consider.
Once in a blue moon: This poetic phrase refers to something that occurs extremely rarely. A blue moon is the term commonly used for a second full moon that occasionally appears in a single month of our solar-based calendars. The problem with the phrase, however, is that blue moons are not so rare. They happen every few years at least, and can even happen within months of each other when the 29.5-day lunar cycle puts the full moon at the beginning of any month but February. The usage of “blue moon” as the second full moon in a month dates back to a 1937 Marine Farmer’s Almanac . But before that, blue moons meant something slightly different. Typically, 12 full moons occur from winter solstice to the next winter solstice, but occasionally a fourth full moon in a season could be observed . In such a case, one of the four full moons in that season was known as “blue”
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire: The phrase means that if something looks wrong, it likely is wrong. But let’s step back. Do you always have to have fire if you see smoke? Answering that first requires defining ‘fire” , Merriam—Webster’s first definition of fire is “ the phenomenon of combustion manifested in light, flame and heat”. Combustion is the chemical reaction that occurs when fuel is burned in the presence of oxygen---denying a fire any of these three things will stop the fire; attempting to start a fire without any one of the three things will be impossible. In complete combustion---what occurs when you light a gas stove--- the fire produces no smoke. However, when most materials are burned, they have incomplete combustion, which means that the fire isn’t able to completely burn all of the fuel . Smoke, then, can be considered to be a product of pyrolysis (高温分解) rather than of fire itself. You’re probably thinking---so what? To get the smoke, a fire needed to be present at some point, right? Not always.
Diamonds are forever: Thanks to the DeBeers slogan , decorating your honey’s neck, wrists and fingers with diamonds means true and timeless love. Of course, no object that you can hold in your hand can last forever. But diamonds have a special reason for being incapable of timelessness. Without the extreme pressures of the deep Earth where they formed, a diamond will slowly turn back into graphite(石墨), which is why the older a diamond is, the more inclusions it’s likely to have.
What common phrases push your buttons when viewed under the microscope of science? Are you curious about the hidden knowledge of some “ big” phrases ? Or perhaps you have the ability to uncover the secret of some unscientific phrases? Let us know!According to the passage, the blue moon _________.
| A.appears at the beginning of a month |
| B.gains its modern meaning before 1937 |
| C.presents itself quite frequently sometimes |
| D.can never be seen by people in February |
What can be concluded from the passage?
| A.the older a diamond is, the more valuable it’s likely to be. |
| B.Fire is not necessarily causing smoke |
| C.Smoke is a product of complete combustion |
| D.the less obvious scientific inaccuracies of some phrases make them more useful |
The underlined phrase “push your buttons” in the last paragraph means “_______”.
| A.impress you a lot | B.frighten you much. |
| C.surprise you greatly | D.make you lose your interest |
The author’s attitude towards the scientific inaccuracies of the phrases is ________.
| A.indifferent | B.objective |
| C.critical | D.favourable |