“The U．S.Food and Drug Administration(FDA)is considering to put stricter limits over tanning salons(晒黑廊)and wants to ban anyone younger than 18 years of age from using a tanning bed，”an advisory panel(专家团)announced last week.
The panel is calling for tighter controls on the industry such as requiring teenagers to get the approval from their parents before using tanning beds or limiting the use of artificial tanning to a certain age.“Given the absence of any demonstrated benefits，I think it is an obligation for us to ban artificial tanning for those under 18，”said panelist Dr.Michael Olding.
Along with a possible ban for teenagers，the panel also recommended that visible warning labels should be placed either on the tanning machines or in the salons in order to caution tanners of the possible dangers.In addition，the committee decided that stricter regulations and classifications were critical to make the machines safer.At this time the machines are categorized as FDA Class 1 devices，the ones that are least likely to cause harm.In case the FDA decided to change their classification from Class 1 to Class 2，as advised by the panel，the FDA could limit the levels of radiation the machines emit.Class 2 devices include Xray machines and powered wheelchairs.
Getting a tan，whether from a tanning bed or the sun，increases the risk of developing skin cancer.Last year，the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)declared tanning beds as “carcinogenic(致癌的)to humans”．It was discovered that young individuals in their teens and 20s who use tanning beds on a regular basis have a 75 per cent higher risk of suffering from melanoma(黑素瘤)，the deadliest form of skin cancer.According to the American Cancer Society，melanoma accounted for nearly 69,000 cases of skin cancer in 2009 and will account for most (about 8,650)of the 11,590 mortality cases due to skin cancer each year.According to the passage，what measures will U．S.FDA most probably take?
| A．Banning tanning salons. |
| B．Posing heavier tax over tanning salons. |
| C．Having tighter controls over tanning salons. |
| D．Limiting the number of tanning salons in every state. |
Which of the following suggestions for making tanning salons safer is NOT mentioned?
| A．Visible caution. |
| B．Setting age limit. |
| C．Professional personnel. |
| D．Parental approval for teenagers. |
What does the writer want to express in the last paragraph?
| A．Tanning in one's youth may mean death. |
| B．Tanning in the sun is safer than on the tanning bed. |
| C．People should get tanned without getting melanoma. |
| D．Getting tanned is only a good idea for those above thirty years old. |
What will most probably happen，if the advisory panel's suggestions are adopted and put into practice?
| A．Fewer people will suffer from skin cancer. |
| B．Tanning salons will have more customers. |
| C．Getting a tan in a tanning salon will cost less. |
| D．Parents will be more anxious about their tanning children. |
The oldest and hardest cow beef may be made as tender and tasty as young and choice met. ”This declaration was made by the French physicist Denis Papin in book published in 1681, which described his “New Digester” or pressure cooker. It was a cast iron pot with an air-tight lid, which allowed liquids to boil at a higher temperature than usual, and so it cooked food in a quarter of the time. The food was cooked by pressurized steam being forced through it at about 121℃. All pressure cookers were made of cast iron until 1905, when the first aluminum model was made in America. In 1938, Alfred Vischer, a man from Chicago, U. S. A., designed a simple interlocking pan and lid, and an improved pressure-tight seal（密封）—a replaceable rubber sealing ring. When Vischer’s patent（专利）expired in 1954, many companies entered the field, and the rapid pressure cooker became popular with people with people who had little time to cook or had to supply food for unexpected guests. From the passage we can learn pressure cooker made of cast iron lasted at least ____years.
| A．300 | B．200 | C．90 | D．60 |
Which of the following shows the correct order?
a.Denis Papin called his invention “New Digester”.
b.It began to be widely used by common families.
c.Instead of cast iron, it was first made of aluminum.
d.The first pressure cooker was invented in France.
e.Alfred Vischer greatly improved its design.
f.Vischer’s patent came to an end.
g. Many other companies began to produce it.
| A．d, a, e, c, g, f, b | B．a, d, c, b, e, f, g |
| C．d, a, c, e, f, g, b | D．g, e, a, e, d, f, b |
In the writer’s opinion, the best advantage of a pressure cooker is that_______.
| A．the oldest and hardest cow beef can be made tender and tasty |
| B．it allows liquids to boil at a higher temperature than usual |
| C．it can help people to supply food for unexpected guests |
| D．it helps people to spend much less time in cooking |
The best title of this passage may possibly be _______.
| A．New Digester | B．Pressure Cooker | C．Favorite Cook | D．The History of Cooker |
Last summer I went through a training program and became a literacy volunteer（扫盲志愿者）. The training I received, though excellent, did not tell me how it was to work with a real student, however. When I began to discover what other people’s lives were like because they could not read, I realized the true importance of reading.
My first student Marie was a 44-year-old single mother of three. In the first lesson, I found out she walked two miles to the nearest supermarket twice a week because she didn’t know which bus to take. When I told her I would get her a bus schedule. She told me it would not help because she could not read it. She said she also had difficulty once she got to the supermarket, because she couldn’t always remember what she needed. Since she did not know words, she could not write out a shopping list. Also, she could only recognize items by sight, so if the product had a different label, she would not recognize it as the product she wanted.
As we worked together, learning how to read built Marie’s self-confidence, which encouraged her to continue in her studies. She began to make rapid progress and was even able to take the bus to the supermarket. After this successful trip, she reported how self-confident she felt. At the end of the program, she began helping her youngest son, Tony, a shy first grader, with his reading. She sat with him before he went to sleep and together they would read bedtime stories. When his eyes became wide with excitement as she read, pride was written all over her face, and she began to see how her own hard work in learning to read paid off. As she described this experience, I was proud of myself as well. I found that helping Marie to build her self-confidence was more rewarding than anything I had ever done before.
As a literacy volunteer, I learned a great deal about teaching and helping others. In fact, I may have learned more from the experience than Marie did.What did the author do last summer?
| A．She worked in the supermarket. |
| B．She helped someone to learn to read. |
| C．She gave single mothers the help they needed. |
| D．She went to a training program to help a literacy volunteer. |
Why didn’t Marie go to the supermarket by bus at first?
| A．Because she liked to walk to the supermarket. | B．Because she lived far away from the bus stop. |
| C．Because she couldn’t afford the bus ticket. | D．Because she couldn’t find the right bus. |
How did Marie use to find the goods she wanted in the supermarket?
| A．She knew where the goods were in the supermarket. | B．She asked others to take her to the right place. |
| C．She managed to find the goods by their looks. | D．She remembered the names of the goods. |
Which of the following statements is true about Marie?
| A．Marie could do things she had not been able to do before. |
| B．Marie was able to read stories with the help of her son. |
| C．Marie decided to continue her studies in school |
| D．Marie paid for her own lessons. |
Every year landslides (滑坡) cause 25 to 50 deaths and $1.5 billion in damage in the United States. They account for 15 percent of the deaths from natural disasters in Europe. And in December, a single event killed more than 200 people in the Philippines. Sending workers to stabilize (加固) mountainsides using steel bars and cement (水泥) can help prevent disaster, but it introduces new difficulties. Shaking drills produce harmful dust and loosen heavy, dangerous debris (岩屑). "It's quite a risky job," says Giorgio Pezzuto of D'Appolonia, an engineering company in Italy.
D'Appolonia, working with eight other companies, may have an answer: a three-ton robot called Roboclimber. "The idea is to operate a machine far away that can drill without a human being on board," says Pezzuto, manager for the project, which is supported by the European Commission. Engineers claim that the machine will be faster and cheaper than manual labor. The robot, a large radio-controlled four-legged mechanical spider, has cost at least $2 million so far. The final product should be able to climb unstable mountainsides, drill holes, insert bars and cement, and collect data on the slope's stability. Testing should begin in May.The underlined word "event"(in Paragraph 1) refers to _____.
| A．landslide | B．machine | C．earthquake | D．flood |
The purpose in writing this text is _____.
| A．to tell people how serious the damage caused by landslides is |
| B．to tell people that sending workers to stabilize mountainsides is a risky job |
| C．to introduce a product that can be used to stabilize mountainsides |
| D．to show people how to use a new product |
What does the robot look like?
| A．A human being. | B．A spider. | C．A truck. | D．A drill. |
The biggest advantage of this product is that _____.
| A．it will be faster and cheaper than manual labor |
| B．it can climb mountainsides, drill holes, insert bars and cement |
| C．it can collect data on the slope's stability |
| D．it can drill without a human being on board |
If you were to come up with a list of organizations whose failures had done the most damage to the American economy in recent years, you would probably have to start with the Wall Street firms that brought us the financial crisis. From there, you might move on to the automakers in Detroit.
But I would suggest that the list should also include a less obvious nominee: public education.
At its top level, the American system of higher education may be the best in the world. Yet in terms of its core mission---turning teenagers into educated college graduates--- much of the system is failing.
The United States does a good job enrolling (招生) teenagers in college, but only half of the students who enroll end up with a bachelor’s degree.
So identifying the causes of the college dropout crisis in the world’s largest economy matters enormously, and a new book called “Crossing the Finish Line” tries to do precisely that. Its authors are economists William Bowen and Michael McPherson, and a doctoral candidate Matthew Chingos. The first problem they diagnose is something they call under-matching. It refers to students who choose not to attend the best college they can get into. They instead go to a less selective one, perhaps one that is closer to home or less expensive. About half of the low-income students with a grade-point average of at least 3.5 in high school and an SAT score of at least 1,200 do not attend the best college they could have. “I was really astonished by the degree to which well-qualified students from poor families under-matched,” said Mr. Bowen.
In fact, well-off students attend the colleges that do the best job of producing graduates. Meanwhile, lower-income students -–even when they are better qualified—often go to colleges that excel（擅长）in producing drop-outs. “It’s really a waste,” Mr. Bowen said, “and a big problem for the country.” As the authors point out, the only way to lift the college graduation rate significantly is to lift it among poor and working-class students. Instead, it appears to have fallen.
What can be done? Money is clearly part of the answer. Which of the following would people first think of as a factor responsible for the American financial crisis according to this passage?
| A．The government. | B．Public education |
| C．The Detroit automakers. | D．The Wall Street firms. |
What is a big problem with American higher education?
| A．It is hard to enroll enough students into college. |
| B．Many colleges are experiencing low rate of graduation. |
| C．Many college students stay away from classes. |
| D．It is hard for many colleges to get financial aid from the government. |
The title of the book Crossing the Finish Line probably means______.
| A．running to the end of the line | B．going to college |
| C．finishing college education | D．working hard in college |
Why do some students under--match ?
| A．Because they have financial difficulty. | B．Because they face ambition crisis. |
| C．Because they lack confidence. | D．Because they can’t get guidance. |
The passage is mainly about _______.
| A．problems with secondary American education and possible solutions |
| B．America’s financial crisis, its cause and influence |
| C．low rate of American college graduation, its cause and its influence |
| D．relationship between American education and its economy |
In this age of Internet chat, videogames and reality television, there is no shortage of mindless activities to keep a child occupied. Yet, despite the competition, my 8-year-old daughter Rebecca wants to spend her free time writing short stories. She wants to enter one of her stories into a writing contest, a competition she won last year.
As a writer I know about winning contests, and about losing them. I know what it is like to work hard on a story only to receive a rejection slip (退稿条) from the publisher. I also know the pressures of trying to live up to a reputation created by previous victories. What if she doesn’t win the contest again? That’s the strange thing about being a parent. So many of our own past scars and ruined hopes can surface.
A revelation (启示) came last week when I asked her, “Don’t you want to win again?”
“No”, she replied, “I just want to tell the story of an angel going to first grade.”
I had just spent weeks correcting her stories as she spontaneously (自发地) told them. Telling myself that I was merely an experienced writer guiding the young writer across the hall, I offered suggestions for characters, conflicts and endings for her tales. The story about a fearful angel starting first grade was quickly “guided” by me into the tale of a little girl with a wild imagination taking her first music lesson. I had turned her contest into my contest without even realizing it.
Staying back and giving kids space to grow is not as easy as it looks. Because I know very little about farm animals who use tools or angels who go to first grade, I had to accept the fact that I was co-opting (借用) my daughter’s experience.
While stepping back was difficult for me, it was certainly a good first step that I will quickly follow with more steps, putting myself far enough away to give her room but close enough to help if asked. All the while I will be reminding myself that children need room to experiment, grow and find their own voices.What do we learn form the first paragraph?
| A．Now too many entertainments take up too much time. |
| B．Children do find lots of fun in many mindless activities. |
| C．Rebecca is much too occupied to enjoy her free time. |
| D．Rebecca draws on a lot of online materials for her writing. |
What did the author say about her own writing experience?
| A．She was constantly under pressure of writing more. |
| B．Most of her stories had been rejected by publishers. |
| C．She did not quite live up to her reputation as a writer. |
| D．Her way to success was full of pains and frustrations. |
Why did Rebecca want to enter this year’s writing contest?
| A．She had won a prize in the previous contest. |
| B．She wanted to share her stories with readers. |
| C．She was sure of winning with her mother’s help. |
| D．She believed she possessed real talent for writing. |
What’s the author’s advice for parents?
| A．Children should be given every chance to voice their opinions. |
| B．Parents should keep an eye on the activities their kids engage in. |
| C．Children should be allowed freedom to grow through experience. |
| D．A writing career, though attractive, is not for every child to pursue. |