Surface Exploration. Robots make great explorers on planets，moons，and other landing areas. Aside from earth，just about every surface in the solar system is unsafe for humans to explore. The air on most other planets is insufficient(不足的) for humans to breathe，making it necessary to wear a space suit and oxygen equipment. The temperatures on these surfaces are much too hot or much too cold for any humans to withstand（禁得起）．Plus there would be complications with radiation，weather，and a lack of gravity. Robots have much less limitation in these areas and can survive much longer under these conditions.
Data Collection. Robots are designed for collecting scientific data. Robots are also able to perform many tasks at a time and can process information much quicker and more efficiently. Important scientific projects from detecting minerals，analyzing ground samples，and finding water are all performed much quicker and more accurately (精确地) by robots.
Cost Effective. The use of robots has made the cost of space exploration much less expensive than it would cost for humans to do the work. In order to successfully send humans into space we would need to build a vehicle that can not only carry humans，but also enough food and water to keep them alive for the duration of the trip. Moreover，robots have no problems working for hours on end. Robots never complain，they don't require food or water，and they never need a bathroom break.
Space Travel. Over the past 30 years or so there have been many different types of robots used successfully in the exploration of space. Perhaps the most famous and successful robots are the Spirit and Opportunity who have both been exploring the surface of Mars. They have both been very successful with experiments on soil and rocks and have even found evidence of water in Mars' history.According to the passage，which of the following is NOT true?
| A．The use of robots in space exploration costs more than the use of humans. |
| B．It may be dangerous for humans to explore the solar system except the earth. |
| C．Both the Spirit and Opportunity have found the evidence of water in the Mars. |
| D．Many different types of robots have explored the space successfully. |
Which column could the passage come from?
| A．Education. | B．Finance. |
| C．Travel. | D．Science. |
The underlined word “withstand” most probably means“________”．
| A．arise | B．bear | C．defeat | D．diverse |
What is the writer's attitude in this passage?
| A．Negative. | B．Persuasive. |
| C．Subjective. | D．Objective. |
While sending an astronaut into the space，we should consider the following EXCEPT ________．
| A．the radiation | B．the oxygen | C．the diet | D．the alien |
Famous centenarians (百岁老人) still active in arts, science are in no mood to retire. "Those who stand still, die." is one of Oliveira's favorite phrases. He knows from experience what it means, as the Portuguese film director has reached the age of 102 and is still active in his profession. Every year, Oliveira shoots a film and is currently working on his next project. "You have to work, work, work in order to forget that death is not far away," he said. When asked about his age, Oliveira said with some humility: "It's down to mother nature. It gave to me what it took from others."
Being both mentally and physically fit in old age is partly a matter of luck, but it also has something to do with character. Not every white-haired person is wise and social skills, openness and the ability to train the brain are essential for senior citizens.
Along with the architect Oscar Niemeyer (103), Nobel laureate Montalcini (101) and director Kurt Maetzig (100), Oliveira is one of those people of whom it would be very wrong to think as members of a listless elderly generation.
Another master in his profession is the architect Oscar Niemeyer. The 103-year-old Brazilian is best known for his futuristic-looking buildings in Brasilia, but he also speaks out on behalf of the poor. "The role of the architect is to struggle for a better world where we can develop a form of architecture that serves everyone and not just a privileged few," said Niemeyer recently. He spends almost every day working in his office in Copacabana, and even when he falls ill he keeps working on ideas: After a gallbladder (胆囊) operation he composed a samba tune (桑巴舞曲) in the clinic.
Another man who could sing a song about age is 107-year-old Heesters. The Dutch-born opera singer spent most of his life performing in Germany, where he still works. Recently Heesters said: "I want to be at least 108-years-old." He also plans to keep performing. "Should I just sit at home and wait until they come and pick me up?" Heesters has not given up trying to add to his tally of awards and is looking for a "good stage role".
Italian scientist Rita Levi-Montalcini, who is 101-year-old and is still active in medical science, has described the force that keeps driving her on: "Progress is created through imperfection." In 1986 she and her lab colleague were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for their work on nerve growth factor. She's convinced that humans grow on challenges.
With so many brilliant examples given, we can see clearly that age is no barrier to some high achievers. From the first two paragraphs, we can see ______.
| A．being active at 102 is achievable for everybody |
| B．Oliveira owes his long life to his mother’s help |
| C．social skills and wisdom are difficult for the senior |
| D．being fit in old age is a matter of luck and character |
How many centenarians are mentioned in this passage?
| A．4 | B．5 | C．6 | D．7 |
By saying "Should I just sit at home and wait until they come and pick me up?” in paragraph 5, Heesters shows us he ________.
| A．wants to sit or lie in comfort |
| B．is waiting for people to pick him up |
| C．is willing to work till he dies |
| D．prefers to give performance at home |
In the passage so many examples were given to show ________.
| A．old age is a big problem if you want tosucceed |
| B．old age can not prevent a great person from achieving a lot |
| C．old people should never think of themselves as old |
| D．as a senior citizen, you have to be open-minded and optimistic |
In the writer’s opinion, the architect Oscar Niemeyer is not ________.
| A．pessimistic | B．intelligent |
| C．positive | D．diligent |
Have you ever thought of joining a book club and buying new books through the post? Here at the International Book Club, we already have many members buying books from us by mail.
Immediate benefits：
●As a special offer, you may choose any reduced-price books from our new members' book list, to the value of $6 in total (plus postage and packing). By doing this, you will save pounds on the publishers' prices.
●Tick the box on your form to order a free watch.
●If you reply within seven days, we will send you another free gift carefully chosen from our book list by our staff.
●Order a DVD from the many on offer in our list, at half the recommended retail price.
●When you've joined：
As a member, you'll enjoy savings of between 30% and 50% off the publisher's price on every book you buy, and what's more, they'll come straight to your door. Your free club magazine arrives once a month, to keep you up-to-date with the latest bestsellers. This means that every year we offer over 1,000 books to choose from. On the Internet, you can find all our titles for the year on our exclusive members' website.
Being a member：
All we are asking you to do while you are a member is to choose four books during your first year. After that, you can decide on the number of books you wish to take.
In each of our monthly club magazines, our experienced staff choose a Club Choice book — a work of fiction or a reference title which they feel is particularly worth buying, and which is offered at an extra-special price. However, if you do not want this book, just say so in the space provided on the form. We will always send the book if we do not receive this.
So, return your application form today, but hurry — it's not every day we can make you an offer like this. To apply to become a member, all you need to do is simply fill in the enclosed form and return it in the envelope supplied.
Before you know it, your books will be with you. Please don't send any money now, as we will send you your bill with the books. And remember, you have up to a fortnight to decide if you wish to keep the books you have ordered. You should then either return the books or send your payment. Which of the following doesn't belong to the benefits of being a club member?
| A．Order a free watch. |
| B．Get a gift for nothing. |
| C．Get four books for free in the first year |
| D．Order a DVD at a low price. |
Every month the club provides a free club magazine in order to ________.
| A．let readers know the number of books to be sold |
| B．attract more and more readers to join the club |
| C．make readers know the club's development |
| D．keep readers well informed of recent bestselling books |
If a book is worth $100, how much will a member probably save if he buys one?
| A．$40. | B．$60. | C．$20. | D．$70. |
What should you do if you want to join the book club?
| A．Just send the club an email. |
| B．Ask other club members to recommend you to the club. |
| C．Fill in an application form and return it to the club. |
| D．Apply for a membership card. |
After you get your books, you should ________.
| A．choose whether to keep them or not after you read them carefully |
| B．decide whether to keep them or not within a certain period of time |
| C．express your idea in the space provided in the book |
| D．send money to the club at once |
Generations of Americans have been brought up to believe that a good breakfast is essential to one’s life. Eating breakfast at the start of the day, we have been told, and told again, is as necessary as putting gasoline in the family car before starting a trip.
But for many people, the thought of food as the first thing in the morning is never a pleasure. So in spite of all the efforts, they still take no breakfast. Between 1977 and 1983, the latest year for which figures could be obtained, the number of people who didn’t have breakfast increased by 33%—from 8.8 million to 11.7 million—according to the Chicago-based Market Research Corporation of America.
For those who dislike eating breakfast, however, there is some good news. Several studies in the last few years have shown that, for grown-ups especially, there may be nothing wrong with omitting (省略) breakfast. “Going without breakfast does not affect work,” said Arnold E. Bender, former professor of nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College in London, “nor does giving people breakfast improve work.”
Scientific evidence linking breakfast to better health or better work is surprisingly little, and most of the recent work involves children, not grown-ups. “The literature,” says one researcher, Dr Earnest Polite at the University of Texas, “is poor.” For those who do not take breakfast, the good news is that _______.
| A．several studies have been done in the past few years |
| B．eating little in the morning is good for health |
| C．the omission of breakfast has little effect on one’s work |
| D．grown-ups have especially made studies in this field |
The sentence in paragraph 3 “nor does giving people breakfast improve work” means _______.
| A．people without breakfast can improve their work |
| B．having breakfast does not improve work, either |
| C．not giving people breakfast improves work |
| D．people having breakfast do improve their work, too |
The word "literature" in the last sentence refers to _______.
| A．stories, poems, play, etc |
| B．the films about the breakfast |
| C．newspaper articles or novels |
| D．written works on a topic |
What is implied in the passage is that _______.
| A．Breakfast does not affect work |
| B．Dr Polite works at Market Research Corporation |
| C．Not eating breakfast might affect the health of children |
| D．Professor Bender once taught college courses in nutrition in Chicago |
The main idea of the passage is that _______.
| A．breakfast has nothing to do with people’s health |
| B．breakfast is not as important as we thought before |
| C．breakfast is not as important to us as gasoline to a car |
| D．a good breakfast used to be important to us |
“I once hoped to afford a wonderful telescope, but now I wish my father would be back.” Lucy Lawrence’s letter to Father Christmas written after his father had been knifed to death outside his school gate, must have touched every heart. Lucy went on to say that without his father he couldn’t see the stars in the sky. When those whom we love depart from us, we cannot see the stars for a while.
But Lucy, the stars are still there, and one day, when you are older and your tears have gone ,you will see them again . And, in a strange way, I expect that you will find your father is there too, in your mind and in your heart . I find that my parents , long dead now , still occur in many of my dreams and that I think of them perhaps more than I ever did when they were alive . I still live to please them and I’m still surprised by their reactions. I remember that when I became a professor , I was so proud , or rather so pleased with myself , that I couldn’t wait to write to my parents . The reply was a long time in coming, but when it did, all Mother said was “I hope this means that now you will have more time for the children! ” I haven’t forgotten. The values of my parents still live on.
It makes me pause and think about how I will live on in the hearts and minds of my children and of those for whom I care. Would I have been as ready as Philip Lawrence have been to face the aggressors, and to lay down my life for those in my care ? How many people would want me back for Christmas? It’s a serious thought, one to give me pause.
I pray silently , sometimes , in the dead of night ,that ancient cry of a poet “Deliver my soul from the sword（剑）, and my darling from the power of the evil .” Yet I know the death comes to us all, and sometimes comes suddenly. We must therefore plan to live forever, but live as if we will die tomorrow. We live on, I’m sure, in the lives of those we loved, and therefore we ought to have a care for what they will remember and what they will treasure. If more parents knew this in their hearts to be true, there might be fewer knives on our streets today.According to the whole text we can see that the first paragraph .
| A．shows the author’s pity on the kid |
| B．acts as an introduction to the discussion |
| C．puts forward the subject of the text |
| D．makes a clear statement of the author’s opinions |
In the second paragraph the author mainly wants to explain to us .
| A．why his parents often appear in his dream |
| B．how much he misses his parents now |
| C．when Lucy will get over all his sadness |
| D．how proud he was when he succeeded in life |
What feeling did the author’s mother express in her reply?
| A．Proud. | B．Excited. |
| C．Uninterested. | D．Uneasy. |
What does the writer mean by the sentence taken from an old poem?
| A．Call on criminals and murderers to lay down their guns. |
| B．Advise parents stay with their children safely at home. |
| C．Try to keep violence and murder far away from society. |
| D．Spend every day meaningfully in memory of the death. |
Many people once thought that air pollution had a bad influence upon only the area immediately around large cities with factories and heavy automobile traffic. Today, we know that although these are the areas with the worst air pollution, the problem is nearly worldwide. On several occasions over the past decade, a heavy cloud of air pollution has covered the entire eastern half of the United States and led to health warnings even in rural areas away from any major concentration of factories and automobile traffic. In fact, the very climate of the entire earth may be affected by air pollution. Some scientists feel that the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide( 二氧化碳) in the air resulting from the burning of fossil fuels (coal and oil) is creating a“greenhouse effect” － holding in heat reflected from the earth and raising the world’s average temperature. If this view is correct and the world’s temperature is raised only a few degrees, much of the polar ice cap will melt and cities such as New York, Boston, Miami, and New Orleans will be under water.
Another opinion, less widely held, is that increasing tiny substances in the atmosphere are blocking sunlight and lowering the earth’s temperature－a result that would be equally disastrous.A drop of just a few degrees could create something close to new ice age and would make agriculture difficult or impossible in many of our top farming areas. At present we do not know for sure that either of these conditions will happen (though one recent government report prepared by experts in the field concluded that the greenhouse effect is very likely). Perhaps, if we are very lucky, the two tendencies will make up for each other and the world’s temperature will stay about the same as it is now.As pointed out at the beginning of the passage, people used to think that air pollution _____.
| A．caused widespread damage in the countryside |
| B．affected the entire eastern half of the United States |
| C．almost brought worldwide effect |
| D．existed merely in urban and industrial areas |
As far as the greenhouse effect is concerned, the author _____________.
| A．shares the same view with the scientists |
| B．is uncertain of its consequence |
| C．rejects it as being ungrounded |
| D．thinks that it will increasingly destroy the world |
It can be inferred from the passage that ____________.
| A．raising the world’s temperature a little would not do much harm to life on earth |
| B．lowering the world’s temperature a little would lead to agricultural disasters |
| C．almost no temperature changes have occurred over the past decade |
| D．the world’s temperature will remain constant in the years to come |
This passage is primarily concerned with _____________.
| A．the greenhouse effect in the world |
| B．the measures to adjust the climate |
| C．the potential effect of air pollution |
| D．the measures to protect the environment |