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In 1999, the price of oil hovered around $ 16 a barrel. By 2008, it had【C1】______the $ 100 a barrel mark. The reasons for the surge【C2】______from the dramatic growth of the economies of China and India to widespread【C3】______in oil-producing regions, including Iraq and Nigeria"s delta region. Triple-digit oil prices have【C4】______the economic and political map of the world, 【C5】______some old notions of power. Oil-rich nations are enjoying historic gains and opportunities, 【C6】______major importers — including China and India, home to a third of the world"s population —【C7】______rising economic and social costs. Managing this new order is fast becoming a central【C8】______of global politics. Countries that need oil are clawing at each other to【C9】______scarce supplies, and are willing to deal with any government, 【C10】______how unpleasant, to do it. In many poor nations with oil, the profits are being, lost to corruption, 【C11】______these countries of their best hope for development. And oil is fueling enormous investment funds run by foreign governments, 【C12】______some in the west see as a new threat. Countries like Russia, Venezuela and Iran are well supplied with rising oil【C13】______a change reflected in newly aggressive foreign policies. But some unexpected countries are reaping benefits, 【C14】______costs, from higher prices. Consider Germany. 【C15】______it imports virtually all its oil, it has prospered from extensive trade with a booming Russia and the Middle East. German exports to Russia【C16】______128 percent from 2001 to 2006. In the United States, as already high gas prices rose【C17】______higher in the spring of 2008, the issue cropped up in the presidential campaign, with Senators McCain and Obama【C18】______for a federal gas tax holiday during the peak summer driving months. And driving habits began to【C19】______as sales of small cars jumped and mass transport systems【C20】______the country reported a sharp increase in riders. 【C2】

A. covered
B. discovered
C. arranged
D. ranged

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In 1999, the price of oil hovered around $ 16 a barrel. By 2008, it had【C1】______the $ 100 a barrel mark. The reasons for the surge【C2】______from the dramatic growth of the economies of China and India to widespread【C3】______in oil-producing regions, including Iraq and Nigeria"s delta region. Triple-digit oil prices have【C4】______the economic and political map of the world, 【C5】______some old notions of power. Oil-rich nations are enjoying historic gains and opportunities, 【C6】______major importers — including China and India, home to a third of the world"s population —【C7】______rising economic and social costs. Managing this new order is fast becoming a central【C8】______of global politics. Countries that need oil are clawing at each other to【C9】______scarce supplies, and are willing to deal with any government, 【C10】______how unpleasant, to do it. In many poor nations with oil, the profits are being, lost to corruption, 【C11】______these countries of their best hope for development. And oil is fueling enormous investment funds run by foreign governments, 【C12】______some in the west see as a new threat. Countries like Russia, Venezuela and Iran are well supplied with rising oil【C13】______a change reflected in newly aggressive foreign policies. But some unexpected countries are reaping benefits, 【C14】______costs, from higher prices. Consider Germany. 【C15】______it imports virtually all its oil, it has prospered from extensive trade with a booming Russia and the Middle East. German exports to Russia【C16】______128 percent from 2001 to 2006. In the United States, as already high gas prices rose【C17】______higher in the spring of 2008, the issue cropped up in the presidential campaign, with Senators McCain and Obama【C18】______for a federal gas tax holiday during the peak summer driving months. And driving habits began to【C19】______as sales of small cars jumped and mass transport systems【C20】______the country reported a sharp increase in riders. 【C3】

A. intensity
B. infinity
C. insecurity
D. instability

Charles Darwin wed his cousin Emma and spawned 10 children, including four brilliant scientists. Albert Einstein"s second wife Elsa was his first cousin. Queen Victoria said "I do" to hers. So have millions worldwide. In parts of Saudi Arabia, 39% of all marriages are between first cousins. In the U. S., though, the practice bears a stigma of inbreeding just this side of incest. The taboo is not only social but legislative; 24 states ban the marriage of first cousins: five others allow it only if the couple is unable to bear children. A major reason for this ban is the belief that kids of first cousins are tragically susceptible to serious congenital illnesses. That view may have to change. A comprehensive study published recently in the Journal of Genetic Counseling indicates such children run an only slightly higher risk of significant genetic disorders like congenital heart defects — about two percentage points above the average 3% to 4%. Says the study"s lead author, Robin Bennett, president-elect of the National Society of Genetic Counselors, which funded the study: "Aside from a thorough medical family history, there is no need to offer any genetic testing on the basis of coasanguinity alone. " Publication of the study will do more than tweak public awareness; it will enlighten doctors who have urged cousin couples not to have children. "Just this week, " says Bennett, "I saw a 23-year-old woman who had had a tubal ligation because her parents were cousins and her doctor told her she shouldn"t have children. " The American proscription against cousin marriages grew in the 19th century as wilderness settlers tried to distinguish themselves from the "savage" Indians, says Martin, author of the book Forbidden Relatives: The American Myth of Cousin Marriage. " The truth is that Europeans were marrying their cousins and Native Americans were not. " And doesn"t God have stern words on the subject Christie Smith, 37, a Nevada writer, says she felt guilty when she fell in love with her first cousin"s son Mark. "I was trying so hard to convince myself not to have these feelings, " she recalls, "that I went to the Bible looking for confirmation that it was wrong. And what I found was the exact opposite: support for cousin marriages. " The patriarch Jacob married two of his first cousins, Rachel and Leah. Smith married Mark in 1999. The medical ban is lifted; the social stain may take longer to disappear. Which of the following is true of the study published in the Journal of Genetic Counseling

A. It suggests kids of first cousins suffer from heart defects.
B. It was funded by its lead author Robin Bennett.
C. It will change people"s opinion of cousin marriages.
D. It has lifted the medical ban and removed the social stain.

The question of where insights come from has become a hot topic in neuroscience, despite the fact that they are not easy to induce experimentally in a laboratory. Dr. Bhattacharya and Dr. Sheth have taken a creative approach. They have selected some brain-teasing but practical problems in the hope that these would get closer to mimicking real insight. To qualify, a puzzle had to be simple, not too widely known and without a methodical solution. The researchers then asked 18 young adults to try to solve these problems while their brainwaves were monitored using an electroencephalograph (EEG). A typical brain-teaser went like this. There are three light switches on the ground-floor wall of a three-storey house. Two of the switches do nothing, but one of them controls a bulb on the second floor. When you begin, the bulb is off. You can only make one visit to the second floor. How do you work out which switch is the one that controls the light This problem, or one equivalent to it, was presented on a computer screen to a volunteer when that volunteer pressed a button. The electrical activity of the volunteer"s brain (his brainwave pattern) was recorded by the EEG from the button"s press. Each volunteer was given 30 seconds to read the puzzle and another 60 to 90 seconds to solve it. Some people worked it out; others did not. The significant point, though, was that the EEG predicted who would fall where. Those volunteers who went on to have an insight (in this case that on their one and only visit to the second floor they could use not just the light but the heat produced by a bulb as evidence of an active switch) had had different brainwave activity from those who never got it. In the right frontal cortex, a part of the brain associated with shifting mental states, there was an increase in high-frequency gamma waves (those with 47~48 cycles a second). Moreover, the difference was noticeable up to eight seconds before the volunteer realised he had found the solution. Dr. Sheth thinks this may be capturing the "transformational thought" in action, before the brain"s "owner" is consciously aware of it. This finding poses fascinating questions about how the brain really works. Conscious thought, it seems, does not solve problems. Instead, unconscious processing happens in the background and only delivers the answer to consciousness once it has been arrived at. Food for further thought, indeed. Through which character of the brain did the scientists study the brain

A. The brainwave pattern.
B. The EEG.
C. The right frontal cortex.
D. The transformational thought.

Most towns up to Elizabethan times were smaller than a modern village, and each of them was built a-round its weekly market where local produce was brought for sale and the town folks sold their work to the people from the countryside and provided them with refreshment for the day. Trade was virtually confined to that one day even in a town of a thousand or so people. On market days craftsmen put up their stalls in the open air whilst on one or two other days during the week the townsman would pack up his loaves, or nails, or cloth, and set out early to do a day"s trade in the market of an adjoining town where, however, he would be charged a heavy toll for the privilege and get a less favourable spot for his stand than the local craftsmen. Another chance for him to make a sale was to the congregation gathered for Sunday morning worship. Although no trade was allowed anywhere during the hours of the service (except at annual fair times), after church there would be some trade at the church door with departing country folk. The trade of markets was almost wholly concerned with exchanging the products of the nearby countryside and the goods sold in the market but particularly in food retail dealing was distrusted as a kind of profiteering. Even when there was enough trade being done to afford a livelihood to an enterprising man ready to buy wholesale and sell retail, town authorities were reluctant to allow it. Yet there were plainly people who were tempted to "forestall the market" by buying goods outside it, and to "regrate" them, that is to resell them, at a higher price. The constantly repeated rules against these practices and the endlessly recurring prosecutions mentioned in the records of all the larger towns prove that some well-informed and sharp-witted people did these things. Every town made its own laws and if it was big enough to have craft guilds, these associations would regulate the business of their members and tried to enforce a strict monopoly of their own trades. Yet while the guild leaders, as craftsmen, followed fiercely protectionist policies, at the same time, as leading townsmen, they wanted to see a big, busy market yielding a handsome revenue in various dues and tolls. Conflicts of interest led to endless, minute regulations, changeable, often inconsistent, frequently absurd. There was a time in the fourteenth century, for example, when London fishmongers were not allowed to handle any fish that had not already been exposed for sale for three days by the men who caught it. We know from Paragraph 1 that craftsmen

A. sold all of their goods on market days.
B. could sell their goods during Sunday morning services.
C. could do trades in neighbour towns freely.
D. didn"t have chance to do trades every day.

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