With 950 million people, India ranks second to China among the most populous countries. But since China (1) a family planning program in 1971, India has been dosing the (2) . Indians have reduced their birth rate but not nearly (3) the Chinese have. If current growth rates continue, India’s population will (4) China’s around the year 2028 (5) about 1.7 billion.Should that happen, it won’t be the (6) of the enlightened women of Kerala, a state in southern India. (7) India as a whole adds almost 20 million people a year, Kerala’s population is virtually (8) . The reason is no mystery: nearly two-thirds of Kerala women practice birth control, (9) about 40% in the entire nation.The difference (10) the emphasis put on health programs (11) birth control, by the state authorities, (12) in 1957 became India’s first elected Communist (13) . And an educational tradition and matrilineal customs in parts of Kerala help girls and boys get (14) good schooling. While one in three Indian women is (15) , 90% of those in Kerala can read and write. Higher literacy rates (16) family planning. "Unlike our parents, we know that we can do more for our children if we have (17) of them," says Laila Cherian, 33, who lives in the village of Kudamaloor. She has limited herself (18) three children-one below the national (19) of four. That kind of restraint will keep Kerala from putting added (20) on world food supplies. 2()
A. gap
B. top
C. bit
D. bet
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Text 2Not too many decades ago it seemed "obvious" both to the general public and to sociologists that modern society has changed people’s natural relations, loosened their responsibilities to kin and neighbors, and substituted in their place superficial relationships with passing acquaintances. However, in recent years a growing body of research has revealed that the "obvious" is not true. It seems that if you are a city resident, you typically know a smaller proportion of your neighbors than you do if you are a resident of a smaller community. But, for the most part, this fact has few significant consequences. It does not necessarily follow that if you know few of your neighbors you will know no one else.Even in very large cities, people maintain close social ties within small, private social worlds. Indeed, the number and quality of meaningful relationships do not differ between more and less urban people. Small-town residents are more involved with kin than are big-city residents. Yet city dwellers compensate by developing friendships with people who share similar interests and activities. Urbanism may produce a different stifle of life, but the quality of life does not differ between town and city. Nor are residents of large communities any likelier to display psychological symptoms of stress or alienation, a feeling of not belonging, than are residents of smaller communities. However, city dwellers do worry more about crime, and this leads them to a distrust of strangers.These findings do not imply that urbanism makes little or no difference. If neighbors are strangers to one another, they are less likely to sweep the sidewalk of an elderly couple living next door or keep an eye out for young trouble makers. Moreover; as Wirth suggested, there may be a link between a community’s population size and its social heterogeneity. For instance, sociologists have found much evidence that the size of a community is associated with bad behavior including gambling, drugs, etc. Large-city urbanites are also more likely than their small-town counterparts to have a cosmopolitan outlook, to display less responsibility to traditional kinship roles, to vote for leftist political candidates, and to be tolerant of nontraditional religious groups, unpopular political groups, and so—called undesirables. Everything considered, heterogeneity and unusual behavior seem to be outcomes of large population size. It can he inferred from the passage that the bigger a community is ().
A. the better its quality of life
B. the more similar its interests
C. the more tolerant and open-minded it is
D. the likelier it is to display psychological symptoms of stress
Text 1In the villages of the English countryside there are still people who remember the good old days when no one bothered to lock their doors. There simply wasn’t any crime to worry about. Amazingly, these happy times appear still to be with us in the world’s biggest community. A new study by Dan Farmer, a gifted programmer, using an automated investigative program of his own called SATAN, shows that the owners of well over half of all World Wide Web sites have set up home without fitting locks to their doors.SATAN can try out a variety of well-known hacking tricks on an Internet site without actually breaking in. Farmer has made the program publicly available, amid much criticism. A person with evil intent could use it to hunt down sites that are easy to burgle.But Farmer is very concerned about the need to alert the public to poor security and, so far, events have proved him right. SATAN has done more to alert people to the risks than cause new disorder.So is the Net becoming more secure Far from it. In the early days, when you visited a Web site your browser simply looked at the content. Now the Web is full of tiny programs that automatically download when you look at a Web page, and run on your own machine. These programs could, if their authors wished, do all kinds of nasty things to your computer.At the same time, the Net is increasingly populated with spiders, worms, agents and other types of automated beasts designed to penetrate the sites and seek out and classify information. All these make wonderful tools for antisocial people who want to invade weak sites and cause damage.But let’s look on the bright side. Given the lack of locks, the Internet is surely the world’s biggest (almost) crime-free society. Maybe that is because hackers are fundamentally honest. Or that there currently isn’t much to steal. Or because vandalism isn’t much fun unless you have a peculiar dislike for someone.Whatever the reason, let’s enjoy it while we can. But, expect it ail to change, and security to become the number one issue, when the most influential inhabitants of the Net are selling Services they want to be paid for. The author’s attitude toward SATAN is ().
A. enthusiastic
B. critical
C. positive
D. indifferent
Text 4For about three centuries we have been doing science, trying science out, using science for the construction of what we call modern civilization. Every indispensable item of contemporary technology, from canal locks to dial telephone-to penicillin, was pieced together to form the analysis of data provided by one or another series of scientific experiments. Three hundred years seems a long time for testing a new approach to human inter-living, long enough to settle back for critical appraisal of the scientific method, maybe even long enough to vote on whether to go no with it or not. There is an argument.Voices have been raised in protest since the beginning, rising in pitch and violence in the nineteenth century during the early stages of the industrial revolutions, summoning urgent crowds into the streets any day on the issue of nuclear energy. Give it back, say some of the voices, it doesn’t really work, we’ve tried it and it doesn’t work, go back three hundred years and start again on something else less chancy for the race of man.The principal discoveries in this century, taking all in all, are the glimpses of the depth of our ignorance about nature. Things that used to seem clear and rational, matters of absolute certainty—Newtonian mechanics, for example—have slipped through our fingers, and we are left with a new set of gigantic puzzles, cosmic uncertainties, ambiguities. Some of the laws of physics are amended every few years, some are canceled outright, and some undergo revised versions of legislative intent as if they were acts of Congress.Just thirty year ago we call it a biological revolution when the fantastic geometry of the DNA molecule was exposed to public view and the linear language of genetics was decoded. For a while, things seemed simple and clear, the cell was a neat little machine, a mechanical device ready for taking to pieces and reassembling, like a tiny watch. But just in the last few years it has become almost unbelievably complex, filled with strange parts whose functions are beyond today’s imagining.It is not just that there is more to do; there is everything to do. What lies ahead, or what can lie ahead if the efforts in basic research are continued, is much more than the conquest of human disease or the improvement of agricultural technology of the cultivation of nutrients in the sea. As we learn more about fundamental processes of living things in general we will learn more about ourselves. The writer’s attitude towards science is ().
A. regretful
B. approving
C. neutral
D. critical
Text 4For about three centuries we have been doing science, trying science out, using science for the construction of what we call modern civilization. Every indispensable item of contemporary technology, from canal locks to dial telephone-to penicillin, was pieced together to form the analysis of data provided by one or another series of scientific experiments. Three hundred years seems a long time for testing a new approach to human inter-living, long enough to settle back for critical appraisal of the scientific method, maybe even long enough to vote on whether to go no with it or not. There is an argument.Voices have been raised in protest since the beginning, rising in pitch and violence in the nineteenth century during the early stages of the industrial revolutions, summoning urgent crowds into the streets any day on the issue of nuclear energy. Give it back, say some of the voices, it doesn’t really work, we’ve tried it and it doesn’t work, go back three hundred years and start again on something else less chancy for the race of man.The principal discoveries in this century, taking all in all, are the glimpses of the depth of our ignorance about nature. Things that used to seem clear and rational, matters of absolute certainty—Newtonian mechanics, for example—have slipped through our fingers, and we are left with a new set of gigantic puzzles, cosmic uncertainties, ambiguities. Some of the laws of physics are amended every few years, some are canceled outright, and some undergo revised versions of legislative intent as if they were acts of Congress.Just thirty year ago we call it a biological revolution when the fantastic geometry of the DNA molecule was exposed to public view and the linear language of genetics was decoded. For a while, things seemed simple and clear, the cell was a neat little machine, a mechanical device ready for taking to pieces and reassembling, like a tiny watch. But just in the last few years it has become almost unbelievably complex, filled with strange parts whose functions are beyond today’s imagining.It is not just that there is more to do; there is everything to do. What lies ahead, or what can lie ahead if the efforts in basic research are continued, is much more than the conquest of human disease or the improvement of agricultural technology of the cultivation of nutrients in the sea. As we learn more about fundamental processes of living things in general we will learn more about ourselves. Now scientists have found in the past few years ().
A. man knows nothing about DNA
B. the exposure of DNA to the public is unnecessary
C. the tiny cell in DNA is a neat little machine
D. man has much to learn about DNA