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When Americans think about hunger, we usually think in terms of mass starvation in far-away countries. But hunger too often lurks (1) . In 2006, 35. 1 million people, including (2) children, in the United States did not have access to enough food for an active healthy life. Some of these individuals relied on emergency food sources and (3) .Although most people think of hungry people and homeless people as the same, the problem of hunger reaches (4) . While the number of people being hungry or (5) may be surprising, it is the faces of those hungry individuals that would probably (6) .The face of hunger is (7) who has worked hard for their entire lives only to find their savings (8) ; or a single mother who has to choose whether the salary from (9) will go to buy food or pay rent; or a child who struggles to (10) because his family couldn’t afford dinner the night before. A December 2006 survey estimated that (11) those requesting emergency food assistance were either children or their parents.Children (12) to live in households where someone experiences hunger and food insecurity than adults. (13) compared to one in five children live in households where someone suffers from hunger (14) .Child poverty is more widespread in the United States than in (15) ; at the same time, the U. S. government spends less than any industrialized country to (16) .We have long known that the (17) of small children need adequate food (18) . But science is just beginning to understand the full extent of this relationship. As late as the 1980s, conventional wisdom held that only the (19) actually alter brain development. The latest empirical evidence, however, shows that even relatively mild under-nutrition (20) in children which can last a lifetime. 1()

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Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following conversation. 2()

A. Last week.
B. On a summer day.
C. Towards evening.
D. Late at night.

Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following news. 7()

A. To resume a talk on improving its relations with India.
B. To cooperate fully with India in looking into the terrorist attacks.
C. To act swiftly to arrest the lo militants who rampaged through Mumbai.
D. To quicken the 5-year-old peace process between the two nuclear rivals.

"They treat us like mules," the guy installing my washer tells me, his eyes narrowing as he wipes his hands. I had just complimented him and his partner on the speed and assurance of their work He explains that it’s rare that customers speak to him this way. I know what he’s talking about. My mother was a waitress all her life, in coffee shops and fast-paced chain restaurants. It was hard work, but she liked it, liked "being among the public," as she would say. But that work had its sting, too-the customer who would treat her like a servant or, her biggest complaint, like she was not that bright.There’s a lesson here for this political season: the subtle and not-so-subtle insults that blue- collar and service workers endure as part of their working lives. And those insults often have to do with intelligence.We like to think of the United States as a classless society. The belief in economic mobility is central to the American Dream, and we pride ourselves on our spirit of egalitarianism But we also have a troubling streak of aristocratic bias in our national temperament, and one way it manifests itself is in the assumptions we make about people who work with their hands. Working people sense this bias and react to it when they vote. The common political wisdom is that hot-button social issues have driven blue-collar voters rightward. But there are other cultural dynamics at play as well. And Democrats can be as oblivious to these dynamics as Republicans-though the Grand Old Party did appeal to them in St. Paul.Let’s go back to those two men installing my washer and dryer. They do a lot of heavy lifting quickly-mine was the first of 15 deliveries-and efficiently, to avoid injury. Between them there is ongoing communication, verbal and nonverbal, to coordinate the lift, negotiate the tight fit, move in rhythm with each other. And all the while, they are weighing options, making decisions and solving problems-as when my new dryer didn’t match up with the gas outlet.Think about what a good waitress has to do in the busy restaurant: remember orders and monitor them, attend to a dynamic, quickly changing environment, prioritize tasks and manage the flow of work, make decisions on the fly. There’s the carpenter using a number of mathematical concepts-symmetry, proportion, congruence, the properties of angles-and visualizing these concepts while building a cabinet, a flight of stairs, or a pitched roof.The hairstylist’s practice is a mix of technique, knowledge about the biology of hair, aesthetic judgment, and communication skill. The mechanic, electrician, and plumber are troubleshooters and problem solvers. Even the routinized factory floor calls for working smarts. When has any of this made its way into our political speeches From either party. Even on I,abor Day.Last week, the GOP masterfully invoked some old cultural suspicions: country folk versus city and east-coast versus heartland education, But these are symbolic populist gestures, not the stuff of true engagement. Judgments about intelligence carry great weight in our society, and we have a tendency to make sweeping assessments of people’s intelligence based on the kind of work they do.Political tributes to labor over the next two months will render the muscled arm, sleeve rolled tight against biceps. But few will also celebrate the thought bright behind the eye, or offer an image that links hand and brain It would be fitting in a country with an egalitarian vision of itself to have a truer, richer sense of all that is involved in the wide range of work that surrounds and sustains us.Those politicians who can communicate that sense will tap a deep reserve of neglected feeling. And those who can honor and use work in explaining and personalizing their policies will find a welcome reception. In the sentence "we pride ourselves on our spirit of egalitarianism" (para. 3), the word "egalitarianism" can be replaced by ()

A. individualism
B. enlightenment
C. equality
D. liberalism

From cyborg housemaids and water-powered cars to dog translators, and rocket boots, Japanese boffins have racked up plenty of near-misses in the quest to turn science fiction into reality. Now the finest scientific minds of Japan are devoting themselves to cracking the greatest sci-fi vision of all: the space elevator. Man has so far conquered space by painfully and inefficiently blasting himself out of the atmosphere but the 21st century should bring a more leisurely ride to the final frontier.For chemists, physicists, material scientists, astronauts and dreamers across the globe, the space elevator represents the most tantalizing of concepts: cables stronger and lighter than any fibre yet woven, tethered to the ground and disappearing beyond the atmosphere to a satellite docking station in geosynchronous orbit above Earth.Up and down the 22,000 mile-long (36,000km) cables-or flat ribbons-will run the elevator carriages, themselves requiring huge breakthroughs in engineering to which the biggest Japanese companies and universities have turned their collective attention.In the carriages, the scientists behind the idea told The Times , could be any number of cargoes. A space elevator could carry people, huge solar-powered generators or even casks of radioactive waste. The point is that breaking free of Earth-s gravity will no longer require so much energy- perhaps 100 times less than launching the space shuttle. "Just like traveling abroad, anyone will be able to ride the elevator into space," Shuichi Ono, chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association, saidThe vision has inspired scientists around the world and government organizations, including Nasa. Several competing space elevator projects are gathering pace as various groups vie to build practical carriages, tethers and the hundreds of other parts required to carry out the plan. There are prizes offered by space elevator-related scientific organizations for breakthroughs and competitions for the best and fastest design of carriage.First envisioned by the celebrated master of science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke, in his 1979 work The Fountains o f Paradise, the concept has all the best qualities of great science fiction: it is bold, it is a leap of imagination and it would change life as we know it. Unlike the warp drives in Star Trek, or H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine, the idea of the space elevator does not mess with the laws of science; it just presents a series of very, very complex engineering problems.Japan is increasingly confident that its sprawling academic and industrial base can solve those issues, and has even put the astonishingly low price tag of a trillion yen (£5 billion) on building the elevator. Japan is renowned as a global leader in the precision engineering and high-quality material production without which the idea could never be possible.The biggest obstacle lies in the cables. To extend the elevator to a stationary satellite from the Earth’s surface world require twice that length of cable to reach a counterweight, ensuring that the cable maintains its tension. The cable must be exceptionally light, staggeringly strong and able to withstand all projectiles thrown at it inside and outside the atmosphere. The answer, according to the groups working on designs, will lie in carbon nanotubes-microscopic particles that can be formed into fibres and whose mass production is now a focus of Japan’s big textile companies.According to Yoshio Aoki, a professor of precision machinery engineering at Nihon University and a director of the Japan Space Elevator Association, the cable would need to be about four times stronger than what is currently the strongest carbon nanotube fibre, or about 180 times stronger than steel. Pioneering work on carbon nanotubes in Cambridge has produced a strength improvement of about 100 times over the past five years.Equally, there is the issue of powering the carriages as they climb into space. "We are thinking of using the technology employed in our bullet trains," Professor Aoki said. "Carbon nanotubes are good conductors of electricity, so we are thinking of having a second cable to provide power all along the route. " Japan is hosting an international conference in November to draw up a timetable for the machine. All of the following would be the features of the cables of the future space elevator EXCEPT that they would be()

A. 22,000 miles long
B. exceptionally light
C. 180 times stronger than steel
D. made of fibres currently available

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