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America has seen a drop in crime rates that in earlier years would have been universally viewed as impossible. The overall crime rate has plummeted by 45% since peaking in 1991 and by 13% just since 2007—counter intuitively continuing to drop through the recession and sharp spike in unemployment. Since 1991, according to FBI data, the number of violent crimes has fallen 36% nationally and 64% in the nation’s largest cities. And in New York and Los Angeles, the nation’s two largest cities, it has fallen even further. Property crime has also become increasingly rare. Incredibly, in New York City, car thefts have plunged 94% in the past two decades. How is this possible In the mid-1990s, few saw this decline coming, and many warned that crime would surge once again as teens of that era grew into young adults. Today, criminologists still differ on what has caused the nationwide turnaround in crime rates and why those dire predictions never came to pass. But crime-fighting technology, better policing, aging societies, growing urban populations and declining usage of hard drugs are widely cited. For many Americans, the drop in crime has resulted not only in a much higher quality of life but in a reduced economic burden as well. Safer cities generally mean stronger urban economies. In the same category of big surprises, teen-pregnancy rates have fallen to their lowest level in more than 30 years, according to the widely respected Guttmacher Institute. They have declined 51% from their 1990 peak, based on the latest available data, and the teenage birthrate is down 43% from that year’s level. Today, fewer teens are becoming pregnant and becoming mothers than at any point since reliable data has been collected by the National Center for Health Statistics. This is also true for women in the 20-to-24 age group. To put it mildly, there were very few predictions to this effect a generation ago. In addition, overall birth rates in the U.S. have turned up for the first time since 2007—including for children born to women in a college education—to just shy of 4 million. We can conclude from the second paragraph that ______.
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Directions: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on the ANSWER SHEET. March 11th marks the second anniversary of the tsunami that killed 18,500 people in Japan. Good news is scant. Almost 315,000 evacuees still 1 in cramped temporary housing, and need new 2 . A different kind of suffering weighs on about 20m people (a sixth of the 3 ) at this time of year which, though less than anguish-filled, is not trivial. 4 late February until May they 5 pollen allergies, mostly 6 by Japanese cedar, or sugi, trees. Usually the affliction, entailing sneezing, eye irritation and huge medical bills, is shrugged off—it can’t be helped. 7 a way could be found to ease the allergies that could also 8 rebuild homes. It would involve thinning out the sugi and other conifer plantations that 9 about 40% of Japan’s forest, most of which are now 10 as uneconomic. The timber could be used to restore and beautify lost villages. The sugi were planted across Japan after the war as material to 11 destroyed cities and 12 . Sugi, straight and tall, are 13 for construction. But after taxes fell, imported wood put the sugi foresters out of business. The higher they grow, the more pollen the magnificent, abandoned trees emit. Officials say some owners, many now in their 70s, reject 14 to plant new ones that emit less pollen 15 the payback is too long. As a result, 16 Kevin Short, a columnist for the Daily Yomiuri, an English-language newspaper, "immense clouds of yellow-green sugi pollen dust 17 down onto the urban areas, like some amorphous monster out of a science-fiction movie." 18 Kiyohito Onuma of the Forestry Agency says his sneezing wife and children often ask him to do more to 19 the problem, the public pressure is muted. Partly this is because the sugi have always 20 near temples and shrines, and are part of national folklore.
Directions: Read the following text and choose the best answer from the right column to complete each of the unfinished statements in the left column. There are two extra choices in, the right column. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET.The human voice, like any sound produced by thrumming a stretched string, has a fundamental frequency. For voice, the centre of that frequency lies mostly below 300Hz depending on the speaker’s sex. Information is conveyed through simultaneous higher-frequency overtones and additional components that can stretch up to 20,000 Hz (20kHz). Modern hearing aids are able to distinguish only a small part of that range, typically between 300Hz and 6kHz, reducing noise and amplifying those frequencies where the wearer’s hearing is weakest. But differentiating elements of many common parts of speech occur in higher frequencies. This is the result both of harmonics that ripple out from the main tone, and from non-voiced elements used to utter consonants, which employ the tongue, teeth, cheeks and lips. Take the words "sailing" and "failing". Cut off the higher frequencies and the two are indistinguishable. The problem is compounded on telephone calls, which do not transmit frequencies below 300Hz or above 3.3kHz. People with hearing aids experience this problem constantly, says Brian Moore of the University of Cambridge. Typical hearing loss tends to be most acute at frequencies above 10kHz, which contain quieter sounds but where speech can still include important cues. Older hearing aids cut off at no higher than 6kHz, but much modern equipment stretches this range to 8-10kHz. However, a problem remains, Dr. Moore says, because bespoke hearing-aid calibrations for individual users, called "fittings", do not properly boost the gain of these higher frequencies. So Dr. Moore and his colleagues have come up with a better method. Their approach can be applied to many existing devices, and is also being built into some newer ones. A key step in any fitting involves testing an individual’s ability to hear sounds in different frequency bands. Each hearing loss is unique, and for most users a standard profile would be too loud in some ranges and too soft in others. But current tests pay scant attention to the higher frequencies that a device’s tiny speaker can produce, regardless of whether the user needs a boost. Dr. Moore’s new test, known as CAM2, which is both a set of specifications and an implementation in software, extends and modifies fittings to include frequencies as high as 10kHz. When the results are used to calibrate a modem hearing aid, the result is greater intelligibility of speech compared with existing alternatives. CAM2 also improves the experience of listening to music, which makes greater use of higher frequencies than speech does. A．be applied to many existing devices B．use the tongue, teeth, cheeks and lips C．enhance the gain of higher frequencies D．pays little attention to the higher frequencies E．reduce noise and amplify certain frequencies F．transmit frequencies below 300Hz or above 3.3kHz G．extends and modifies fittings to include high frequencies Modern hearing-aids can ______.
Surveys find entrenched (根深蒂固的) pessimism over the country’s economic outlook and overall trajectory (轨道). In the latest Wall Street Journal poll, 63% of the respondents said the U.S. is on the wrong track. It’s not difficult to see why. Set aside the gridlock in Washington for a moment and appreciate the weakness of the economic recovery: Households whose finances were too weak to spend. Large numbers of unemployed workers who couldn’t do so either. Younger Americans who couldn’t afford their own homes. Banks that were too broken to lend. Yet nearly a year ago, I wrote an essay for Time suggesting that the economy could surprise on the upside. That hypothesis looks even more valid today. Despite the pessimistic mood, America is experiencing a profound comeback. Yes, too many Americans are out of work and have been for far too long. And yes, there is a huge amount of slack to make up. In fact, if the 2008 collapse had not happened, the U.S. GDP would be $1 trillion— or more than 5%—higher than it is today. But in terms of the growth outlook, the news is good. Goldman Sachs and many private-sector forecasters project a 3.3% growth rate for the remainder of 2014. The first half of 2014 saw the best job-creation rate in 15 years. Total household wealth and private employment surpassed 2008 levels last year. Bank loans to businesses exceeded previous highs this year. And income growth will soon improve too. America is finally returning to where it was seven years ago. As halting as the U.S. recovery has been, the economy is now leaner and more capable of healthy, sustained growth through 2016 and beyond. The U.S. outlook shines compared with that of the rest of the industrialized world, as Europe and Japan are stagnant. The 2008 economic crisis and Great Recession forced widespread restructuring throughout the U.S. economy—not unlike a company gritting its teeth through a lifesaving bankruptcy. Manufacturing costs are down. The banking system has been recapitalized. The excess and abuse that defined the housing market are gone. And it’s all being turbocharged by an energy boom nobody saw coming. According to the second paragraph, which one is true
The country’s biggest challenge now is the plight of lower-income Americans, who are under severe and sustained economic pressure. Today, America resembles a tale of two cities. Those who own homes or stocks have benefited from the recovery in these asset classes and are moving up again. But 40% of working-age families earn $40,000 a year or less. Generally they live within 250% of the official poverty level, which is the eligibility threshold for food stamps. Indeed, judging from current trends, half of today’s 20-year-olds will receive food stamps during their adult lives. More broadly, median household income is still 8% below the precrisis level, and those who have not completed college are seeing declines in anticipated lifetime earnings compared with their peers with college degrees. This is the primary economic challenge. If a third of the population has little purchasing power, it will be hard to achieve the desired rate of long-term growth. The U.S. needs to improve the work skills of this group, strengthen the social safety net and increase the number of young Americans receiving a full college education. Although doing more to relieve the financial burdens of working Americans is good economics, it is also, and perhaps more important, a matter of values. For much of the 20th century Americans strove, with much success, to build a fairer and more inclusive society. But today, too many working families are living paycheck to paycheck or even in outright poverty, while the toeholds (客服困难的方法) to economic stability become fewer and farther between. With the economy’s near and medium term economic outlook strong, now is the time to remove the barriers that are keeping hardworking Americans walking a far too thin financial line. The last two paragraphs tell us that ______.
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