Mr.Serf’s handgun _______.

Directions: In this part of the test, there are five short passages. Read each passage carefully, and then do the questions that follow. Choose the best answer from the four choices given and mark the corresponding letter with a single bar across the square brackets on your machine-scoring Answer Sheet.
Remember Farid Seif Mr.Seif is the Houston Iranian-American businessman who mistakenly carried a Glock handgun through security, onto a plane, all the Way from Houston to Indianapolis. When he got to his destination and realized his mistake, he alerted security officials. There was reportedly " nothing else" in Mr.Serf’s carry-on besides the weapon. Yet the security screeners at George Bush International. America’s eighth-busiest airport, missed it entirely. The scariest part of that story was that Transportation Security Administration officials told reporters that this type of incident was " not uncommon. "
Now another Texas airport，Dallas-Fort Worth, is proving the point. This week, a high-level TSA source told the local NBC affiliate that " An undercover TSA agent was able to get through security at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport with a handgun during testing of the enhanced-imaging body scanners. "
The TSA insider who blew the whistle on the test also said that none of the TSA agents who Ailed to spot the gun on the scanned image were disciplined. The source said the agents continue to work the body scanners today.
This is not confidence-inspiring. If TSA screeners can’t even stop guns getting through security, Why are they taking away our bottled water Incidents like this only lend incentives to TSA critics who say the whole airport security apparatus is an enormous waste of time and money. The TSRs attitude towards the reporting of these SOrtS of messes isn’t helpful, either. They only provided the NBC with a brief statement claiming that they don’t reveal the results of secret testing for "security reasons" and arguing that "advanced imaging technology is an effective tool to detect both metallic and nonmetallic items hidden on passengers. "That’S pretty much the public affairs equivalent of sticking their fingers in theft ears and saying "lalalalala we can’t hear you! "
It is really hard to have an accountable TSA without greater transparency about the results of secret testing. Instead of leaking hints to the press that failure rates have decreased since the last public reports, the TSA should back up its whispering with actual data. If it won’t, some enterprising congressional committee should order it." Trust US that this works " just isn’t cutting it anymore.Mr.Serf’s handgun _______.

A.passed the check at the Houston airport
B.caused big trouble for himself in Houston
C.was tracked down by officials in Indianapolis
D.triggered a series of false alarms in Indianapolis

单项选择题

A study by Dr. David Lewis from The University of Sussex, who coined the term " road rage," found that motorists face a hidden mental health impact from the stresses of driving, while bus travel can produce long-term health benefits.
For the experiment, the heart rate and EDR (Electro-Dermal Response)of 30 commuters was measured when taking similar journeys by car and bus．The findings reveal a vast difference in EDR, a form of biophysical measurement that indicates mental stress. The EDR results suggested that taking the car produced significantly more stress than taking the bus, which was 33% less stressful.
"EDR can be a hidden stress—it’s not as visible as intensely nervous driving or audible as road rage. This type of stress can have long-term physiological and emotional implications," said Dr.Lewis, who finds three key factors that increase the stresses of driving a car.
Driving in heavy traffic—especially against a deadline—requires a high level of attention. This requires the brain to work especially hard processing a myriad of incoming information and making, often split-second, decisions．
Congestion and delays can raise blood pressure and physical tension which may manifest itself as " road rage, "having serious long-term health consequences and causing drivers sometimes to take reckless and foolish decisions. Driving in congested traffic now outweighs any previous benefits car-driving once gave．
A sense of frustration of" wasting one’s life" behind the wheel of the car, unable to do anything more productive than casual conversations or listening to the radio. On a bus it is possible to fill the time more profitably by doing some work or reading.
He also notes that highly trained, professional bus drivers are skilled in negotiating the challenges of the road,and the relief of trusting someone else to be in charge of the journey is a key part of what makes taking the bus less stressful.
He encourages people to get out of their cars and on to the bus for trips where it makes sense—such as shopping in town or heading to a restaurant—so that you don’t need to battle traffic or find parking．Switching simple journeys can help achieve the goal of taking a billion Car journeys off the road．All it will take is everyone shifting around a trip a month.The finding of the study mentioned in this passage is that ______.

A.cars cause more traffic accidents than buses
B.driving a car is more stressful than taking a bus
C.high blood pressure is harmful to human’s health
D.Car driving is accompanied by many distractions

单项选择题

Once upon a time， staying a healthy weight was easy. To lose weight you simply had to practise the reverse of home economics-spend more than you earned. Unfortunately for many, but perhaps not surprisingly, it turns out that eople are rather more complicated than bank accounts.
To stay a healthy weight, you need a hormone called leptin to work properly. It sends "I’m full" messages from the fat cells up to the brain，where they go, among other places, to the same pleasure centers that respond tO drugs like cocaine. Obese people produce plenty of leptin, but the brain doesn’t seem to respond to it properly. Last year, researchers at the Oregon Research Institute scanned the brains of overweight people and found their reward circuits were underactive. They were eating more to try to get the enjoyment they were missing.
There’s a lot of evidence for the fact that most, if not all, of us have a set point around which our weight can vary by about seven to nine kilos, but anything beyond that is a real struggle. Making changes is hard, particularly if your body is working against you. So why not ditch the traditional approaches and try some new methods, based on the latest research, that work with your body rather than against it.
Several years ago researchers at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore reported that when they gave rats very little food one day and allowed them to eat plenty the next, they showed virtually all the benefits of a permanent calorie restriction diet. The same goes for humans, according to Dr.James Johnson.
How does it workBesides forcing the body to burn fat, it may also trigger hormonal changes. Most people say that the diet takes a bit of getting used to, but is not as grindng as trying tO cut back on an everyday basis.
Older dieters may remember something called brown fat. Unlike the undesirable white stuff, this was a dieter’s dream. Instead of storing excess energy as fat, brown-fat tissue burned it off to keep you warm—at least in mice. Brown fat fell out of favor because researchers couldn’t find much in humans but now, thanks to the New England Journal of Medicine, it’s back in fashion. The idea is to expose people to cold temperatures. They then make more brown fat and their weight drops.The last sentence in Paragraph 1 means that people’s understanding of losing weight ______.

A.seems rather unreasonable
B.is unnecessarily complicated
C.used to be limited
D.can be partly justified

单项选择题

Once upon a time， staying a healthy weight was easy. To lose weight you simply had to practise the reverse of home economics-spend more than you earned. Unfortunately for many, but perhaps not surprisingly, it turns out that eople are rather more complicated than bank accounts.
To stay a healthy weight, you need a hormone called leptin to work properly. It sends "I’m full" messages from the fat cells up to the brain，where they go, among other places, to the same pleasure centers that respond tO drugs like cocaine. Obese people produce plenty of leptin, but the brain doesn’t seem to respond to it properly. Last year, researchers at the Oregon Research Institute scanned the brains of overweight people and found their reward circuits were underactive. They were eating more to try to get the enjoyment they were missing.
There’s a lot of evidence for the fact that most, if not all, of us have a set point around which our weight can vary by about seven to nine kilos, but anything beyond that is a real struggle. Making changes is hard, particularly if your body is working against you. So why not ditch the traditional approaches and try some new methods, based on the latest research, that work with your body rather than against it.
Several years ago researchers at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore reported that when they gave rats very little food one day and allowed them to eat plenty the next, they showed virtually all the benefits of a permanent calorie restriction diet. The same goes for humans, according to Dr.James Johnson.
How does it workBesides forcing the body to burn fat, it may also trigger hormonal changes. Most people say that the diet takes a bit of getting used to, but is not as grindng as trying tO cut back on an everyday basis.
Older dieters may remember something called brown fat. Unlike the undesirable white stuff, this was a dieter’s dream. Instead of storing excess energy as fat, brown-fat tissue burned it off to keep you warm—at least in mice. Brown fat fell out of favor because researchers couldn’t find much in humans but now, thanks to the New England Journal of Medicine, it’s back in fashion. The idea is to expose people to cold temperatures. They then make more brown fat and their weight drops.According to the findings of the oregon Research Institute,_______.

A.overweight people get less pleasure from eating the same amount
B.overweight people enjoy eating more than the others do
C.people will become overweight if they eat more than they need
D.people are more likely to be overweight if they produce less leptin

单项选择题

A study by Dr. David Lewis from The University of Sussex, who coined the term " road rage," found that motorists face a hidden mental health impact from the stresses of driving, while bus travel can produce long-term health benefits.
For the experiment, the heart rate and EDR (Electro-Dermal Response)of 30 commuters was measured when taking similar journeys by car and bus．The findings reveal a vast difference in EDR, a form of biophysical measurement that indicates mental stress. The EDR results suggested that taking the car produced significantly more stress than taking the bus, which was 33% less stressful.
"EDR can be a hidden stress—it’s not as visible as intensely nervous driving or audible as road rage. This type of stress can have long-term physiological and emotional implications," said Dr.Lewis, who finds three key factors that increase the stresses of driving a car.
Driving in heavy traffic—especially against a deadline—requires a high level of attention. This requires the brain to work especially hard processing a myriad of incoming information and making, often split-second, decisions．
Congestion and delays can raise blood pressure and physical tension which may manifest itself as " road rage, "having serious long-term health consequences and causing drivers sometimes to take reckless and foolish decisions. Driving in congested traffic now outweighs any previous benefits car-driving once gave．
A sense of frustration of" wasting one’s life" behind the wheel of the car, unable to do anything more productive than casual conversations or listening to the radio. On a bus it is possible to fill the time more profitably by doing some work or reading.
He also notes that highly trained, professional bus drivers are skilled in negotiating the challenges of the road,and the relief of trusting someone else to be in charge of the journey is a key part of what makes taking the bus less stressful.
He encourages people to get out of their cars and on to the bus for trips where it makes sense—such as shopping in town or heading to a restaurant—so that you don’t need to battle traffic or find parking．Switching simple journeys can help achieve the goal of taking a billion Car journeys off the road．All it will take is everyone shifting around a trip a month.The term“road rage”probably refers to______.

A.the sudden heart attack that drivers suffer from
B.the explosive outbursts of anger shown by motorists
C.traffic accidents arising from bad-tempered drivers
D.the panic caused by traffic congestions

单项选择题

Directions: In this part of the test, there are five short passages. Read each passage carefully, and then do the questions that follow. Choose the best answer from the four choices given and mark the corresponding letter with a single bar across the square brackets on your machine-scoring Answer Sheet.
Remember Farid Seif Mr.Seif is the Houston Iranian-American businessman who mistakenly carried a Glock handgun through security, onto a plane, all the Way from Houston to Indianapolis. When he got to his destination and realized his mistake, he alerted security officials. There was reportedly " nothing else" in Mr.Serf’s carry-on besides the weapon. Yet the security screeners at George Bush International. America’s eighth-busiest airport, missed it entirely. The scariest part of that story was that Transportation Security Administration officials told reporters that this type of incident was " not uncommon. "
Now another Texas airport，Dallas-Fort Worth, is proving the point. This week, a high-level TSA source told the local NBC affiliate that " An undercover TSA agent was able to get through security at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport with a handgun during testing of the enhanced-imaging body scanners. "
The TSA insider who blew the whistle on the test also said that none of the TSA agents who Ailed to spot the gun on the scanned image were disciplined. The source said the agents continue to work the body scanners today.
This is not confidence-inspiring. If TSA screeners can’t even stop guns getting through security, Why are they taking away our bottled water Incidents like this only lend incentives to TSA critics who say the whole airport security apparatus is an enormous waste of time and money. The TSRs attitude towards the reporting of these SOrtS of messes isn’t helpful, either. They only provided the NBC with a brief statement claiming that they don’t reveal the results of secret testing for "security reasons" and arguing that "advanced imaging technology is an effective tool to detect both metallic and nonmetallic items hidden on passengers. "That’S pretty much the public affairs equivalent of sticking their fingers in theft ears and saying "lalalalala we can’t hear you! "
It is really hard to have an accountable TSA without greater transparency about the results of secret testing. Instead of leaking hints to the press that failure rates have decreased since the last public reports, the TSA should back up its whispering with actual data. If it won’t, some enterprising congressional committee should order it." Trust US that this works " just isn’t cutting it anymore.What happened at Dallas-Fort Worth______.

A.helped rebuild public confidence
B.was merely an unusual accident
C.caused greater concern over security
D.resulted in unexpected disorder

单项选择题

Once upon a time， staying a healthy weight was easy. To lose weight you simply had to practise the reverse of home economics-spend more than you earned. Unfortunately for many, but perhaps not surprisingly, it turns out that eople are rather more complicated than bank accounts.
To stay a healthy weight, you need a hormone called leptin to work properly. It sends "I’m full" messages from the fat cells up to the brain，where they go, among other places, to the same pleasure centers that respond tO drugs like cocaine. Obese people produce plenty of leptin, but the brain doesn’t seem to respond to it properly. Last year, researchers at the Oregon Research Institute scanned the brains of overweight people and found their reward circuits were underactive. They were eating more to try to get the enjoyment they were missing.
There’s a lot of evidence for the fact that most, if not all, of us have a set point around which our weight can vary by about seven to nine kilos, but anything beyond that is a real struggle. Making changes is hard, particularly if your body is working against you. So why not ditch the traditional approaches and try some new methods, based on the latest research, that work with your body rather than against it.
Several years ago researchers at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore reported that when they gave rats very little food one day and allowed them to eat plenty the next, they showed virtually all the benefits of a permanent calorie restriction diet. The same goes for humans, according to Dr.James Johnson.
How does it workBesides forcing the body to burn fat, it may also trigger hormonal changes. Most people say that the diet takes a bit of getting used to, but is not as grindng as trying tO cut back on an everyday basis.
Older dieters may remember something called brown fat. Unlike the undesirable white stuff, this was a dieter’s dream. Instead of storing excess energy as fat, brown-fat tissue burned it off to keep you warm—at least in mice. Brown fat fell out of favor because researchers couldn’t find much in humans but now, thanks to the New England Journal of Medicine, it’s back in fashion. The idea is to expose people to cold temperatures. They then make more brown fat and their weight drops.The method used by the National Institute on Aging can be summarized as ______.

A.tat all
B.diet on a daily basis
C.diet every other day
D.diet permanently

单项选择题

The term "g" (general intelligence) represents a measure of overall cognitive ability across a variety of tests. It’s not the same as IQ but it does tend to correlate. Everyone agrees that "g" tends to run in families. But is this down to genetics or to environmental influences
However, no single gene has yet been conclusively linked to intelligence. Rather it appears to be a case of complex interactions on many levels between many different genes.
Identical twins have exactly the same genes, while non-identical twins share about half their genes. Another feature of twins that makes them an ideal choice for studies is that they tend to be raised in pretty much the same environment. If a particular feature is the same in identical twins, but not m non-identical twins, then chances are it’s mainly genes that are controlling that feature.
So what do the twin studies show Well, first degree relatives tend to have "g" correlation of about 0.4-0.5. (Perfect correlation is 1; correlation of 0 means that the two things in question are totally unrelated). Identical twins have a correlation of 0.85, while for non-identical twins it’s about 0.6. Which suggests that genes play a very important role, but are not the only factor, since if they were, the correlation between identical twins would be 1.
Identical twins reared apart are almost as similar in "g" scores as those reared together. Adopted children and their adoptive parents have a "g" correlation of zero, while adopted children and their biological parents tend to have the same correlations as any parent-child pair. So although genes don’t seem to be the only thing affecting intelligence, their effects seem to be constant and apparently not overridden by environment.
Does heritability of intelligence alter over a lifetime Remarkably, it appears so. "g" heritability climbs gradually from 20% in babies to 40% in children, peaking at 60% in adults. Why this should be is still a matter of speculation. It’s been suggested that as our cognitive abilities become more complex, new genes may come into play that were not needed when brain functions were less sophisticated. Or individuals may be drawn towards environments that fit with their genetic makeup, as time goes by and genetic effects that started out small in childhood build up together during adulthood.All of the following statements about "g" are true EXCEPT______.

A. "g" is to some extent inherited
B. "g" correlates with IQ
C. "g" can be attributed to a single gene
D. "g" is a measure of cognitive ability

单项选择题

Once upon a time， staying a healthy weight was easy. To lose weight you simply had to practise the reverse of home economics-spend more than you earned. Unfortunately for many, but perhaps not surprisingly, it turns out that eople are rather more complicated than bank accounts.
To stay a healthy weight, you need a hormone called leptin to work properly. It sends "I’m full" messages from the fat cells up to the brain，where they go, among other places, to the same pleasure centers that respond tO drugs like cocaine. Obese people produce plenty of leptin, but the brain doesn’t seem to respond to it properly. Last year, researchers at the Oregon Research Institute scanned the brains of overweight people and found their reward circuits were underactive. They were eating more to try to get the enjoyment they were missing.
There’s a lot of evidence for the fact that most, if not all, of us have a set point around which our weight can vary by about seven to nine kilos, but anything beyond that is a real struggle. Making changes is hard, particularly if your body is working against you. So why not ditch the traditional approaches and try some new methods, based on the latest research, that work with your body rather than against it.
Several years ago researchers at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore reported that when they gave rats very little food one day and allowed them to eat plenty the next, they showed virtually all the benefits of a permanent calorie restriction diet. The same goes for humans, according to Dr.James Johnson.
How does it workBesides forcing the body to burn fat, it may also trigger hormonal changes. Most people say that the diet takes a bit of getting used to, but is not as grindng as trying tO cut back on an everyday basis.
Older dieters may remember something called brown fat. Unlike the undesirable white stuff, this was a dieter’s dream. Instead of storing excess energy as fat, brown-fat tissue burned it off to keep you warm—at least in mice. Brown fat fell out of favor because researchers couldn’t find much in humans but now, thanks to the New England Journal of Medicine, it’s back in fashion. The idea is to expose people to cold temperatures. They then make more brown fat and their weight drops.The word " grinding" in Paragraph 5 is closest in meaning to ______.

A.effective
B.realistic
C.unreliable
D.miserable

单项选择题

Directions: In this part of the test, there are five short passages. Read each passage carefully, and then do the questions that follow. Choose the best answer from the four choices given and mark the corresponding letter with a single bar across the square brackets on your machine-scoring Answer Sheet.
Remember Farid Seif Mr.Seif is the Houston Iranian-American businessman who mistakenly carried a Glock handgun through security, onto a plane, all the Way from Houston to Indianapolis. When he got to his destination and realized his mistake, he alerted security officials. There was reportedly " nothing else" in Mr.Serf’s carry-on besides the weapon. Yet the security screeners at George Bush International. America’s eighth-busiest airport, missed it entirely. The scariest part of that story was that Transportation Security Administration officials told reporters that this type of incident was " not uncommon. "
Now another Texas airport，Dallas-Fort Worth, is proving the point. This week, a high-level TSA source told the local NBC affiliate that " An undercover TSA agent was able to get through security at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport with a handgun during testing of the enhanced-imaging body scanners. "
The TSA insider who blew the whistle on the test also said that none of the TSA agents who Ailed to spot the gun on the scanned image were disciplined. The source said the agents continue to work the body scanners today.
This is not confidence-inspiring. If TSA screeners can’t even stop guns getting through security, Why are they taking away our bottled water Incidents like this only lend incentives to TSA critics who say the whole airport security apparatus is an enormous waste of time and money. The TSRs attitude towards the reporting of these SOrtS of messes isn’t helpful, either. They only provided the NBC with a brief statement claiming that they don’t reveal the results of secret testing for "security reasons" and arguing that "advanced imaging technology is an effective tool to detect both metallic and nonmetallic items hidden on passengers. "That’S pretty much the public affairs equivalent of sticking their fingers in theft ears and saying "lalalalala we can’t hear you! "
It is really hard to have an accountable TSA without greater transparency about the results of secret testing. Instead of leaking hints to the press that failure rates have decreased since the last public reports, the TSA should back up its whispering with actual data. If it won’t, some enterprising congressional committee should order it." Trust US that this works " just isn’t cutting it anymore.After the Dallas-Fort Worth report, the TSA______.

A.reluctantly punished the relevant agents
B.allowed the relevant agents to stay in position
C.enhanced security check at relevant airports
D.began to reconsider relevant security methods

单项选择题

A study by Dr. David Lewis from The University of Sussex, who coined the term " road rage," found that motorists face a hidden mental health impact from the stresses of driving, while bus travel can produce long-term health benefits.
For the experiment, the heart rate and EDR (Electro-Dermal Response)of 30 commuters was measured when taking similar journeys by car and bus．The findings reveal a vast difference in EDR, a form of biophysical measurement that indicates mental stress. The EDR results suggested that taking the car produced significantly more stress than taking the bus, which was 33% less stressful.
"EDR can be a hidden stress—it’s not as visible as intensely nervous driving or audible as road rage. This type of stress can have long-term physiological and emotional implications," said Dr.Lewis, who finds three key factors that increase the stresses of driving a car.
Driving in heavy traffic—especially against a deadline—requires a high level of attention. This requires the brain to work especially hard processing a myriad of incoming information and making, often split-second, decisions．
Congestion and delays can raise blood pressure and physical tension which may manifest itself as " road rage, "having serious long-term health consequences and causing drivers sometimes to take reckless and foolish decisions. Driving in congested traffic now outweighs any previous benefits car-driving once gave．
A sense of frustration of" wasting one’s life" behind the wheel of the car, unable to do anything more productive than casual conversations or listening to the radio. On a bus it is possible to fill the time more profitably by doing some work or reading.
He also notes that highly trained, professional bus drivers are skilled in negotiating the challenges of the road,and the relief of trusting someone else to be in charge of the journey is a key part of what makes taking the bus less stressful.
He encourages people to get out of their cars and on to the bus for trips where it makes sense—such as shopping in town or heading to a restaurant—so that you don’t need to battle traffic or find parking．Switching simple journeys can help achieve the goal of taking a billion Car journeys off the road．All it will take is everyone shifting around a trip a month.All of the following are considered a source of stress during car driving EXCEPT ______.

A.heavy traffic
B.traffic jams
C.unfamiliar roads
D.a sense of waste of time

单项选择题

The term "g" (general intelligence) represents a measure of overall cognitive ability across a variety of tests. It’s not the same as IQ but it does tend to correlate. Everyone agrees that "g" tends to run in families. But is this down to genetics or to environmental influences
However, no single gene has yet been conclusively linked to intelligence. Rather it appears to be a case of complex interactions on many levels between many different genes.
Identical twins have exactly the same genes, while non-identical twins share about half their genes. Another feature of twins that makes them an ideal choice for studies is that they tend to be raised in pretty much the same environment. If a particular feature is the same in identical twins, but not m non-identical twins, then chances are it’s mainly genes that are controlling that feature.
So what do the twin studies show Well, first degree relatives tend to have "g" correlation of about 0.4-0.5. (Perfect correlation is 1; correlation of 0 means that the two things in question are totally unrelated). Identical twins have a correlation of 0.85, while for non-identical twins it’s about 0.6. Which suggests that genes play a very important role, but are not the only factor, since if they were, the correlation between identical twins would be 1.
Identical twins reared apart are almost as similar in "g" scores as those reared together. Adopted children and their adoptive parents have a "g" correlation of zero, while adopted children and their biological parents tend to have the same correlations as any parent-child pair. So although genes don’t seem to be the only thing affecting intelligence, their effects seem to be constant and apparently not overridden by environment.
Does heritability of intelligence alter over a lifetime Remarkably, it appears so. "g" heritability climbs gradually from 20% in babies to 40% in children, peaking at 60% in adults. Why this should be is still a matter of speculation. It’s been suggested that as our cognitive abilities become more complex, new genes may come into play that were not needed when brain functions were less sophisticated. Or individuals may be drawn towards environments that fit with their genetic makeup, as time goes by and genetic effects that started out small in childhood build up together during adulthood.Identical twins are chosen as the subjects of the study because

A. they have the same genes and live in the same environment
B. they have some genes linked to general intelligence
C. they have the same heritability of intelligence
D. they are alike in everything except for intelligence

单项选择题

I was born on the last day of February. I’ve always felt sorry for February, squeezed between the big months of January (named for the Roman god Janus, keeper of gateways) and March (after Mars, the god of war).
The first Roman calendar, legend has it, had 10 months and no February. Beginning at the vernal equinox (春分) with March, it ended with December. In an agricultural society, winter was of little importance, and thus went undivided.
January and February were added about 700 B.C. by the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius. He made all the months 29 or 31 days, but shortened February, the last month of the year, by giving it only 28.
By the time of Julius Caesar, the calendar was three months out of sync with the solar year. This prompted Caesar to announce a new calendar in 46 B.C. Although there is some dispute—some historians say Caesar gave February 29 days--most believe his calendar preserved a 28-day February (with 29 days only in a leap year).
Next, it was the church’s turn. In 1582 Pope Gregory Ⅻ decreed a new calendar in Europe. Many changes were made, but the Pope passed up yet another chance to grant February equality with the other months.
It’s messy, even dangerous, changing how we measure time, but Pope Gregory was hardly the last one to try. The League of Nations received over 150 new calendar designs, and the United Nations has considered more proposals since. Just to name a few, there’s the 30×11 Calendar (which supersizes December to 35 or 36 days) and the Kluznickian Calendar (which adds the month of Aten, after an Egyptian sun god). Each proposal involves something that supposedly modernizes the calendar.
But I have a simpler proposal that won’t lead to chaos, and will correct the historical injustices against February: move the last day of January and the last day of March into February to make it a normal month with 30 days, and a respectable 31 on leap years. This would not add or subtract a single day from the calendar year.
As an added benefit, making the first three months of the year each 30 days would bring them into closer alignment with the lunar cycle. It’s a great idea. And unlike Julius and Augustus, I won’t even demand a month named in my honor.It is said that in the first Roman calendar,______.

A. all months were equally divided
B. December was the longest month
C. February was the shortest month
D. January and February were merged into one

单项选择题

Once upon a time， staying a healthy weight was easy. To lose weight you simply had to practise the reverse of home economics-spend more than you earned. Unfortunately for many, but perhaps not surprisingly, it turns out that eople are rather more complicated than bank accounts.
To stay a healthy weight, you need a hormone called leptin to work properly. It sends "I’m full" messages from the fat cells up to the brain，where they go, among other places, to the same pleasure centers that respond tO drugs like cocaine. Obese people produce plenty of leptin, but the brain doesn’t seem to respond to it properly. Last year, researchers at the Oregon Research Institute scanned the brains of overweight people and found their reward circuits were underactive. They were eating more to try to get the enjoyment they were missing.
There’s a lot of evidence for the fact that most, if not all, of us have a set point around which our weight can vary by about seven to nine kilos, but anything beyond that is a real struggle. Making changes is hard, particularly if your body is working against you. So why not ditch the traditional approaches and try some new methods, based on the latest research, that work with your body rather than against it.
Several years ago researchers at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore reported that when they gave rats very little food one day and allowed them to eat plenty the next, they showed virtually all the benefits of a permanent calorie restriction diet. The same goes for humans, according to Dr.James Johnson.
How does it workBesides forcing the body to burn fat, it may also trigger hormonal changes. Most people say that the diet takes a bit of getting used to, but is not as grindng as trying tO cut back on an everyday basis.
Older dieters may remember something called brown fat. Unlike the undesirable white stuff, this was a dieter’s dream. Instead of storing excess energy as fat, brown-fat tissue burned it off to keep you warm—at least in mice. Brown fat fell out of favor because researchers couldn’t find much in humans but now, thanks to the New England Journal of Medicine, it’s back in fashion. The idea is to expose people to cold temperatures. They then make more brown fat and their weight drops.It can be learned that brown fat ______.

A.converts excess energy into fat
B.works better in warm temperatures
C.burns extra energy to produce heat
D.accumulates easily in human bodies

单项选择题

Directions: In this part of the test, there are five short passages. Read each passage carefully, and then do the questions that follow. Choose the best answer from the four choices given and mark the corresponding letter with a single bar across the square brackets on your machine-scoring Answer Sheet.
Remember Farid Seif Mr.Seif is the Houston Iranian-American businessman who mistakenly carried a Glock handgun through security, onto a plane, all the Way from Houston to Indianapolis. When he got to his destination and realized his mistake, he alerted security officials. There was reportedly " nothing else" in Mr.Serf’s carry-on besides the weapon. Yet the security screeners at George Bush International. America’s eighth-busiest airport, missed it entirely. The scariest part of that story was that Transportation Security Administration officials told reporters that this type of incident was " not uncommon. "
Now another Texas airport，Dallas-Fort Worth, is proving the point. This week, a high-level TSA source told the local NBC affiliate that " An undercover TSA agent was able to get through security at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport with a handgun during testing of the enhanced-imaging body scanners. "
The TSA insider who blew the whistle on the test also said that none of the TSA agents who Ailed to spot the gun on the scanned image were disciplined. The source said the agents continue to work the body scanners today.
This is not confidence-inspiring. If TSA screeners can’t even stop guns getting through security, Why are they taking away our bottled water Incidents like this only lend incentives to TSA critics who say the whole airport security apparatus is an enormous waste of time and money. The TSRs attitude towards the reporting of these SOrtS of messes isn’t helpful, either. They only provided the NBC with a brief statement claiming that they don’t reveal the results of secret testing for "security reasons" and arguing that "advanced imaging technology is an effective tool to detect both metallic and nonmetallic items hidden on passengers. "That’S pretty much the public affairs equivalent of sticking their fingers in theft ears and saying "lalalalala we can’t hear you! "
It is really hard to have an accountable TSA without greater transparency about the results of secret testing. Instead of leaking hints to the press that failure rates have decreased since the last public reports, the TSA should back up its whispering with actual data. If it won’t, some enterprising congressional committee should order it." Trust US that this works " just isn’t cutting it anymore.The TSA’s statement concerning the reported cases shows that they are

A.practical
B.uncooperative
C.reliable
D.unpredictable

单项选择题

A study by Dr. David Lewis from The University of Sussex, who coined the term " road rage," found that motorists face a hidden mental health impact from the stresses of driving, while bus travel can produce long-term health benefits.
For the experiment, the heart rate and EDR (Electro-Dermal Response)of 30 commuters was measured when taking similar journeys by car and bus．The findings reveal a vast difference in EDR, a form of biophysical measurement that indicates mental stress. The EDR results suggested that taking the car produced significantly more stress than taking the bus, which was 33% less stressful.
"EDR can be a hidden stress—it’s not as visible as intensely nervous driving or audible as road rage. This type of stress can have long-term physiological and emotional implications," said Dr.Lewis, who finds three key factors that increase the stresses of driving a car.
Driving in heavy traffic—especially against a deadline—requires a high level of attention. This requires the brain to work especially hard processing a myriad of incoming information and making, often split-second, decisions．
Congestion and delays can raise blood pressure and physical tension which may manifest itself as " road rage, "having serious long-term health consequences and causing drivers sometimes to take reckless and foolish decisions. Driving in congested traffic now outweighs any previous benefits car-driving once gave．
A sense of frustration of" wasting one’s life" behind the wheel of the car, unable to do anything more productive than casual conversations or listening to the radio. On a bus it is possible to fill the time more profitably by doing some work or reading.
He also notes that highly trained, professional bus drivers are skilled in negotiating the challenges of the road,and the relief of trusting someone else to be in charge of the journey is a key part of what makes taking the bus less stressful.
He encourages people to get out of their cars and on to the bus for trips where it makes sense—such as shopping in town or heading to a restaurant—so that you don’t need to battle traffic or find parking．Switching simple journeys can help achieve the goal of taking a billion Car journeys off the road．All it will take is everyone shifting around a trip a month.One of the advantages of a bus ride is that______.

A. you can do something productive on the road
B. there is no fear of taking the wrong road
C. no passenger suffers from high blood pressure
D. you can get to your destination quickly

单项选择题

I was born on the last day of February. I’ve always felt sorry for February, squeezed between the big months of January (named for the Roman god Janus, keeper of gateways) and March (after Mars, the god of war).
The first Roman calendar, legend has it, had 10 months and no February. Beginning at the vernal equinox (春分) with March, it ended with December. In an agricultural society, winter was of little importance, and thus went undivided.
January and February were added about 700 B.C. by the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius. He made all the months 29 or 31 days, but shortened February, the last month of the year, by giving it only 28.
By the time of Julius Caesar, the calendar was three months out of sync with the solar year. This prompted Caesar to announce a new calendar in 46 B.C. Although there is some dispute—some historians say Caesar gave February 29 days--most believe his calendar preserved a 28-day February (with 29 days only in a leap year).
Next, it was the church’s turn. In 1582 Pope Gregory Ⅻ decreed a new calendar in Europe. Many changes were made, but the Pope passed up yet another chance to grant February equality with the other months.
It’s messy, even dangerous, changing how we measure time, but Pope Gregory was hardly the last one to try. The League of Nations received over 150 new calendar designs, and the United Nations has considered more proposals since. Just to name a few, there’s the 30×11 Calendar (which supersizes December to 35 or 36 days) and the Kluznickian Calendar (which adds the month of Aten, after an Egyptian sun god). Each proposal involves something that supposedly modernizes the calendar.
But I have a simpler proposal that won’t lead to chaos, and will correct the historical injustices against February: move the last day of January and the last day of March into February to make it a normal month with 30 days, and a respectable 31 on leap years. This would not add or subtract a single day from the calendar year.
As an added benefit, making the first three months of the year each 30 days would bring them into closer alignment with the lunar cycle. It’s a great idea. And unlike Julius and Augustus, I won’t even demand a month named in my honor.The 12-month calendar was first announced by ______.

A. Julius Caesar
B. Pope Gregory Ⅻ
C. Augustus
D. Numa Pompilius

单项选择题

The term "g" (general intelligence) represents a measure of overall cognitive ability across a variety of tests. It’s not the same as IQ but it does tend to correlate. Everyone agrees that "g" tends to run in families. But is this down to genetics or to environmental influences
However, no single gene has yet been conclusively linked to intelligence. Rather it appears to be a case of complex interactions on many levels between many different genes.
Identical twins have exactly the same genes, while non-identical twins share about half their genes. Another feature of twins that makes them an ideal choice for studies is that they tend to be raised in pretty much the same environment. If a particular feature is the same in identical twins, but not m non-identical twins, then chances are it’s mainly genes that are controlling that feature.
So what do the twin studies show Well, first degree relatives tend to have "g" correlation of about 0.4-0.5. (Perfect correlation is 1; correlation of 0 means that the two things in question are totally unrelated). Identical twins have a correlation of 0.85, while for non-identical twins it’s about 0.6. Which suggests that genes play a very important role, but are not the only factor, since if they were, the correlation between identical twins would be 1.
Identical twins reared apart are almost as similar in "g" scores as those reared together. Adopted children and their adoptive parents have a "g" correlation of zero, while adopted children and their biological parents tend to have the same correlations as any parent-child pair. So although genes don’t seem to be the only thing affecting intelligence, their effects seem to be constant and apparently not overridden by environment.
Does heritability of intelligence alter over a lifetime Remarkably, it appears so. "g" heritability climbs gradually from 20% in babies to 40% in children, peaking at 60% in adults. Why this should be is still a matter of speculation. It’s been suggested that as our cognitive abilities become more complex, new genes may come into play that were not needed when brain functions were less sophisticated. Or individuals may be drawn towards environments that fit with their genetic makeup, as time goes by and genetic effects that started out small in childhood build up together during adulthood.The studies on twins’ general intelligence show that

A. nothing but genes can determine "g"
B. genes play an important role in "g"
C. the correlation between identical twins is 1
D. identical twins are more intelligent

单项选择题

Once upon a time， staying a healthy weight was easy. To lose weight you simply had to practise the reverse of home economics-spend more than you earned. Unfortunately for many, but perhaps not surprisingly, it turns out that eople are rather more complicated than bank accounts.
To stay a healthy weight, you need a hormone called leptin to work properly. It sends "I’m full" messages from the fat cells up to the brain，where they go, among other places, to the same pleasure centers that respond tO drugs like cocaine. Obese people produce plenty of leptin, but the brain doesn’t seem to respond to it properly. Last year, researchers at the Oregon Research Institute scanned the brains of overweight people and found their reward circuits were underactive. They were eating more to try to get the enjoyment they were missing.
There’s a lot of evidence for the fact that most, if not all, of us have a set point around which our weight can vary by about seven to nine kilos, but anything beyond that is a real struggle. Making changes is hard, particularly if your body is working against you. So why not ditch the traditional approaches and try some new methods, based on the latest research, that work with your body rather than against it.
Several years ago researchers at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore reported that when they gave rats very little food one day and allowed them to eat plenty the next, they showed virtually all the benefits of a permanent calorie restriction diet. The same goes for humans, according to Dr.James Johnson.
How does it workBesides forcing the body to burn fat, it may also trigger hormonal changes. Most people say that the diet takes a bit of getting used to, but is not as grindng as trying tO cut back on an everyday basis.
Older dieters may remember something called brown fat. Unlike the undesirable white stuff, this was a dieter’s dream. Instead of storing excess energy as fat, brown-fat tissue burned it off to keep you warm—at least in mice. Brown fat fell out of favor because researchers couldn’t find much in humans but now, thanks to the New England Journal of Medicine, it’s back in fashion. The idea is to expose people to cold temperatures. They then make more brown fat and their weight drops.The author’s purpose in Writing is to ______.

A.compare the various ways of cutting calories
B.recommend new methods of losing weight
C.point out the misconceptions of losing weight
D.clarify the common myth about weight loss

单项选择题

Directions: In this part of the test, there are five short passages. Read each passage carefully, and then do the questions that follow. Choose the best answer from the four choices given and mark the corresponding letter with a single bar across the square brackets on your machine-scoring Answer Sheet.
Remember Farid Seif Mr.Seif is the Houston Iranian-American businessman who mistakenly carried a Glock handgun through security, onto a plane, all the Way from Houston to Indianapolis. When he got to his destination and realized his mistake, he alerted security officials. There was reportedly " nothing else" in Mr.Serf’s carry-on besides the weapon. Yet the security screeners at George Bush International. America’s eighth-busiest airport, missed it entirely. The scariest part of that story was that Transportation Security Administration officials told reporters that this type of incident was " not uncommon. "
Now another Texas airport，Dallas-Fort Worth, is proving the point. This week, a high-level TSA source told the local NBC affiliate that " An undercover TSA agent was able to get through security at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport with a handgun during testing of the enhanced-imaging body scanners. "
The TSA insider who blew the whistle on the test also said that none of the TSA agents who Ailed to spot the gun on the scanned image were disciplined. The source said the agents continue to work the body scanners today.
This is not confidence-inspiring. If TSA screeners can’t even stop guns getting through security, Why are they taking away our bottled water Incidents like this only lend incentives to TSA critics who say the whole airport security apparatus is an enormous waste of time and money. The TSRs attitude towards the reporting of these SOrtS of messes isn’t helpful, either. They only provided the NBC with a brief statement claiming that they don’t reveal the results of secret testing for "security reasons" and arguing that "advanced imaging technology is an effective tool to detect both metallic and nonmetallic items hidden on passengers. "That’S pretty much the public affairs equivalent of sticking their fingers in theft ears and saying "lalalalala we can’t hear you! "
It is really hard to have an accountable TSA without greater transparency about the results of secret testing. Instead of leaking hints to the press that failure rates have decreased since the last public reports, the TSA should back up its whispering with actual data. If it won’t, some enterprising congressional committee should order it." Trust US that this works " just isn’t cutting it anymore.What is the author’s demand for the TSA

A.No more secret testing.
B.Promising to be responsible.
C.Rapid response to emergency.
D.Releasing results wi山evidence.

单项选择题

A study by Dr. David Lewis from The University of Sussex, who coined the term " road rage," found that motorists face a hidden mental health impact from the stresses of driving, while bus travel can produce long-term health benefits.
For the experiment, the heart rate and EDR (Electro-Dermal Response)of 30 commuters was measured when taking similar journeys by car and bus．The findings reveal a vast difference in EDR, a form of biophysical measurement that indicates mental stress. The EDR results suggested that taking the car produced significantly more stress than taking the bus, which was 33% less stressful.
"EDR can be a hidden stress—it’s not as visible as intensely nervous driving or audible as road rage. This type of stress can have long-term physiological and emotional implications," said Dr.Lewis, who finds three key factors that increase the stresses of driving a car.
Driving in heavy traffic—especially against a deadline—requires a high level of attention. This requires the brain to work especially hard processing a myriad of incoming information and making, often split-second, decisions．
Congestion and delays can raise blood pressure and physical tension which may manifest itself as " road rage, "having serious long-term health consequences and causing drivers sometimes to take reckless and foolish decisions. Driving in congested traffic now outweighs any previous benefits car-driving once gave．
A sense of frustration of" wasting one’s life" behind the wheel of the car, unable to do anything more productive than casual conversations or listening to the radio. On a bus it is possible to fill the time more profitably by doing some work or reading.
He also notes that highly trained, professional bus drivers are skilled in negotiating the challenges of the road,and the relief of trusting someone else to be in charge of the journey is a key part of what makes taking the bus less stressful.
He encourages people to get out of their cars and on to the bus for trips where it makes sense—such as shopping in town or heading to a restaurant—so that you don’t need to battle traffic or find parking．Switching simple journeys can help achieve the goal of taking a billion Car journeys off the road．All it will take is everyone shifting around a trip a month.This passage is intended to ______.

A. urge the public to stop using cars altogether
B. advise people to take a bus instead of a car when possible
C. tell people how to ward off stress while driving a car
D. highlight the causes of stress in a city

单项选择题

The term "g" (general intelligence) represents a measure of overall cognitive ability across a variety of tests. It’s not the same as IQ but it does tend to correlate. Everyone agrees that "g" tends to run in families. But is this down to genetics or to environmental influences
However, no single gene has yet been conclusively linked to intelligence. Rather it appears to be a case of complex interactions on many levels between many different genes.
Identical twins have exactly the same genes, while non-identical twins share about half their genes. Another feature of twins that makes them an ideal choice for studies is that they tend to be raised in pretty much the same environment. If a particular feature is the same in identical twins, but not m non-identical twins, then chances are it’s mainly genes that are controlling that feature.
So what do the twin studies show Well, first degree relatives tend to have "g" correlation of about 0.4-0.5. (Perfect correlation is 1; correlation of 0 means that the two things in question are totally unrelated). Identical twins have a correlation of 0.85, while for non-identical twins it’s about 0.6. Which suggests that genes play a very important role, but are not the only factor, since if they were, the correlation between identical twins would be 1.
Identical twins reared apart are almost as similar in "g" scores as those reared together. Adopted children and their adoptive parents have a "g" correlation of zero, while adopted children and their biological parents tend to have the same correlations as any parent-child pair. So although genes don’t seem to be the only thing affecting intelligence, their effects seem to be constant and apparently not overridden by environment.
Does heritability of intelligence alter over a lifetime Remarkably, it appears so. "g" heritability climbs gradually from 20% in babies to 40% in children, peaking at 60% in adults. Why this should be is still a matter of speculation. It’s been suggested that as our cognitive abilities become more complex, new genes may come into play that were not needed when brain functions were less sophisticated. Or individuals may be drawn towards environments that fit with their genetic makeup, as time goes by and genetic effects that started out small in childhood build up together during adulthood.It can be inferred from Paragraph 5 that

A. environment plays a more important role in "g" than genes
B. an adopted child can become as clever as the step-parents
C. "g" changes with the living environment
D. parenting has less effect on one’s "g" than genes

单项选择题

I was born on the last day of February. I’ve always felt sorry for February, squeezed between the big months of January (named for the Roman god Janus, keeper of gateways) and March (after Mars, the god of war).
The first Roman calendar, legend has it, had 10 months and no February. Beginning at the vernal equinox (春分) with March, it ended with December. In an agricultural society, winter was of little importance, and thus went undivided.
January and February were added about 700 B.C. by the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius. He made all the months 29 or 31 days, but shortened February, the last month of the year, by giving it only 28.
By the time of Julius Caesar, the calendar was three months out of sync with the solar year. This prompted Caesar to announce a new calendar in 46 B.C. Although there is some dispute—some historians say Caesar gave February 29 days--most believe his calendar preserved a 28-day February (with 29 days only in a leap year).
Next, it was the church’s turn. In 1582 Pope Gregory Ⅻ decreed a new calendar in Europe. Many changes were made, but the Pope passed up yet another chance to grant February equality with the other months.
It’s messy, even dangerous, changing how we measure time, but Pope Gregory was hardly the last one to try. The League of Nations received over 150 new calendar designs, and the United Nations has considered more proposals since. Just to name a few, there’s the 30×11 Calendar (which supersizes December to 35 or 36 days) and the Kluznickian Calendar (which adds the month of Aten, after an Egyptian sun god). Each proposal involves something that supposedly modernizes the calendar.
But I have a simpler proposal that won’t lead to chaos, and will correct the historical injustices against February: move the last day of January and the last day of March into February to make it a normal month with 30 days, and a respectable 31 on leap years. This would not add or subtract a single day from the calendar year.
As an added benefit, making the first three months of the year each 30 days would bring them into closer alignment with the lunar cycle. It’s a great idea. And unlike Julius and Augustus, I won’t even demand a month named in my honor.According to most historians, the new calendar in 46 B.C.______.

A. gave February 29 days for the first time
B. unveiled many mysteries surrounding February
C. followed the tradition on February
D. made February equal with other months

单项选择题

Directions: In this part of the test, there are five short passages. Read each passage carefully, and then do the questions that follow. Choose the best answer from the four choices given and mark the corresponding letter with a single bar across the square brackets on your machine-scoring Answer Sheet.
Remember Farid Seif Mr.Seif is the Houston Iranian-American businessman who mistakenly carried a Glock handgun through security, onto a plane, all the Way from Houston to Indianapolis. When he got to his destination and realized his mistake, he alerted security officials. There was reportedly " nothing else" in Mr.Serf’s carry-on besides the weapon. Yet the security screeners at George Bush International. America’s eighth-busiest airport, missed it entirely. The scariest part of that story was that Transportation Security Administration officials told reporters that this type of incident was " not uncommon. "
Now another Texas airport，Dallas-Fort Worth, is proving the point. This week, a high-level TSA source told the local NBC affiliate that " An undercover TSA agent was able to get through security at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport with a handgun during testing of the enhanced-imaging body scanners. "
The TSA insider who blew the whistle on the test also said that none of the TSA agents who Ailed to spot the gun on the scanned image were disciplined. The source said the agents continue to work the body scanners today.
This is not confidence-inspiring. If TSA screeners can’t even stop guns getting through security, Why are they taking away our bottled water Incidents like this only lend incentives to TSA critics who say the whole airport security apparatus is an enormous waste of time and money. The TSRs attitude towards the reporting of these SOrtS of messes isn’t helpful, either. They only provided the NBC with a brief statement claiming that they don’t reveal the results of secret testing for "security reasons" and arguing that "advanced imaging technology is an effective tool to detect both metallic and nonmetallic items hidden on passengers. "That’S pretty much the public affairs equivalent of sticking their fingers in theft ears and saying "lalalalala we can’t hear you! "
It is really hard to have an accountable TSA without greater transparency about the results of secret testing. Instead of leaking hints to the press that failure rates have decreased since the last public reports, the TSA should back up its whispering with actual data. If it won’t, some enterprising congressional committee should order it." Trust US that this works " just isn’t cutting it anymore.The last sentence of the passage suggests that the author’s attitude to the TSA is______.

A.appreciative
B.critical
C.tolerant
D.indifferent

单项选择题

I was born on the last day of February. I’ve always felt sorry for February, squeezed between the big months of January (named for the Roman god Janus, keeper of gateways) and March (after Mars, the god of war).
The first Roman calendar, legend has it, had 10 months and no February. Beginning at the vernal equinox (春分) with March, it ended with December. In an agricultural society, winter was of little importance, and thus went undivided.
January and February were added about 700 B.C. by the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius. He made all the months 29 or 31 days, but shortened February, the last month of the year, by giving it only 28.
By the time of Julius Caesar, the calendar was three months out of sync with the solar year. This prompted Caesar to announce a new calendar in 46 B.C. Although there is some dispute—some historians say Caesar gave February 29 days--most believe his calendar preserved a 28-day February (with 29 days only in a leap year).
Next, it was the church’s turn. In 1582 Pope Gregory Ⅻ decreed a new calendar in Europe. Many changes were made, but the Pope passed up yet another chance to grant February equality with the other months.
It’s messy, even dangerous, changing how we measure time, but Pope Gregory was hardly the last one to try. The League of Nations received over 150 new calendar designs, and the United Nations has considered more proposals since. Just to name a few, there’s the 30×11 Calendar (which supersizes December to 35 or 36 days) and the Kluznickian Calendar (which adds the month of Aten, after an Egyptian sun god). Each proposal involves something that supposedly modernizes the calendar.
But I have a simpler proposal that won’t lead to chaos, and will correct the historical injustices against February: move the last day of January and the last day of March into February to make it a normal month with 30 days, and a respectable 31 on leap years. This would not add or subtract a single day from the calendar year.
As an added benefit, making the first three months of the year each 30 days would bring them into closer alignment with the lunar cycle. It’s a great idea. And unlike Julius and Augustus, I won’t even demand a month named in my honor.It is implied in the passage that______.

A. most people today are not interested in changing the calendar
B. there is no point in changing the current calendar
C. people have been trying to make changes to the calendar
D. it is urgent for us to make improvements to the calendar

单项选择题

The term "g" (general intelligence) represents a measure of overall cognitive ability across a variety of tests. It’s not the same as IQ but it does tend to correlate. Everyone agrees that "g" tends to run in families. But is this down to genetics or to environmental influences
However, no single gene has yet been conclusively linked to intelligence. Rather it appears to be a case of complex interactions on many levels between many different genes.
Identical twins have exactly the same genes, while non-identical twins share about half their genes. Another feature of twins that makes them an ideal choice for studies is that they tend to be raised in pretty much the same environment. If a particular feature is the same in identical twins, but not m non-identical twins, then chances are it’s mainly genes that are controlling that feature.
So what do the twin studies show Well, first degree relatives tend to have "g" correlation of about 0.4-0.5. (Perfect correlation is 1; correlation of 0 means that the two things in question are totally unrelated). Identical twins have a correlation of 0.85, while for non-identical twins it’s about 0.6. Which suggests that genes play a very important role, but are not the only factor, since if they were, the correlation between identical twins would be 1.
Identical twins reared apart are almost as similar in "g" scores as those reared together. Adopted children and their adoptive parents have a "g" correlation of zero, while adopted children and their biological parents tend to have the same correlations as any parent-child pair. So although genes don’t seem to be the only thing affecting intelligence, their effects seem to be constant and apparently not overridden by environment.
Does heritability of intelligence alter over a lifetime Remarkably, it appears so. "g" heritability climbs gradually from 20% in babies to 40% in children, peaking at 60% in adults. Why this should be is still a matter of speculation. It’s been suggested that as our cognitive abilities become more complex, new genes may come into play that were not needed when brain functions were less sophisticated. Or individuals may be drawn towards environments that fit with their genetic makeup, as time goes by and genetic effects that started out small in childhood build up together during adulthood.It can be concluded from the passage that______.

A. it is easy to identify what determines our intelligence
B. genes are a more important determinant of "g" than environment
C. identical twins have exactly the same IQ
D. IQ depends more on environment than on genes

单项选择题

A study by Dr. David Lewis from The University of Sussex, who coined the term " road rage," found that motorists face a hidden mental health impact from the stresses of driving, while bus travel can produce long-term health benefits.
For the experiment, the heart rate and EDR (Electro-Dermal Response)of 30 commuters was measured when taking similar journeys by car and bus．The findings reveal a vast difference in EDR, a form of biophysical measurement that indicates mental stress. The EDR results suggested that taking the car produced significantly more stress than taking the bus, which was 33% less stressful.
"EDR can be a hidden stress—it’s not as visible as intensely nervous driving or audible as road rage. This type of stress can have long-term physiological and emotional implications," said Dr.Lewis, who finds three key factors that increase the stresses of driving a car.
Driving in heavy traffic—especially against a deadline—requires a high level of attention. This requires the brain to work especially hard processing a myriad of incoming information and making, often split-second, decisions．
Congestion and delays can raise blood pressure and physical tension which may manifest itself as " road rage, "having serious long-term health consequences and causing drivers sometimes to take reckless and foolish decisions. Driving in congested traffic now outweighs any previous benefits car-driving once gave．
A sense of frustration of" wasting one’s life" behind the wheel of the car, unable to do anything more productive than casual conversations or listening to the radio. On a bus it is possible to fill the time more profitably by doing some work or reading.
He also notes that highly trained, professional bus drivers are skilled in negotiating the challenges of the road,and the relief of trusting someone else to be in charge of the journey is a key part of what makes taking the bus less stressful.
He encourages people to get out of their cars and on to the bus for trips where it makes sense—such as shopping in town or heading to a restaurant—so that you don’t need to battle traffic or find parking．Switching simple journeys can help achieve the goal of taking a billion Car journeys off the road．All it will take is everyone shifting around a trip a month.Which of the following is an appropriate title for this passage

A. Car Driving: A Demanding But Exciting Job
B. Traffic Jams: A Source of Diseases and Conflicts
C. Road Rage: A Frequent Occurrence on the Way
D. Bus Travel: One Third Less Stressful Than the Car

单项选择题

I was born on the last day of February. I’ve always felt sorry for February, squeezed between the big months of January (named for the Roman god Janus, keeper of gateways) and March (after Mars, the god of war).
The first Roman calendar, legend has it, had 10 months and no February. Beginning at the vernal equinox (春分) with March, it ended with December. In an agricultural society, winter was of little importance, and thus went undivided.
January and February were added about 700 B.C. by the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius. He made all the months 29 or 31 days, but shortened February, the last month of the year, by giving it only 28.
By the time of Julius Caesar, the calendar was three months out of sync with the solar year. This prompted Caesar to announce a new calendar in 46 B.C. Although there is some dispute—some historians say Caesar gave February 29 days--most believe his calendar preserved a 28-day February (with 29 days only in a leap year).
Next, it was the church’s turn. In 1582 Pope Gregory Ⅻ decreed a new calendar in Europe. Many changes were made, but the Pope passed up yet another chance to grant February equality with the other months.
It’s messy, even dangerous, changing how we measure time, but Pope Gregory was hardly the last one to try. The League of Nations received over 150 new calendar designs, and the United Nations has considered more proposals since. Just to name a few, there’s the 30×11 Calendar (which supersizes December to 35 or 36 days) and the Kluznickian Calendar (which adds the month of Aten, after an Egyptian sun god). Each proposal involves something that supposedly modernizes the calendar.
But I have a simpler proposal that won’t lead to chaos, and will correct the historical injustices against February: move the last day of January and the last day of March into February to make it a normal month with 30 days, and a respectable 31 on leap years. This would not add or subtract a single day from the calendar year.
As an added benefit, making the first three months of the year each 30 days would bring them into closer alignment with the lunar cycle. It’s a great idea. And unlike Julius and Augustus, I won’t even demand a month named in my honor.The author suggests in the last paragraph that his proposal______.

A. is easy to carry out
B. is simpler than the others
C. will trigger little dispute
D. makes scientific sense

单项选择题

The term "g" (general intelligence) represents a measure of overall cognitive ability across a variety of tests. It’s not the same as IQ but it does tend to correlate. Everyone agrees that "g" tends to run in families. But is this down to genetics or to environmental influences
However, no single gene has yet been conclusively linked to intelligence. Rather it appears to be a case of complex interactions on many levels between many different genes.
Identical twins have exactly the same genes, while non-identical twins share about half their genes. Another feature of twins that makes them an ideal choice for studies is that they tend to be raised in pretty much the same environment. If a particular feature is the same in identical twins, but not m non-identical twins, then chances are it’s mainly genes that are controlling that feature.
So what do the twin studies show Well, first degree relatives tend to have "g" correlation of about 0.4-0.5. (Perfect correlation is 1; correlation of 0 means that the two things in question are totally unrelated). Identical twins have a correlation of 0.85, while for non-identical twins it’s about 0.6. Which suggests that genes play a very important role, but are not the only factor, since if they were, the correlation between identical twins would be 1.
Identical twins reared apart are almost as similar in "g" scores as those reared together. Adopted children and their adoptive parents have a "g" correlation of zero, while adopted children and their biological parents tend to have the same correlations as any parent-child pair. So although genes don’t seem to be the only thing affecting intelligence, their effects seem to be constant and apparently not overridden by environment.
Does heritability of intelligence alter over a lifetime Remarkably, it appears so. "g" heritability climbs gradually from 20% in babies to 40% in children, peaking at 60% in adults. Why this should be is still a matter of speculation. It’s been suggested that as our cognitive abilities become more complex, new genes may come into play that were not needed when brain functions were less sophisticated. Or individuals may be drawn towards environments that fit with their genetic makeup, as time goes by and genetic effects that started out small in childhood build up together during adulthood.It seems that heritability of intelligence

A. has been clearly explained
B. declines as we grow up
C. increases with our age
D. remains unchanged all our life

单项选择题

I was born on the last day of February. I’ve always felt sorry for February, squeezed between the big months of January (named for the Roman god Janus, keeper of gateways) and March (after Mars, the god of war).
The first Roman calendar, legend has it, had 10 months and no February. Beginning at the vernal equinox (春分) with March, it ended with December. In an agricultural society, winter was of little importance, and thus went undivided.
January and February were added about 700 B.C. by the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius. He made all the months 29 or 31 days, but shortened February, the last month of the year, by giving it only 28.
By the time of Julius Caesar, the calendar was three months out of sync with the solar year. This prompted Caesar to announce a new calendar in 46 B.C. Although there is some dispute—some historians say Caesar gave February 29 days--most believe his calendar preserved a 28-day February (with 29 days only in a leap year).
Next, it was the church’s turn. In 1582 Pope Gregory Ⅻ decreed a new calendar in Europe. Many changes were made, but the Pope passed up yet another chance to grant February equality with the other months.
It’s messy, even dangerous, changing how we measure time, but Pope Gregory was hardly the last one to try. The League of Nations received over 150 new calendar designs, and the United Nations has considered more proposals since. Just to name a few, there’s the 30×11 Calendar (which supersizes December to 35 or 36 days) and the Kluznickian Calendar (which adds the month of Aten, after an Egyptian sun god). Each proposal involves something that supposedly modernizes the calendar.
But I have a simpler proposal that won’t lead to chaos, and will correct the historical injustices against February: move the last day of January and the last day of March into February to make it a normal month with 30 days, and a respectable 31 on leap years. This would not add or subtract a single day from the calendar year.
As an added benefit, making the first three months of the year each 30 days would bring them into closer alignment with the lunar cycle. It’s a great idea. And unlike Julius and Augustus, I won’t even demand a month named in my honor.The author’s purpose in writing the passage is to______.

A. emphasize that February should be extended
B. rewrite the history of February in the calendar
C. explain why February should be the shortest month
D. compare various proposals to make February longer

你可能感兴趣的试题