问题:问答题The world economy has run into a brick wall. Despite countless warnings in recent years about the need to address a looming hunger crisis in poor countries and a looming energy crisis worldwide, world leaders failed to think ahead. The result is a global food crisis. Wheat, corn and rice prices have more than doubled in the past two years, and oil prices have more than tripled since the start of 2004. These food-price increases combined with soaring energy costs will slow if not stop economic growth in many parts of the world and will even undermine political stability, as evidenced by the protest riots that have erupted in places like Haiti, Bangladesh and Burkina Faso. Practical solutions to these growing woes do exist, but we'll have to start thinking ahead and acting globally. The crisis has its roots in four interlinked trends. The first is the chronically slow productivity of farmers in the poorest countries, caused by their inability to pay for seeds, fertilizers and irrigation. The second is the misguided policy in the U.S. and Europe of subsidizing diversion of food crops to produce biofuels like corn-based ethanol. The third is climate change: take the recent droughts in Australia and Europe, which cut the global production of grain in 2005 and 2006. The fourth is the growing global demand for food and feed grains brought on by swelling populations and incomes. In short, rising demand has hit a limited supply, with the poor taking the hardest blow. So, what should be done? Here are three steps to ease the current Crisis and avert the potential for a globa1 disaster. The first is to scale-up the dramatic success of Malawi, a famine-prone country in southern Africa, which three years ago established a special fund to help its farmers get fertilizer and high-yield seeds. Malawi’s harvest doubled after just one year. An international fund based on the Malawi model would cost a mere $10 per person annually in the rich world, or $10 billion in all. Such a fund could fight hunger as effectively as the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria is controlling those diseases. Second, the U.S. and Europe should abandon their policies to subsidizing the conversion of food into biofules. The U.S. government gives farmers a taxpayer-financed subsidy of 51 cents per gal of ethanol divert corn from the food and feed-grain supply. There maybe a case for biofuels produced on lands that do not produce foods—tree crops (like palm oil) , grasses and wood products—but there’s no case for doling out subsidies to put the world’s dinner into the gas tank. Third, we urgently need to weatherproof the world’s crops as soon and as effectively as possible. For a poor farmer, sometimes something as simple as a farm pond—which collects rainwater to be used for emergency irrigation in a dry spell—can make the difference between a bountiful crop and a famine. The world has already committed to establishing a Climate Adaptation Fund to help poor regions climate-proof vital economic activities such as food production and health care but has not yet acted upon the promise.
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
问题:单选题Seed is a physicist, which means that he studies______.A human bodyB medicineC surgeryD physics
Wednesday, November 30, 2022
问题:单选题Sugar manufactures have ______.A tried hard to make experiments on their own with sugar on humans and animalsB invested millions of dollars in buying best names of scientists to sell sugar.C hoped to encounter some scientific findings about sugar.D tried hard to establish public relations in order to open the market for sugar.
Thursday, September 15, 2022
问题:单选题According to the passage, we may infer that in the future______.A less and less students will go to university to avoid confronting mental-health problems.B more and more students will go to university to find ways to make universities less tough.C undergraduates will have no choice but to continue to suffer from mental-health problems in silence.D undergraduates are supposed to find ways to let mental suffering out with psychological counselors’ help.
Sunday, May 5, 2024
问题:问答题[A] Difficulty of changing one's immigration status. [B] Extent of error in card completion. [C] Classification of border-crossers. [D] Uncertainty in categorization. [E] Computer-assisted measurement of illegal immigration. [F] Preventing illegal immigration. [G] Determining net flow of population. Whenever a person enters or leaves the island nation of Freedonia, he or she must fill out an arrival or departure card. The data collected from the cards are entered into a computer database, known as the Inflow/Outflow Record (IOR). The Immigration Bureau uses the IOR to monitor changes in the population of Freedonia, which was estimated in 1994 to be 14.4 million people. 1. ___________________________ The cards do more than just help count the number of people coming and going. The people who cross Freedonia's borders are put into one of several categories depending on how they fill out their card. The first category, labelled "Category M" by the Immigration Bureau, is made up of people, usually tourists and business travellers from abroad, whose stay in Freedonia is less than 6 months. In "Category N" are citizens and residents of Freedonia who go abroad for a similar period of time. "Category P" includes foreigners who stay in Freedonia for a period longer than 6 months, while Freedonians who leave the country for more than 6 months are put in "Category Q". Then there are the people who migrate permanently to Freedonia, known as "Category R", and those who permanently emigrate from the island state, who are placed in "Category S". Emigrants, it should be noted, are sometimes former immigrants to Freedonia. 2. ___________________________ One problem with maintaining the IOR is that the departure and arrival cards ask for people's intentions, and intentions do not always become reality. Freedonia's population includes many people who originally entered the country on a temporary visa but who later applied for and were given permanent status; in this way, someone who was Category M becomes Category R. This is not too great a problem as changes in migration status inside the country can easily be tracked and entered into the IOR. It becomes difficult to make accurate categorizations, though, when Freedonians move overseas with plans to return--whether in less than 6 months or after a longer period—but do not, in fact, come back. Similarly, Freedonians who claim to be emigrating to other countries may change their minds and return to Freedonia. 3. ___________________________ People may also make mistakes when filling out the cards. In 1994, a study was made of 21,730 arrival and departure cards filled out by people leaving from Freedonia's major airports and seaports. The study showed that one in five cards had errors. A total of 4,008 passengers who were citizens of Freedonia mistakenly said that they were temporary entrants to Freedonia. Of these,18 percent were, in fact, emigrating or Category Q leavers. The study's most important finding was the lack of certainty expressed by departing Freedonians about when they planned to return to Freedonia. The arrival and departure cards were redesigned by the Immigration Bureau after the 1994 study, but while the new cards have been in use for over a decade, no new research has been done. 4. ___________________________ The unrecorded movements of people from one category to another make it hard to measure the flow of population, but it should be said that Freedonia is the only nation with high overall immigration that keeps reliable records of departures. In this way, the Immigration Bureau is able to keep track of departing native Freedonians as well as former settlers. By monitoring both immigration and emigration, the Bureau is able to maintain a record of net migration, the total gain or loss of people over a period of time. In other countries with high level of immigration, the issue of net migration has often been neglected. 5. ___________________________ One final benefit of the IOR is the help it gives in determining the level of illegal immigration to Freedonia. People who enter Freedonia saying they will stay in the country for under six months will appear automatically in the database as "Category T" if they have not left the country after the end of that period. Unlike countries such as the United States that have little idea of the true extent of illegal immigration entering their borders, Freedonia's Immigration Bureau has shown it is able to keep a fairly accurate count.
Friday, May 3, 2024
问题:单选题The phrase “making the biggest splash” (line 1, paragraph 3) most probably means ______.A causing the biggest troubleB exerting the greatest effortC achieving the greatest successD enjoying the widest popularity
Friday, December 1, 2023
问题:问答题A set of golden lights hovering silently in the night sky in a “V” formation stopped traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, but were the drivers seeing visitors from outer space or just a set of military flares flaming out?At least 15 people contacted police to report seeing strange lights in the New Jersey sky over the weekend. More than a dozen people, including two Carteret, N.J., police officers, saw the lights last weekend, and several of the witnesses described a sense of serenity that seemed to emanate from the celestial display. The gold lights hovered for awhile, according to the witnesses, and then disappeared.To some, the description sounded very much like the so-called Phoenix Lights, another V formation that appeared in the sky near Phoenix in March 1997. Like the apparition in New Jersey, the Phoenix lights were caught on videotape. The formation also matches reports of unexplained lights in the sky from all across the United States, as well as England and Europe.
Saturday, December 2, 2023
问题:问答题Directions: You have taken a message from a phone call for your roommate Sun Fei, who is supposed to be back later to go to a movie with you tonight. Now you have to leave to attend to some urgent business. Write a note to your roommate to tell her about: (1)the telephone message you’ve taken, (2)your reason for not waiting in the dorm, and (3)what to do with your film ticket. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the note. Use “Tian Jie” instead.
问题:单选题The estimates in Economic Outlook show that in rich countries ______.A heavy industry becomes more energy-intensiveB income loss mainly results from fluctuating crude oil pricesC manufacturing industry has been seriously squeezedD oil price changes have no significant impact on GDP
Tuesday, May 30, 2023
问题:单选题What does the author feel about the vanishing languages throughout the world?A Concerned.B Indifferent.C Pleased.D Sympathetic.
Tuesday, February 13, 2024
问题:问答题Top colleges and universities are rushing into online education, but the big news is the proliferation of a new breed of for-profit online institutions bringing Internet education to the masses. “The Internet will probably be the single most democratizing force in education,” says Columbia Business School Dean Meyer Feldberg, who envisions educational programs being routed through the Net to hundreds of millions of people. The largest online institution is the University of Phoenix (http://onl.uophx.edu/), with some 6, 000 students today and hopes of reaching 200, 000 students in 10 years. The University offers bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in business management, technology, education and nursing. The institution boasts that if you’re a student “you can earn your degree via the Internet whenever and wherever you want.” The University notes that its degree programs cost far less and may take some students far less time to complete. On the other hand, a Business Week survey of 247 companies found that only a handful would consider hiring applicants who earned their MBA degrees online. Whether that will change as for-profit online universities improve their offerings—and graduates prove their worth—is anyone’s guess.
Saturday, April 27, 2024
问题:问答题Directions: You are preparing to organize a lecture and in need of a prominent professor. Write a letter to invite him. Your letter should cover the following information: (1) the time and place of the lecture; (2) the theme of the lecture; (3) the reasons of bolding such a lecture. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. You don't need to write the address.
Sunday, February 4, 2024
问题:问答题Directions: Please write an essay in 160-200 words entitled “Water Shortage” based on the following outline. The first sentence has been given. Outline: (1)Water shortage has become much more serious than before. (2)The chief reasons for water shortage. (3)My suggestions.
Wednesday, September 13, 2023
问题:问答题Tomorrow is Tuesday, I’ll spend five minutes warming up on the Versa-Climber. Then I’ll do 30 minutes on a stair mill. On Wednesday a personal trainer will work me like a farm animal for an hour. Thursday is “body wedge” class, which involves another exercise contraption (device). Friday will bring a 5.5-mile run, the extra half-mile my exhausting compensation of any gastrono mical (the art or science of good eating) indulgences during the week. I have exercised like this—obsessively, a bit persistently—for years, but recently I began to wonder: Why am I doing this? Except for a two-year period at the end of an unhappy relationship—a period when I self-medicated with lots of Italian desserts—I have never been overweight. One of the most widely accepted, commonly repeated assumptions in our culture is that if you exercise, you will lose weight. But I exercise all the time, and since I ended that relationship and cut most of those desserts, my weight has returned to the same 163 lb. it has been most of my adult life. I still have gut fat that hangs over my belt when I sit. Why isn’t all the exercise wiping it out? (1)________________. Of course, some people join and never go. Still, as one major study— the Minnesota Heart Survey-found, more of us at least say we exercise regularly. The survey ran from 1980, when only 47%of respondents said they engaged in regular exercise, to 2000, when the figure had grown to 57%. (2) ________________. Yes, it’s entirely possible that those of us who regularly go to the gym would weigh even more if we exercised less. But like many other people, I get hungry after I exercise, so I often eat more on the days I work out than on the days I don’t. Could exercise actually be keeping me from losing weight? (3) ________________. Today doctors encourage even their oldest patients to exercise, which is sound advice for many reasons: People who regularly exercise are at significantly lower risk for all manner of diseases—those of the heart in particular. They less often develop cancer, diabetes and many other ill-nesses. But the past few years of obesity research show that the role of exercise in weight loss has been wildly overstated. (4) ________________. Many recent studies have found that exercise isn’t as important in holding people lose weight as you hear so regularly in gym advertisements or on shows like The Biggest Loser—or, for that matter, from magazines like this one. (5) ________________. That causes us to eat more, which in turn can cancel out the weight-loss benefits we just accrued. Exercise, in other words, isn’t necessarily helping us lose weight. It may even be making it harder. (本文选自Time 2009年刊) [A] And yet obesity figures have risen dramatically in the same period: a third of Americans are obese, and another third count as overweight by the Federal Government’s definition. [B] The conventional wisdom that exercise is essential for shedding pounds is actually fairly new. As recently as the 1960s, doctors routinely advised against rigorous exercise, particularly for older adults who could injure themselves. [C] It’s a question many of us could ask. More than 45 million Americans now belong to a health club, up from 23 million in 1993. We spend some $19 billion a year on gym memberships. [D] The findings were surprising. On average, the women in all the groups, even the control group, lost weight, but the women who exercised—sweating it out with a trainer several days a week for six months—did not lose significantly more weight than the control subjects did. [E] The basic problem is that while it’s true that exercise burns calories and that you must burn calories to lose weight, exercise has another effect: it can stimulate hunger. [F] “In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless,” says Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism (any basic process of organic functioning or operating) at Louisiana State University and a prominent exercise researcher. [G] Yes, although the muscle-fat relationship is often misunderstood. According to calculations published in the journalObesity Researchby a Columbia University team in 2001, a pound of muscle bums approximately six calories a day in a resting body, compared with the two calories that a pound of fat burns.
Monday, September 19, 2022
问题:单选题From the context, we may guess that the word “squabble” means______.A accidentB mealC jokeD quarrel
问题:单选题The estimates in Economic Outlookshow that in rich countries ______.A heavy industry becomes more energy-intensiveB income loss mainly results from fluctuating crude oil pricesC manufacturing industry has been seriously squeezedD oil price changes have no significant impact on GDP
Sunday, November 26, 2023
问题:问答题Directions: You are planning to study abroad. Write a letter of inquiry to (1) give your brief personal information; (2) ask for the terms of admission into that university; (3) ask for the possibility of getting a scholarship. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. You don't need to write the address.
问题:问答题In the early to mid-1990s, up to 80% of all Internet traffic was adult-related. Even today, the adult-entertainment industry still drives the Internet, with profit margins of 30% or more, even though they have no off-line revenue stream generated by magazines, books, videocassettes, etc. But in the past couple of years, cybersex has moved uptown. From time to time, we need an expert. In such situations, the Internet has been like a gift from the gods. In the old days, authorities were near at hand for expert advice: the village seamstress on how to make a button hole, the blacksmith on how to take care of a horse hooves, etc. On the Internet, advice and answer sites are popping up all over the place with self-proclaimed experts at the ready. It’s said that expert sites or knowledge networks represent the latest stage in the Internet’s evolution, a “democratization of expertise.” However, if your question is about something other than “Who invented the light bulb?” the answers are likely to be a wild potpourri of personal opinions.
Sunday, April 2, 2023