Q: Read the article and select the best answer. Article: The first flights of the new airlines that will take tourists into space are ready to take off in 2012, and getting a seat on one is not all that different from booking a trip someplace on Earth. You can sign up on the website of, say, Virgin Galactic,the most wellknown of the new space tourism companies, or go to an approved travel agency and put down a large deposit. Soon you will be able to buy travel insurance,just as you can for any other vacation. Until now,space tourism has been limited to the ultrawealthy. Just seven people have paid tens of millions of dollars each for a trip to the International Space Station aboard a Russian rocket. But that could change this year, when Virgin Galactic intends to start offering flights just beyond the space barrier on a rocket ship it has built, featuring five minutes of weightlessness during a twoandahalfhour tour. At $ 200,000 a seat, this will open the final frontier to far more people. At least two other specialty airlines have jumped in as well, taking reservations and deposits for future space flights.Allianz, the big insurer, will introduce an insurance product in 2012, lending space tourism the _ of the regular travel industry. "Just to be able to sell space travel as a regular part of your business, really, just how cool is that?" said Lynda Turley Garrett, president of Alpine Travel of Saratoga, Calif.,who is one of 58 accredited space agents for Virgin Galactic in the United States. In five years,Ms.Garrett has sold three seats. But she expects that to change once passengers start going up and coming down to tell their friends. "By 2017,it'll be just like scheduling a flight to L.A.," Ms.Garrett predicted. Question: If you want to book a flight to space in 2012, you can _ . Options: A: go to any travel agency B: telephone Virgin Galactic C: pay a visit to Allianz D: sign up on the website of Virgin Galactic
A: D

Q: Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Matt Haimovitz is 42 and a renowned cellist in the world. He rushed into the classical music scene at the age of 12 after Itzhak Perlman, the famed violinist, heard him play. But nothing in his family history explains where Haimovitz got his extraordinary talent. And that's typical, Ellen Winner, a professor says. "People are fascinated by these children because they don't understand where their talent came from. You will see parents who say, 'I wasn't like this, and my husband wasn't like this.' It seems to sometimes just come out of the blue," Winner says. It's not clear whether a prodigy's brain is any different from the brains of other children, in part because there have been no study comparing the brains of prodigies to those of average people. "But I believe that anything that shows up so early, without training, has got to be either a genetic or some other biological basis," Winner says. "If a child suddenly at the age of 3 goes to the piano and picks out a tune and does it beautifully, that has to be because that child has a different brain." Children who are extremely gifted tend to be socially different, too, Winner says. "They feel like they can't find other kids like themselves, so they feel strange, maybe even like a freak, and feel like they don't have anybody to connect with. On the other hand, they also long to connect with other kids, and they can't find other kids like themselves." As Haimovitz got older, he became frustrated. He wanted to play other kinds of music but felt constricted by the image and the expectations of the boy prodigy who played classical music and filled concert halls. "When you start that early, you suddenly start to grow up in public, and I wanted to experiment," Haimovitz says. So he took his cello into punk rock clubs and coffee houses. He played Bach, Haydn and Hendrix. "My teacher was Leonard Rose, and we never played any 20th-century music. He didn't like it. But once I was exposed to James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix, Miles Dewey Davis El and others, I couldn't... Question: According to some parents, prodigies' extraordinary talent _ . Options: A: comes unexpectedly B: is inherited from parents C: results from hard work D: is trained in early times
A: A

Q: Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Environmental protection was stressed at Kanas, a growing tourism destination in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, famous for its attractive scenery and its "lake monster". "All of the hotels and restaurants will _ from the scenic site to 30 kilometers away," said Jim Liquan, an official with the Kanas Environment and Tourism Bureau. The move aims to protect environment of Kanas, a scenic site that is part of the European ecosystem and bordersprefix = st1 /Kazakhstan,RussiaandMongolia. Meanwhile, construction of environmental facilities including sewage and rubbish treatment plants will be completed soon. According to Mao Ken, chief of AltayPrefecturewhere Kanas is located, the government invested 1 billion yuan (US $ 120 million) on environmental facilities. "Education for tourists is also important," he said. An education center is being created to provide information on how to protect the environment in Kanas. But he vowed that the government would not interfere with the lives of traditional residents in Kanas. It is expected that Kanas will receive more than 500,000 tourists this year, 4,000 more than last year, according to the official. "However, there are still few overseas visitors," he said. Statistics showed that only 2 percent of the total number of tourists is foreigners. "This is partly because the transportation facilities connecting Kanas are still not convenient enough," Mao said. At present, there is only one highway connecting Kanas. "Upon request from tourists, construction of an airport will start this month and will be completed by the end of next year," the official said. A railway line connecting Kuitun and Altay will also open to traffic in 2008 to make it possible to travel to Kanas by train, probably bringing in more tourists. Question: There are few overseas visitors to Kanas because _ . Options: A: scenery in Kanas is not attractive enough B: Kanas hasn't been known to them C: the transportation to Kanas is not convenient enough D: they are afraid of the "lake monster"
A: C