This winter, the air quality over the north China plain was so bad that it was actually off the standard scale. The air pollution reached levels that the World Health Organization describes as dangerous. On Thursday, heavy smog blanketed most of northern and eastern China again. It is reasonable to ask why the air pollution is so bad this winter. Weather conditions and topographic factors have been given as reasons, but, although contributing factors, these are not to blame. The worsening air pollution is linked to an energy mix that relies heavily on coal and to motor vehicle emissions . But despite the astonishing growth of motor vehicles in our cities, it is the burning of coal that is the biggest cause of air pollution. More than half of the country's power plants are located in the eastern region and China's coal consumption has more than doubled in the past decade, reaching 3.8 billion tons last year, accounting for almost half the world's total coal consumption. And with coal occupying nearly 70 percent of the country's primary energy consumption, it has become critical to reduce the use of coal if we are to solve the nation's overall air pollution problem. In the face of the poisonous air recently, one citizen said, "we have nothing but hot air to purify the skies". In fact, the government plans to have 350 billion yuan ($55.67 billion) investment in improving coal-fired facilities and limiting the use of yellow-label cars that do not meet the Euro I emissions standard and so on. However, it would be far more effective to reduce emissions at the source, which means that the biggest challenge currently facing government departments is saying "no" to the country's air polluting offenders. According to the Joint Prevention and Control Plan on Air Pollution in Key Regions released recently by the State Council, the amount of coal the nation consumes is set to rise by 30 percent during the period of the 12th Five-Year Plan. This is not going to let anyone breathe easier. This highlights a key problem when... Which best describes the writer's tone in the passage? A) Pessimistic. B) Convincing. C) Doubtful. D) Concerned.
D
(Question)
Dogs may help save the day in the Philippines, as they use their noses to smell out survivors buried by Friday's mudslide . The team of dogs arrived in the Philippines from Spain, and this Tuesday they were just beginning their work. Search officials told CNN they hope the recent rain will wash away the smell of rescue teams so the dogs can do their job more accurately. The dogs were brought in after sound equipment found sounds coming from deep inside the ruins, at a place where a school stood before the mudslide covered it. The sounds could mean people are still alive under all the mud or it could just be the earth resettling. On Monday, rescue workers worked at the school site until three in the morning, trying to locate survivors, and they will begin digging again as soon as the dogs think they find someone. Human teams from the US, Malaysia, and Australia are all trying to help, too. But so far they have yet to locate any survivors. Rescue workers told CNN that an earlier report that 50 survivors had been found was false. How did all that mud bury the village in the first place? On Friday, 2,400-foot Mt Kanabag turned into a mudslide after two weeks of constant rain weakened it. The mountain crumbled and the mud fell onto the village Guinsaugon, burying the 1,800 people who lived there . Out of the 300 houses in the village, only 3 were not covered by the mud . The village is on a southern Philippine Island called Levte. Rescue efforts have been difficult because the village takes six hours to reach from the nearest airport. Hopefully, the dogs can help their human friends find survivors. How many survivors were found by the dogs? A) 50. B) Only a few. C) 1,800. D) None.
(Answer)
D
Ques: On the old-time farm in America, there were chickens, cows, pigs and horses. But there were very few machines. Most of the work was done by the farm family. Sometimes more workmen were needed in busy seasons. Work done by horses took up 79 percent; by men, 15 percent; and machine work only took up 6 percent. Today all that has changed. On many modern farms machines now will do 96 percent of the work, while man does 3 percent. As for horses, they do 1 percent of the whole work. The children go to school by bus every morning; the parents work on the farm or in the house and other people's help is hardly needed. Their work has been replaced by a whole army of farm machines. How many things are compared in the passage? A) Two. B) Three. C) Four. D) Five.
Ans: B
For most city people, the elevator is an unremarkable machine that inspires none of the enthusiasm or interest that Americans afford trains, jets,and even bicycles. Dr. Christopher Wilk is a member of a small group of elevator experts who consider _ a misunderstanding. Without the elevator, they point out, there could be no downtown skyscrapers or tall buildings, and city life as we know it would be impossible. In that sense, they argue,the elevator's role in American history has been no less significant than that of cars. In fact, according to Wilk?the car and the elevator have been locked in a "secret war" for over a century, with cars making it possible for people to spread horizontally ,and elevators pushing them toward life in close groups of towering vertical columns. If we tend to ignore the significance of elevators, it might be because riding in them tends to be such a brief, boring, and even awkward experience^one that can involve unexpectedly meeting people with whom we have nothing in common, and an unpleasant awareness of the fact that we're hanging from a cable in a long passage. In a new book, Lifted, German journalist and cultural studies professor Andreas Bernard directed all his attention to this experience, studying the origins of elevator and its relationship to humankind and finding that riding in an elevator has never been a totally comfortable experience. "After 150 years, we are still not used to it", Bernard said. "We still have not exactly learned to cope with the mixture of closeness and displeasure." That mixture, according to Bernard, sets the elevator ride apart from just about every other situation we find ourselves in as we go about our lives. Today,as the world's urban population explodes,and cities become more crowded, taller, and more crowded, America's total number of elevators--900,000 at last count, according to Elevator World magazine's "2012 Vertical Transportation Industry"are a force that's becoming more important than ever. And for the people who really, really... The author urges readers to consider _ . A) the exact number of elevator lovers B) the serious future situation of elevators C) the role of elevators in city development D) the relationship between cars and elevators
C