ABOARD XUELONG--The stranded Chinese icebreaker, Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, broke through the Antarctic's heavy ice Hoes at about 6 pm, on Tuesday, January 7th, 2014 and headed for open water, according to Xinhua Agency. After being stranded in heavy ice for five days, the ship had broken free by Tuesday evening and was making its way through lighter ice, China Central Television reported on Tuesday. The vessel, which had been conducting China's 30th Antarctic expedition before going to the aid of the Russian ship Akademik Shokalskiy, will now continue with its scheduled activities. The trapped Russian ship was also trying to free itself on Tuesday, with the favorable west wind loosening the surrounding ice, according to CCTV. A helicopter onboard Xuelong _ 52 passengers onboard Akademik Shokalskiy to an Australian vessel on Thursday. The Russian ship had been stuck in the ice for 10 days. However, Xuelong became trapped during the rescue effort, with the ice surrounding the vessel three to four meters thick, far beyond the ship's ice-breaking capability. Qu Tanzhou, director of the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration under the State Oceanic Administration, told China Daily via telephone on Tuesday that Xuelong's attempts at the breakout started on Tuesday morning. "A west wind is blowing on Tuesday, as we expected, which makes the floes and ice surrounding Xuelong more loose , creating favorable conditions for sailing on Wednesday," Qu said. On Tuesday morning, Xuelong broke ice for about 100 meters at a speed of 6 km per hour, but later became trapped in the broken floes, according to Xinhua. The efforts bore fruit on Tuesday afternoon with the ship sailing through the area of heavy ice. All the 101 crew members onboard are faring well, with entertainment facilities such as ping-pong tables, a gym and a library accessible. There is enough food onboard to last until April, sufficient water for a month and oil for four months, Qu said in a previous interview. How long can the food on Xuelong last? A) A month. B) Two months. C) Until April. D) Half a year.
C
(Question)
The American newspaper has been around for about three hundred years. In 1721, the printer James Franklin, Benjamin's older brother, started the New England Courant,and that was what we might recognize today as a real newspaper. He filled his paper with stories of adventure, articles on art, on famous people, and on all sorts of political subjects. Three centuries after the appearance of Franklin'sCourant,few believe that newspapers in their present printed from will remain alive for long. Newspaper companies are losing advertisers ,readers, market value, and in some cases, their sense of purpose at a speed that would not have been imaginable just several years ago. The chief editor of theTimessaid recently, "At places where they gather, editors ask one another, 'How are you?', as if they have just come out of the hospital or a lost law case." An article about the newspaper appeared on the website of theGuandian, under the headline "NOT DEAD YET." Perhaps not, but the rise of the Internet, which has made the daily newspaper look slow and out of step with the world, has brought about a real sense of death. Some American newspapers have lost 42% of their market value in the past three years. The New York Times Company has seen its stock drop by 54% since the end of 2004, with much of the loss coming in the past year. A manager at Deutsche Bank suggested that stock-holders sell off their Times stock. The Washington Post Company has prevented the trouble only by changing part of its business to education; its testing and test-preparation service now brings in at least half the company's income. How does the author seem to feel about the future of newspapers? A) Satisfied. B) Hopeful. C) Worried. D) Surprised.
(Answer)
C
Ques: Knots are the kind of stuff that even myths are made of.In the Greek legend of the Gordian knot, for example, Alexander the Great used his sword to slice through a knot that had failed all previous attempts to unite it. Knots, enjoy a long history of tales and fanciful names such as "Englishman's tie, " "and "cat's paw. " Knots became the subject of serious scientific investigation when in the 1860s the English physicist William Thomson (known today as Lord Kelvin) proposed that atoms were in fact knotted tubes of ether . In order to be able to develop the equivalent of a periodic table of the elements, Thomson had to be able to classify knots -- find out which different knots were possible. This sparked a great interest in the mathematical theory of knots. A mathematical knot looks very much like a familiar knot in a string, only with the string's ends joined. In Thomson's theory, knots could, in principle at least, model atoms of increasing complexity, such as the hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen atoms, respectively. For knots to be truly useful in a mathematical theory, however, mathematicians searched for some precise way of proving that what appeared to be different knots were really different -- the couldn't be transformed one into the other by some simple manipulation . Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Scottish mathematician Peter Guthrie Tait and the University of Nebraska professor Charles Newton Little published complete tables of knots with up to ten crossings. Unfortunately, by the time that this heroic effort was completed, Kelvin's theory had already been totally discarded as a model for atomic structure. Nevertheless, even without any other application in sight, the mathematical interest in knot theory continued at _ point for its own sake. In fact, mathematical became even more fascinated by knots. The only difference was that, as the British mathematician Sir Michael Atiyah has put it, "the study of knots became a special branch of pure mathematics. " Two major breakthroughs in knot... According to the passage, _ shows the most updated study about knots. A) t 2-t+1 B) t 2-3t+1 C) Alexander polynomial D) Jones polynomial
Ans: D
Ques: A man called Greedy Black loved nothing but old things. He was so crazy about everything that was old and out of fashion because he was convinced that the older, the better. Always worried about losing his treasures, he kept all he had collected in an old room. It had no windows, so it was very dark, and of course, it was full of old things. One day Greedy Black went into this room to get a ladder, as he had often practiced, but slipped on something and fell against a big garden fork. The fork hit him on the head and knocked him down. Then it fell on top of him and hit him hard on the left leg. The ends of the fork then went into his long beard. He fought with the fork fiercely, and at last threw it off him, jumped up and ran out of the room. He was very angry. He had an old sword under his bed, and he now ran and got this. Then he ran back to the room, opened the door suddenly and shouted in a terrible voice, "All right, come out and fight, you and all the other forks in the world! I'm not afraid of you!" But there was no response for his challenge. So in great _ , he turned on the electric light, only to find that there was no other fork but the one that had repeatedly troubled him. After reading this story, what reflections have you got for yourself? Do you still think that keeping old things in a private place sounds sound? Or don't you believe that you have to be far away from forks because forks are the most powerful? Or what else.....? Which of the following is true according to the story? A) The man believed that he could win the game. B) The man became mad after he was in the room. C) The man mistook one fork for more than one. D) The man was wondering how to kill thieves.
Ans:
C