A well-dressed man entered a famous jewelry shop. He explained that he wished to buy a pearl for his wife' s birthday. The price didn't matter, since business had been very good for him that year. After examining a nice black one that costs $5, 000, he paid for the pearl in cash, shook hands with the jeweler, and left. A few days later the man returned and said that his wife liked the pearl so much that she wanted another one just like it. It had to be exactly the same size and quality as she wanted a pair of earrings made. "Can you give me any advice on how to get such a pearl?" said the man. The jeweler regretfully replied, "I would say it's exactly impossible to find one exactly like that pearl." The rich man insisted that the jeweler advertise in the newspapers, offering $25,000 for the matching pearl. Many people answered the advertisement but nobody had a pearl that was just right. Just when the jeweler had given up hope, a little old lady came into his store. To his great surprise, she pulled the perfect pearl from her purse." I don't like to part with it." she said sadly, I got it from my mother, and ,my mother got it from hers. But I really need the money. The jeweler was quickly to pay her before she changed her mind .Then he called the rich man's hotel to tell him the good news .The man, however, was nowhere to be found. The man said he wanted to buy a pearl for _ . A) his wife B) his mother-in-law C) his own mother D) no one
A
Dear Editor: While a new school term is about to begin, perhaps we should reconsider the matter of examinations. In July, two writers(letters to the editor) praised the cancellation of exams because they believe "Tests don't tell the whole story". As a teacher who has worked in four countries, I have had the experience that a student who earns good marks is generally a good student, and a student's final mark in a subject is usually a grade average of the year's work. Of course there are expectations, but they do not have the frequency that would give an unfair picture of a student's ability. The simple fact is that proper class work; diligent exam studies and good marks are almost certain indicators of a student's future performance. The opposite is, almost certainly, incompetence. There is no acceptable substitute for competition of quality. How can teachers and future officials determine what a student has learned and remembered? Should we simply take the student's mark for it? Any institution that "liberates" students from fair and formal exams is misguided, if not ignorant and surely the "graduates " of such institutions will lack trustworthiness , not to mention being rejected by foreign universities for graduate or other studies. When all is said and done, I sense that a fear of failure and a fear of unpleasant comparison with others are at the bottom of most ban-exam talks. Excellence and quality fear nothing. On the contrary, they seek competition and desire the satisfaction of being the best. According to the writer of the letter, those who oppose exams _ . A) are incompetent teachers B) fear failure C) have no confident in competition D) both B and C
D
Q: The cattle egret has lived in American continent in recent years. Non-native species are a worldwide problem and studies are devoted to assess the damage they cause to local species populations. The cattle egret primarily lives on the grassland and feeds in close association with animals like cattle and sheep. This bird is native to Africa, southern Europe and western Asia. The cattle egret in Brazil is unlike a number of bird species that have been established and expanded to non-native areas through human assistance. The first sight of the cattle egret in the New World were reported between 1877 and 1882, followed by sightings in British Guiana and Colombia and later expansion throughout the Americas. In Brazil, the cattle egret was first recorded in the northern region of the country in 1964, feeding along with buffalos on Marajo Island in the state of Para. While the cattle egret is not currently a threat to native animals and birds in Brazil throughout most of its geographic distribution, it has the potential to produce bad effects, as evidenced by its occupation of island environments. For example, in the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, the cattle egret drives adult native seabirds away from their nests in producing time. Understanding how the cattle egret settled and lived in Brazil is important for the better understanding of spreading patterns of bird populations and their interaction with the local species. Explaining the egret cattle's settling in the Americas is a challenging task due to the lack of sufficient information and reports on entrance time, location, and number of events. Comparisons between native and non-native populations can provide a 'natural' experimental way to clarify the biological and environmental factors that may contribute to range expansion and adaptation to climate change, and to find how animals respond to strange and sudden ecological and environmental pressures. The research on the American cattle egret A) must be meaningless to other animals. B) will mainly take place in the laboratory. C) should be very easy due to the existing fact. D) can help discover how animals adapt to the environment.
A: D
Question: Country-dwellers often say the constant noise, heavy traffic and crowds of the city would drive them mad. Well, they might be right, according to the latest research. City residents are more likely to develop mental illnesses than those who live in villages, a study has found. Researchers from Cardiff university examined the lifestyles of more than 200,000 people in Sweden and found that those who lived in urban areas were more at risk from mental illnesses than people who lived in villages. The experts don't know exactly why this is but they suggest that town and city residents are more likely to be ostracized by those around them. They are more likely to experience discrimination if they do not fit in, which can lead to them feeling anxious and even developing mental illnesses. Dr Stanley Zammit, who led the research said that people living in towns and cities are more likely to develop other mental illnesses that result in personality changes -- a condition known as non-affective psychosis . Earlier this year an official report found that village-dwellers live an average of two years longer than those living in towns and cities. According to figures from the Office of National Statistics in the UK, men who live in villages are likely to live for between 78 and 79 years, while those in towns and cities can expect to survive to an age of 76. Women on average survive to their 81stbirthday in towns and cities, but live to between 82 and 83 in villages. The small marked town of Wimborne Minster in rural Dorset was named the healthiest place to live in. What is the passage mainly about? A) Country-dwellers are more likely to develop mental illnesses. B) City-dwellers are more likely to develop mental illnesses. C) Country-dwellers live longer than city-dwellers. D) City-dwellers live longer than country-dwellers.
Answer: B
Q: The horsepower was first used two hundred years ago. James Watt had made the world's first widely used steam engine. He had no way of telling people exactly how powerful it was, for at that time there were no units for measuring power. Watt decided to find out how much work one strong horse could do in one minute. He called that init one horsepower. With this unit he could measure the work his steam engine could do. He discovered that a horse could lift a 3,300-pound weight 10 feet into the air in one minute. His engine could lift a 3,300 pound weight 100 feet in one minute. Because his engine did ten times as much work as the horse, Watt called it a ten-horsepower engine. Watt made the world's first _ . A) train B) engine C) steam engine D) bus
A: C