It was December 25, 1914, only 5 months into World War I. German, British, and French soldiers, already sick and tired of the senseless killing, disobeyed their superiors and started socialising with "the enemy" along two-thirds of the Western Front. German troops held up Christmas trees with signs, "Merry Christmas". Thousands of troops ran across the battlefields covered with dead bodies. They sang Christmas songs, exchanged photographs of loved ones back home, shared food and even played football. Soldiers hugged men they had been trying to kill a few short hours before. They agreed to warn each other if their officers forced them to fire their weapons, and to aim high. Fear ran through the military leaders on both sides. They felt that their power was being challenged: soldiers declaring their brotherhood with each other and refusing to fight. Generals declared this unexpected peacemaking illegal and said that participating soldiers would face a military court. Those found guilty would be imprisoned or even shot. By March 1915 the socialising movement had been destroyed and the killing machine was back in full operation. Over the next three years more than fifteen million people died in the war. Not many people have heard the story of the Christmas Truce . On Christmas Day, 1988, a local radio host in Boston played "Christmas in the Trenches", a song about the Christmas Truce, several times and was _ by his listeners' response. Thousands of people called in, praising the song, with many moved to tears by the amazing events it described. You can probably guess why the callers were in tears. The Christmas Truce story goes against most of what we have been taught about people. It lets us see the world as it can be and says, "This really happened once." It shows us the potential we have as humans, and contradicts all of those TV and newspaper stories that tell us how mean and heartless people are. It is like hearing that our deepest wishes really are true: the world really can be different. The author uses the story of the soldiers to imply that human beings _ . A) are not trustworthy under stress B) are naturally aggressive and war-like C) are basically caring and kindhearted D) will always do what is in their own self-interest
C
(Question)
The painter Georgia O'keeffe was born in Wisconsin in 1887 and grew up on her family's farm. At seventeen she decided she wanted to be an artist and left the farm for schools in Chicago and New York, but she never lost her bond with the land. Like most painters, O'Keeffe painted the things that were most important to her, and nearly all her works are simplified portrayals of nature. O'Keeffe became famous when her paintings were discovered and exhibited in New York by the photographer Levered Stieglitz, whom she married in 1924. During a visit to New York in 1929, O'Keeffe was so moved by the bleak landscape and broad skies of the Western desert that she began to paint its images. Cows' skulls and other bleached bones found in the desert figured prominently in her paintings. When her husband died in 1946, she moved to New Mexico permanently and used the horizon lines of the desert, colorful flowers, rocks, barren hills, and the sky as subjects for her paintings. Although O'Keeffe painted her best known works in the 1920's, 1930's and 1940's, she continued to produce tributes(, ) to the Western desert until her death in 1986. O'Keeffe is widely considered to have been a pioneering American modernist painter. While most early modern American artists were strongly influenced by European art, O'Keeffe's position was more independent. She established her own vision and preferred to view her painting as a private endeavor. Almost from the beginning, her work was more indentifiably American than that of her contemporaries in its simplified and idealized treatment of color, light, space, and natural forms. Which of the following is NOT mentioned as an influence on O'Keeffe's paintings ? A) Her rural upbringing B) Her life in the West C) The works of European artists D) The appearance of the natural landscape
(Answer)
C
It is pretty much a one-way street. While it may be common for university researchers to try their luck in the commercial world, there is very little traffic in the opposite direction. Pay has always been the biggest deterrent, as people with families often feel they cannot afford the drop in salary when moving to a university job. For some industrial scientists, however, the attractions of academia outweigh any financial considerations. Helen Lee took a 70% cut in salary when she moved from a senior post in Abbott Laboratories to a medical department at the University of Cambridge. Her main reason for returning to academia mid-career was to take advantage of the greater freedom to choose research questions. Some areas of inquiry have few prospects of a commercial return, and Lee's is one of them. The impact of a salary cut is probably less severe for a scientist in the early stages of a career. Guy Grant, now a research associate at the Unilever Centre for Molecular Informatics at the University of Cambridge, spent two years working for a pharmaceutical company before returning to university as a post-doctoral researcher. He took a 30% salary cut but felt it worthwhile for the greater intellectual opportunities. Higher up the ladder, where a pay cut is usually more significant, the demand for scientists with a wealth of experience in industry is forcing universities to make the transition to academia more attractive, according to Lee. Industrial scientists tend to receive training that academics do not, such as how to build a multidisciplinary team, manage budgets and negotiate contracts. They are also well placed to bring something extra to the teaching side of an academic role that will help students get a job when they graduate, says Lee, perhaps experience in manufacturing practice or product development. "Only a small number of undergraduates will continue in an academic career. So someone leaving university who already has the skills needed to work in an industrial lab has far more potential in the... Guy Grant chose to work as a researcher at Cambridge in order to _ . A) do financially more rewarding work B) raise his status in the academic world C) enrich his experience in medical research D) exploit better intellectual opportunities
D