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. What can we learn about theNew England Courant? A) It is mainly about the stock market. B) It marks the beginning of the American newspaper. C) It remains a successful newspaper in America. D) It carries articles by political leaders.
B
"Eat local." It's one way to reduce human effect on the planet.Eating local means to try to buy and consume foods that are grown in places close to home.However, most of the food sold at supermarkets is not locally grown or produced.Trucks and planes deliver these foods from hundreds or thousands of miles away.During the transportation, greenhouse gases are produced, causing global warming.So the shorter the distance your foods must travel, the less the harm is done to the environment. But how do you get local food if you live in a large city, hundreds of miles away from farms?Environmental health scientist Dickson Despommier and his students came up with the idea of a "vertical farm". A vertical farm is a glass-walled structure that could be built as tall as a skyscraper.Since the garden is built upwards, rather than outwards, it requires much less space than an ordinary farm.The world is quickly running out of room for ordinary farming.Vertical farms could be a key to this situation.Despommier imagines a 30-story building with a greenhouse on every floor.The walls of the building would be clear, to allow crops to get as much sunlight as possible.Depending on a city's water resources, Despommier thinks hydroponic farming is another method for the vertical farm which needs no soil to grow plants. Despommier says the hydroponic greenhouses would use a system that would use a city's waste water and fill it with nutrition to make the crops grow.If this method works, it would provide food to a city and save millions of tons of water. The idea of a vertical farm has attracted the attention of government officials around the world.Scott Stringer, a government official from New York City, thinks the city is suitable for the vertical farming."Obviously we don't have much land left for us," Stringer said, "But the sky is the limit in Manhattan." Despommier admits that there is still a lot of work to do to make vertical farms a reality."But I think vertical farming is an idea that can work in a big way." he says. What can we learn about the vertical farming in the passage? A) In a vertical farm, soil may not be needed to grow plants. B) It has solved the problem of the food shortage in a big way. C) It is a 30-story building with a greenhouse on every floor. D) Crops are mainly grown in the rainwater in a vertical farm.
A
Q: More than one in eight U. S. adults finds it hard to stay away from the Internet for several days at a time and about one in eleven tries to hide his or her online habit, according to a study showed on Tuesday. The study by researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine in California found one in eight adults admitted they needed to spend less time online, saying this showed "problematic Interact use" is present in a sizable portion of the population. The study involved a nationwide telephone survey of 2,581 respondents in the spring and summer of 2004 with researchers then examining the data and preparing the report which appears in the October issue of CNS Spectrums. The survey found that 68.9 percent of respondents were regular Internet users and 13.7 percent of the users found it hard to stay offline for several days at a time. It found 12.4 percent often stayed online longer than intended, more than 12 percent said they saw a need to cut back on their Internet use, and 8.7 percent tried to conceal "non-essential "Internet use from family, friends and employers. A smaller number, 8.2 percent, said they use the Internet to escape problems or a bad mood, while 5.9 percent felt their relationships suffered because of too much Internet use. One report published earlier this year said that 5 percent to 10 percent of the population likely will experience Internet addiction . It said signs include a disregard for health or appearance, lack of sleep and reducing physical activities and social communications with others, as well as dry eyes and juries of hands and fingers. Those who try to hide their habit of addition to the Interact make up of the respondents. A) 12.4% B) 8.7% C) 5.9% D) 13.7%
A: B
*Question*
Many rural areas in the United States have no doctor. Some medical schools are trying different ways to treat the problem . One idea is to educate doctors in smaller communities and hope they stay. Dr. William Cathcart-Rake heads a new program at the University of Kansas in the Midwest. "We need more doctors. There's somewhere like a quarter of all of our physicians in Kansas who are sixty years of age or older. So we need to be replacing physicians, too."Says Dr. William Cathcart. He also says medical students from rural areas now typically study in Wichita or Kansas City, two of the biggest cities in Kansas. They say, "You know, I really have every intention of coming back to rural Kansas,"but they meet a soul mate, they get married, their soul mate happens to be from a big city and we never see them again. They get captured in the big city. Hopefully, if we train them in smaller communities, they can meet the future _ here , they can network here, and they have those connections which can hopefully be lifelong. The program is based in Kansas' tenth largest city , Salina, home to about fifty thousand people. Salina is about a three-hour drive from Kansas City, past fields of corn, soybeans and cattle. Student Claire Hinrichsen grew up in a town of about six hundred people. She attended the University of Kansas, or KU, as an undergraduate. One reason why the chose the Salina program is because of the size. There are only eight students--the smallest medical school in the country. Classes are taught by professors in Salina or on a video link from Kansas City or Wichita. Students who complete the four year program will then do their residency training in a small community in the surrounding area. One place a resident might work is the Clay Center Clinic, where Dr. Kerry Murphy is a family physician. Rural doctors generally serve older, poorer patients. Going into a specialty in a big city can mean better working hours and more money to pay off student loans. The Salina program will pay tuition for each year... Why did student Claire Hinrichsen choose the Salina program? A) Because she found her soul mate in rural Kanas. B) Because she likes to work as a doctor. C) Because she grew up in a town of 6,000 people. D) Because she likes the size of the program.
**Answer**
D