We still have many problems______before we can produce atomic cars.A.overcomingB.having ov
We still have many problems______before we can produce atomic cars.
A.overcoming
B.having overcome
C.to overcome
D.to have overcome
We still have many problems______before we can produce atomic cars.
A.overcoming
B.having overcome
C.to overcome
D.to have overcome
(71)
A.number
B.group
C.price
D.deal
Perhaps the best way to think of our present situation is to imagine a train coming into a switchyard. All of the switches are set before the train arrives, so that its path is completely determined. Some switches we can see, others we can not. There is no ambiguity if we can see the setting of a switch: we can say with confidence that some possible futures will not materialize and others will. At the unseen switches, however, there is no such certainty. We know the train will take one of the tracks leading out, but we have no idea which one. The unseen switches are the true decision points in the future, and what happens when we arrive at them determines the entire subsequent course of events.
When we think about the future of the universe, we can see our "track" many billions of years into the future, but after that there are decision points to be dealt with and possible fates to consider. The goal of science is to reduce the ambiguity at the decision points and find the true road that will be followed.
According to the passage, it is difficult to be certain about the distant future of the universe because we ______.
A.have too many conflicting theories
B.do not have enough funding to continue our research
C.are not sure how the universe is put together
D.have focused on investigations of the moon and planets
When we think about the future of the universe, we can see our "track" many billions of years into the future, but after that there are decision points to be dealt with and possible fates to consider. The goal of science is to reduce the ambiguity at the decision points and find the true road that will be followed.
According to the passage, it is difficult to be certain about the distant future of the universe because we______.
A.have too many conflicting theories
B.do not have enough funding to continue our research
C.are not sure how the universe is put together
D.have focused our investigations on the moon and planets
We may think of all of these as our needs. Yet most of us would be far from satisfied if we had nothing more than these which are supplied for us. (78) We all enjoy extra income to spend on things like books, sports or hobbies. Sometimes we save some of this extra income to pay for future expense of this type on holidays. So we must add our wants to our basic needs. Our standard of living is the degree, to which these needs and wants are satisfied.
But as time goes on, what we think of as our basic needs changes. Twenty years ago a television would have been a luxury, and still is in many countries now. Even now we cannot say it is a need in the same sense as food, clothing and shelter. Yet if most of the people of a country have one, it comes to be accepted as a need.It is possible therefore to have food, clothing and shelter and still be poor by the standards of our own society.
What we need in life is divided into ________ according to this article.
A.the basic necessities and luxury
B.many kinds of need such as food, clothing and houses
C.four groups the basic necessities, luxury, reliable income and future expense
D.the basic necessities and reliable income
One day when I was about twelve years old, it occurred to me to wonder about the phenomenon of laughter. At first I thought it is easy enough to see what I laugh at and why I am amused, but why at such times do I open my mouth and exhale in jerking gasps and wrinkle up my eyes and throw back my head and halloo like an animal? Why do I not instead rap four times on the top of my head or whistle or whirl about?
That was over twenty years ago and I am still wondering, except that I now no longer even take my first assumption for granted, I no longer clearly understand why I laugh at what amuses me nor why things are amusing. I have illustrious company in my confusion, of course, Many of the great minds of history have brought their power of concentration to bear on the mystery of humour, and, to date, their conclusions are so contradictory and ephemeral that they cannot possibly be classified as scientific.
Many definitions of the comic are incomplete and many are simply rewording of things we already know. Aristotle, for example, defined the ridiculous as that which is incongruous but represents neither **er nor pain. But that seems to me to be a most inadequate sort of observation, for of at this minute I insert here the word rutabagas, I have introduced something in congruous, something not funny. Of course, it must be admitted that Aristotle did not claim that every painless in congruity is ridiculous but as soon as we have gone as far as this admission, we begin to see that we have come to grips with a ghost when we think have it pinned, it suddenly appears behind us, mocking us.
An all-embracing definition of humour has been attempted by many philosophers, but no definition, no formula had ever been devised that is entirely satisfactory. Aristotle's definition has come to be known loosely as the "disappointment" theory, or the "frustrated expectation", but he also, discussed another theory borrowed in part from Plato which states that the pleasure we derive in laughing is an enjoyment of the misfortune of others, due to a momentary feeling of superiority or gratified vanity in appreciation of the fact that we ourselves are not in the observed predicament.
第36题:Which of the following can be inferred from the first paragraph?
[A] People don't like to be considered as one with no sense of humour.
[B] People will give you a satisfactory answer to what humour is.
[C] People would like to be a liar or a coward.
[D] People can make light of other's comment on their sense of humour.
The fans are wrong: More than anything else, digital cameras are radically (4)_____ what photography means and what it can be. The venerable medium of photography (5)_____ we know it is beginning to seem out of (6)_____ with the way we live. In our computer and camcorder (7)_____ saving pictures as digital (8)_____ and watching them on TV is no less practical—and in many ways more (9)_____ than fumbling with rolls of film that must be sent off to be (10)_____.
Paper is also terribly (11)_____. Pictures that are incorrectly framed, (12)_____,or lighted are nonetheless committed to film and ultimately processed into prints.
The digital medium changes the (13)_____. Still images that are (14)_____ digitally can immediately be shown on a computer (15)_____, a TV screen, or a small liquid-crystal display (LCD) built fight into the camera. And since the points of light that (16)_____ an image are saved as a series of digital bits in electronic memory, (17)_____ being permanently etched onto film, they can be erased, retouched, and transmitted (18)_____.
What's it like to (19)_____ with one of these digital cameras? It's a little like a first date—exciting, confusing and fraught with (20)_____.
A.rather than
B.let alone
C.much less
D.so as to
But we still retain our primitive optimism about air and water. There will always be enough rain falling from the skies to meet our needs. The air can absorb all the filth we care to put in it. Still less do we worry whether we could ever run short of oxygen. Surely there is air enough to breathe. Who ever asks where oxygen comes from, to begin with? They should—for we now consume about 10 percent of all the atmospheric oxygen every year, thanks to the many forms of combustion which destroy it; every car, aircraft and power station destroys oxygen in quantities far greater than men consume by breathing.
The fact is we are just beginning to press up against the limits of the earth's capacity. We begin to have to watch what we are doing to things like water and oxygen, just as we have to watch whether we are overfishing or overfelling. The realization has dawned that the earth is a spaceship with strictly limited resources. These resources must, in the long run, be recycled, either by nature or by man. Just as the astronaut's urine is purified to provide drinking water and just as his expired air is regenerated to be breathed anew, so all the earth's resources must be recycled, sooner or later. Up to now, the slow pace of nature's own recycling has served, coupled with the fact that the "working capital" of already recycled material was large. But the margins are getting smaller and if men, in even larger numbers, are going to require even larger quantities, the pace of recycling will have to be artificially quickened.
All we have is a narrow band of usable atmosphere, no more than seven miles high, a thin crust of land, only one eighth of the surface of which is really suitable for people to live on, and a limited supply of drinkable water, which we continually reuse. And in the earth, we have a capital of fossil fuels and ores, which, we steadily run down billions of times faster than nature, restores it. These resources are tied together in a complex set of transactions. The air helps purify the water, the water irrigates the plants, the plants help to renew the air.
We heedlessly intervene in these transactions. For instance, we cut down the forests, which transpire water and oxygen, we build dams and pipeline which limit the movement of animals, we pave the earth and build reservoirs, altering the water cycle. So far, nature has brushed off these injuries as pinprick. But now we are becoming so strong, so clever and so numerous, that they are beginning to hurt.
Today there has been a change of attitude towards nature. This is shown in ______.
A.the pollution of rivers
B.the overfishing of seas
C.the increase in air pollution e
D.the fostering of forests
(4)_____ a decade or more, we have caused significant damage to (5)_____ unknown ecosystems, depleted species and probably doomed many others to (6)_____.Every day, commercial fishing fleets (7)_____ primarily from just 11 nations venture (8)_____ the high seas to fish the deep ocean. What's left is truly a lonely, infertile, undersea desert.
The high seas are very special. It is here where you can find (9)_____ groupings of animals that (10)_____ their energy from sources (11)_____ the sun around volcanoes on the deep sea floor. It is only here where you can find areas still free from introduced species, (12)_____ in the seas around Antarctica. And it is here where you can find (13)_____ organisms that are more than 8,000 years old, like many of the massive deep-sea corms.
But what really sets the high seas (14)_____ from all other areas we know is the (15)_____ lack of protection for any of this natural heritage.
A United Nations meeting recently finally pay great attention to the high seas and put them on the (16)_____.Government officials from around the world gathered together with scientists, representatives from the fishing (17)_____, conservation groups and other stake-holders to discuss conservation and (18)_____ use of marine biological diversity in the high seas, (19)_____ 64 percent of the Earth's surface.
They need to move quickly. (20)_____ the fragility of these environments, we simply do hot have the luxury of time, but we can act before it is too late.
A.pointing
B.intending
C.targeting
D.aiming
According to the passage, visitors from space may have landed on the earth ______.
A.long before man had dreamed of it
B.long before there were human beings
C.in the last few hundred years
D.after the space age began