题目内容
Meanwhile, the mother arms herself with returns from the last trip. Her two young daughters fro get games of flashlight tag or favorite TV shows and strap on tennis shoes and seatbelts: and they're off. On summer nights, when it's light until after, the fireflies arrive, the air is heavy and moist. The daughters unroll their windows and stick the whole of their heads out into the slate blue sky, feeling full force the sweaty, honey suckle air. In the cold mall, their rubber soles squeak on shiny linoleum squares. The younger daughter tries not to step on any cracks. The older daughter keeps a straight-ahead gaze; her sullen eyes count down each errand as it's dune.
It is not until the third or, on a good night, the fourth errand that the trouble begins. The girls have wandered over to examine rainbow beach towels, perhaps, or some kind of pink ruffled bedspread. The mother's voice finds them from a few aisles away.
Dinner squirms in the daughters' stomachs. Now comes that what if I-threw-up-right this second？ or where-is-a-rabbit-hole-for-me-to-fall-into？ feeling that they get around this time of evening, at the mall. The older one shakes her ponytails at the younger one. Her blue eyes hiss the careful-don't-cry warning, but the younger one's cheeks only get redder. Toe by toe, the daughters edge towards housewares where they finger lace placemats or trace patterns in the store carpet with sneakered soles. The mother's voice still finds them, shaking with rage. Finally, heels slapping in her sandals, she strides towards them and then keeps going. They follow, catching her word-trail, "Stupid people. Stupid, stupid', stupid. I HATE stupid people." It's the little skips between steps the younger one takes to keep up with her mother's long, angry legs. It's the car door slamming and the seat belt buckle yanked into place. It's those things that tell the daughters how the next few hours will go.
In the car, the older one sighs and grinds her back teeth. The younger one feels her face get hotter and her eyes start to swell. She stares at an ice cream stain on the back of the front .4eat and sees a pony, a flower, and a fairy in that splash of chocolate mint chip. The mother begins on both at once. "And when we get home, if your shoes are still in the TV room, I'm throwing them out. Same for books. No more shit house. No more lazy, ungrateful kids. "And so on and so on through the black velvet sky and across the Hershey bar roads. On into the house with a slap or two. "You'll be happy when I'm in my grave," wails at them as they put on their nightgowns and brush their teeth. The older one sets a stone jaw and the younger one tries not to sob an she opens wide, engulfing her small hand and. scrubbing each and every molar.
The father is not spared. The volcanic mother saves some up just for him. "Fucking lousy husband Do-nothing father." And on like that for an hour or so more. Then in the darkest part of the night, it's bare feet and cool hands on a small sweaty forehead. Kisses and caresses and "Sorry Mom got a little mad." Promises for that pink ruffled bedspread or maybe a new stuffed animal. Long fingers rake through the younger one's curls. "Tomorrow evening, we'll get you some kind of treat, Right after dinner, we'll go to the mall."
From the first paragraph, we get the impression that ______.
查看答案
搜索结果不匹配？点我反馈
更多问题
听力原文： The King of Saudi Arabia has removed Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani as Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister. Yamani had held the job for twenty-four years. Although it's been rumored for a few years that Yamani was out of favor with the King, his firing shocked the oil market. Yamani's replacement, Hicham Niza, is Saudi Arabia's Planning Minister. Oil traders in New York on the mercantile exchange said they had no idea that Yamani was about to be fired, but they took it as a sign that world oil prices would start to rise. Yamani had been leading OPEC in a price war over the past ten months. Saudi Arabia, the largest producer in the cartel, had raised its production and created an oil glut. That lowered the price of oil by 50%. Analysts say Saudi Arabia's King Fahd supposedly had enough of the price war and of Yamani. King Fahd has said that he would like to see the price of oil rise to about $ 18 a barrel.
On hearing Yamani's firing, oil traders in New York were ______.
Ernest Hemingway underwent 20 gruelling rounds of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to cure him of his depression. Having lost many of his memories as a result, he said, "It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient," and took a shotgun to his head not long afterwards. Ever since ECT was pioneered by Ugo Cerletti, an Italian neurosurgeon, in the late 1930s, it bas had a bad press. In books (The Bell Jar, Zen and the Art of MIotorcycle Maintenance), in song (Electric Co by U2) and in film (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Tar-nation), it has been portrayed as a sinister procedure that leaves the patient a dribbling dullard. But in spite of this, ECT remains one of the fastest-acting and most effective antidepressant treatments known.
Why it should be so effective, though, is an enigma. On the face of it, running a current of almost an amp through someone's brain seems a silly thing to do. But a study by Johan Hellsten of Lund University in Sweden bas cast some light on the question. Dr. Hellsten has shown that ECT leads to the gene ration of new blood vessels [n part of the brain implicated in depression.
Previous brain imaging studies have shown that patients with long-term depression have a smaller hippocampus (part of the brain that deals with emotion and memory) than average. But, while it is possible to use scanners to look at brain volume in people, it is impossible to examine what is going on at a cellular level. For this reason, Dr. Hellsten used rats.
There were two groups of rats in his experiment. The test group received ECT once a day. for ten days while the control group received a sham treatment. On the eleventh day! the rats were killed and examined. Dr. Hellsten found a 20 fold increase in the number of endothelial cells (the cells that line blood vessels) in the hippocampuses of the test rats, compared with the control rats. He also found a 16% increase in the total length of the blood vessels in their hippocampuses. If the blood vessels of any organ--including the hippocampus are reduced, that organ begins to atrophy. ECT appears to reverse this atrophy. This study is the first to show an increase in blood-vessel production in connection with an anti-depressive treatment.
Why ECT has this effect is still a subject of speculation, but Dr. Hellsten suspects that what is happening is a consequence of the brain trying to protect itself. ECT works by creating an artificial epileptic seizure. Natural seizures, which often last much longer than the 30 seconds or so employed for ECT. result in the production of chemicals called growth factors that stimulate cell division and growth. This response helps to compensate for the damage that a seizure can do. Though modern ECT does not last long enough to cause damage, it nevertheless provokes the damage-limitation response.
ECT, invented in a more brutal age, was originally seen as a way to control unruly patients, often against their will. Ironically, it now serves to give will back to those who have lost it.
The word "gruelling" in the first paragraph probably means ______.
听力原文： A number of people in India are being tested for possible bird flu infection following the discovery of the most virulent strain of the disease in the State of Maharashtra. Only hours earlier, the presence of the H5N1 strain of bird flu had been confirmed among thousands of dead chickens at a farm in Maharashtra. In Iran, tests on dead swans in the north of the country have shown that they were infected by the same strain. Cases have also been confirmed in Austria and in France, where tests on a wild duck found dead at a poultry farm proved it was carrying H5N1 bird flu. The United Nations special coordinator David Nabarro said the authorities everywhere had to be prepared to deal with an outbreak.
The H5N1 bird flu has been found in all the following places EXCEPT ______.
SECTION B INTERVIEW
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions.
Now listen to the interview.
听力原文：W: Good morning, John, nice to be here!
M: You know, well, a lot of us spend time looking for things in the morning？ It's the glasses, it's the keys, and in my case it's always, always the other shoe.
W: Yeah, the other shoe, yeah! I've been there.
Ms What are the biggest mistakes we made when it comes to that？
W: And to speak to what you're saying, I think it's being organized. When you're disorganized, you don't know where things are. You're rifling from drawers, rifling through closets, trying to find the thing that didn't go back where it belongs. So if you can stay organized, you can really save some time.
M: All right. Let's start saving time right this minute. OK？
W: Okay.
M: No. 1, your No. 1 tip here is banking online. Now some people are afraid to do it, but you say it's something smart.
W: Yeah, yeah, 'it is very safe. And we certainly recommend that you use your own bank's website. So go to the bank, talk to the consumer service representatives there. If you have some questions about how to do it, how safe it is, it's the best way to find out how safe it is and how easy...
M: And how much time do you think you saved, Carolyn, by doing that？
W: You know if you can, write, write in a lot of checks, if you're making transfers, checking your statements, you can save 30 minutes, up, even up to an hour.
M: I've seen a lot of this number, the second tip, which is online grocers. Now, that's really not for everyone, but you actually go grocery shopping online.
W: That's exactly what you do. And you know, if you are the type of person that wants to read every label and look at every piece of fruit, it's probably not for you. But, you know, if you wanna give up a little control, you can definitely save some time. M: And what's the good strategy if you decide to go shopping online？
W: What I would suggest is especially starting out, is to do the staples online. The brands that you use all the time, the paper products, the cleaning products, the cereals, get that online and then go to the store for the meats in the produce.
M: Now for those who are big library people who like the library, you say make a preemptive strike basically and go online first before you actually make the trip out to the library.
W: That's exactly right. Check the library's website. You can reserve books rather than make a trip and find out they don't have the book that you want. You can put it in order and they will call you and let you know when it's in and then you go get it.
M: Ah, the fourth tip, I like it a lot because I travel a lot. It is to print your boarding pass before you go to the airport. That is so smart, right？
W: It's really amazing, especially when you don't have to check luggage. Because if you have to check luggage it's gonna take you a little time. But if you're just carrying on, you skip those chaos and go right to the gate.
M: That's brilliant. Now for those of us who are always sort of looking for the same phone number, I know I'm like this. I leaf through the phone book, I find the phone number, I call it, I shut the phone book and then the next week I'm gonna use that same number. What's the good way to sort or keep track of things？
W: Highlight it, you know, just do it in a bright color, so it jumps out to you if it's something that you use often and organize your phone book. That's really important. No more napkins and envelope flaps and old Christmas cards and phone numbers. Do it nicely and you will find things quicken
M: Okay, my big Achilles' heel for me is my purse. It is the bottomless horrible pit. I don't even know wh
微信支付 
支付宝支付