题目内容

Part A
Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D . Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.
When the vote was finally taken, it was 3:45 in the morning, After six months of arguing and the final 16 hours of hot parliamentary debates, Australia's Northern Territory became the first legal authority in the world to allow doctors to take the lives of incurably ill patients who wished to die. The measure was passed by the convincing vote of 15 to 10. Almost at the same time word flashed on the Internet and was picked up, half a world away, by John Hofsess, executive director of the Right to Die Society of Canada. He sent it on through the group's on-line service, Death Net. Hofsess said: "We posted bulletins all day long, because of course this isn't just something that happened in Australia. It's world history."
The full import may take a while to sink in. The NT Rights of the Terminally Ill law has left physicians and citizens alike trying to deal with its moral and practical implications. Some have breathed sighs of relief; others, including churches, right-to, live groups and the Australian Medical Association, bitterly attacked the bill and the haste of its passage. But the tide is unlikely to turn back. In Australia—where an aging population, life-extending technology and changing community attitudes have all played their part—other states are going to consider making a similar law to deal with euthanasia. In America and Canada, where the right-to-die movement is gathering strength, observers are waiting for the dominoes to start failing.
Under the new Northern Territory law, an adult patient can request death—probably by a deadly injection or pill—to put an end to suffering. The patient must be diagnosed as terminally ill by two doctors. After a "cooling off" period of seven days, the patient can sign a certificate of request. 48 hours later, the wish for death can be met. For Lloyd Nickson, a 54-year-old Darwin resident suffering from lung cancer, the NT Rights of the Terminally Ill law means he can get on with living without the haunting fear of his suffering: a terrifying death from his breathing condition. "I'm not afraid of dying from a spiritual point of view, but what I am afraid of is how I'd go, because I've watched people die in the hospital fighting for oxygen and clawing at their masks." he says.
From the second paragraph we learn that ______.

A. the objection to euthanasia is diminishing in some countries
B. physicians and citizens have the same view on euthanasia
C. technological changes are chiefly responsible for the new law
D. it takes time to appreciate the significance of laws passed

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According to the passage, the processing of the new antibiotic and vaccines becomes an engineering problem when ______.

A. it involves the low-cost production of large quantities
B. these items originate in the work of biochemistry
C. people are engaged in safe operations in the test-tube stage
D. business agents use efficient methods to market these items

One might expect that the vacuum would always be the state of the lowest possible energy for a given region of space. If an area is initially empty and a real panicle is put into it, the total energy, it seems, should be raised by at least the energy equivalent of the mass of the added panicle. A surprising result of some recent theoretical investigations is that this assumption is not invariably true. There are conditions under which the introduction of a real particle of finite mass into an empty region of space can reduce the total energy, If the reduction in energy is great enough, an electron and a positron will be instantly created. Under these conditions the electron and positron are not a result of vacuum fluctuations but are real particles, which exist indefinitely and can be detected. In other words, under these conditions the vacuum is an unstable state and can decay(衰减) into a state of lower energy; that is one in which real particles are created.
The necessary condition for the decay of the vacuum is the presence of an intense electric field. As a result of the decay of the vacuum, the space permeated by such a field can be said to obtain an electric charge, and it can be called a charged vacuum. The particles that materialize in space make the charged vacuum likely to be found in only one place: in the immediate vicinity of a super heavy atomic nucleus(原子核), one with about twice as many pro tons as the heaviest natural nuclei known. A nucleus that large cannot be stable, but it might be possible to assemble one next to a vacuum for long enough to observe the decay of the vacuum. Experiments attempting to achieve this are now under way.
Which of the following titles best describes the passage as a whole?

A. The Vacuum: Its Fluctuations and Decay.
B. The Vacuum: Its Creation and Instability.
C. The Vacuum: a State of Absence.
D. Particles that Materialize in the Vacuum.

听力原文: Social Security is one of the great moral achievements of American government. For almost 70 years, it has kept millions of elderly citizens out of poverty and assured young Americans of a secure future. The Social Security system is essential, yet it faces a long-term problem.
While benefits for today's seniors are secure, the system is headed towards bankruptcy down the road. Each year there are more retirees taking money out of the system, and not enough additional workers to support them.
In the 1950s, there were about 16 workers paying for every Social Security beneficiary. Today, there are about three. And eventually, there will only be two workers per beneficiary. These changes signal a looming danger. In the year 2018, for the first time ever, Social Security will pay out more in benefits than the government collects in payroll taxes. And the gaps will grow larger each year leading to the bankruptcy of the system.
Therefore, Social Security is not a personal savings plan. Benefits paid to today's retirees come directly from the taxes paid by today's workers. The crisis in Social Security can be avoided by emphasizing several principles. First, nothing will change for those who are receiving Social Security and for those who are near retirement. Secondly, payroll taxes will not increase, because higher taxes would slow economic growth. More efforts must be made to use the power of compound interest, by giving younger workers the option to save some of their payroll taxes in a personal account, which government cannot take away.
(30)

Around 1930.
B. Around 1940.
C. Around 1950.
D. Around 1960.

What does the example of India illustrate?

A. Wealth people tend to have fewer children than poor people.
B. The upper class population is 80% smaller than that of the tribes.
C. Natural selection hardly works among the rich and the poor.
D. India is one of the countries with a very high birth rate.

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