Why de old age and seniority alone not command authority among the British？

Why does the author mention an elderly mouse in paragraph 2？

A．To describe the influence of old age on mice.

B．To illustrate the effect of a meager diet on mice.

C．To tell us how mice's liver genes behave.

D．To inform. us of the process of metabolizing drugs.

Why does the author mention an elderly mouse in paragraph 2？

A. To describe the influence or old age on mice．

B. To illustrate the effect of meager food on mice．

C. To tell US how mice’s liver genes behave．

D. To inform. US of the process of metabolizing drugs．

SECTION B PASSAGES

Directions: In this section, you will hear several passages. Listen to the passages carefully and then answer the questions that follow.

听力原文： Few people expect luxury while flying, but these days, even the basics seem to be in bad shape. It's not uncommon to find your tray table broken, the in-flight entertainment system not working and your seat cushion worn—all of which can make you think, how old is this plane anyway？

The reality for many U. S. air travelers is that most of their journeys take place on planes that have been in service for a decade or more. The average age of the fleet of the seven large U. S. passenger airlines is about 14 years old, according to The Airline Monitor. It found American and Delta/Northwest had the oldest fleets, at about 16 years on average". As of the end of 2008, a small percentage of the merged Delta/North west's planes dated back to the late 1960s.

U.S. fleets are among the oldest in the world, said Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst. "I'm not really sure that people should read that much into that," Aboulafia said. "From a safety standpoint, a lot of the older planes were built tougher and with proper maintenance, there's no reason why a plane can't stay safe for 25 to 30 years. "13 "It's also important to remember that a plane may be 20 years old, but its engines and other major systems could have been recently manufactured or upgraded", said Aboulafia. "There's less pressure on the airlines to upgrade the interior, unless it's a safety issue or a redesign that will save money".

According to the passage, the average age of the fleet of Delta/Northwest is______.

A．10 years

B．14 years

C．16 years

D．20 years

n of the UK has been falling for quite a few years. The size of the British workforce (劳动力) is becoming smaller and the average age of the workforce is rising. This trend is quite worrying for the British economy.

Why aren't the British having as many children as they used to？ Well, there is a whole range of reasons. One of them is that British people are now having their children at a much older age than before, meaning they have fewer vears in which they can have children. Most young people today want a well-paid job, meaning they usually have to go to university. After years of study at university, they then need a few years of work experience before they can get the job they want. They might then get married, but it's very expensive to buy a house in the UK.

The above also explains why British young people now don't move out of their parents' home until they are around 30 years old on average. It is not until they are 30 that they can afford to get married and start a new life in a new home. It's only after this age that many young people start thinking about having a child.

Paragraph 1 tells us that______.

A．the size of the workforce is becoming larger

B．the population of the UK has been on the rise

C．the workers of the UK are much younger than before

D．the average number of children in a British family is falling

ll be the only book you'll ever need. No. It's not the Bible or some New Age tome promising enlightenment—al though it would let you carry around both texts simultaneously. It's an electronic book—a single volume that could contain a library of information or, if your tastes run toward what's current, every title on to day's best-seller list. And when you're clone with those, you could refill it with new titles.

Why an electronic book？ Computers can store a ton of data and their laptop companions make all that information portable. True enough. But laptops(便携式电脑) and similar portable information de vices require a lot of power and heavy batteries to keep their LCD screens operating. And LCDs are not easy to read in the bright light of the sun.

Fact is, when it comes to portability, easy viewing, and low power requirements, it's hard to beat plain old paper.

So let's make the ink electronic.

That's the deceptively simple premise behind a project currently coming to fruition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Some hurdles mostly having to do with large-scale manufacturing remain, so it will be a few years before you see an electronic book for sale in stores. But the basic technology already exists, developed at the Institute's Media Lab by a team led by physicist Joe Jacobson.

Thanks to electronic ink, the book essentially typesets itself, receiving instructions for each page via electronics housed in the spine. From a power standpoint, this process makes the electronic book very efficient. Unlike an LCD screen, which uses power all the time, energy is no longer needed to view the electronic book's pages once they are typeset. Only a small battery would be required, as opposed to the large ones needed to power laptop computers and their LCDs.

Convenience, though, is still the main attraction—and that means more than simple portability. Be cause the information is in electronic form, it can be easily manipulated.

Jacobson thinks an electronic book will be affordable around $ 200 for a basic read-only model to about $ 400 for one that would record your margin scribbles. Some hurdles remain, though, before you can take an electronic book with you anywhere. Paper is produced in long sheets, and Jacobson is still working on the best method to integrate electronic ink into that process. To avoid having to use thousands of tiny wires on each page, the ink itself must be conductive. Such ink was recently demonstrated in the lab but has yet to be produced in volume. "Essentially," notes Jacobson, "We're trying to print chips."

Jacobson is confident, however, that this can be done on a large scale. If Jacobson succeeds, he will have made the book for the 21st century.

According to the passage, which book is the only book you'll ever need？

A．Americans like sports and sports reveal much about the changing ethnic structure of the United States

B．A single volume.

C．New Age tome.

D．An electronic book.

t our three-year-olds together in day-care centers, our 13-year-olds in schools and sports activities, and our 80-year-olds in senior-citizen homes.

M: Why？ Don't people of the same ages share more things in common？

F: But there are problems with this age-segregation experiment. Researche shows that ten 14-year-olds grouped together will become competitive and mean. But ten people ages 2 to 80 grouped together will fall into a natural age hierarchy that teaches them all.

M: What do you think we should do？ Need we reconnect the age groups？

F: Yes. It will do good to our own mental and social health. In my opinion, we segregate the old for many reasons: prejudice, ignorance, and a lack of good alternatives.

M: And I guess younger people sometimes avoid the old to evade fears of aging and dying. Death is easier to bear in the abstract. It's much harder to watch someone we love fade before our eyes. Sometimes it's so hard that we stay away from the people who need us most.

F: I agree with you. Fortunately, some of us have found our way to the old. And we have discovered that they often save the young. You can learn the art of aging. You will become more accepting, and more grateful. You can understand your parents and your country's history.

M: Hey. a teacher I know once told me she can tell which kids have good relationships with grand-parents: they are quieter, calmer, and more trusting.

F: That is the point, To learn from the old, we must love them-- not just in the abstract but also in the flesh-- beside us in our homes, business, churches and schools. We must work together to build the kinds of communities that allow us to care for one another.

What shall we do according to the conversation？

A．Put our three-year-olds together in day-care centers.

B．Put our 13-year-olds in schools and sports activities.

C．Put our 80-year-olds in senior-citizen homes.

D．Mix people of all ages together.

ountry must have adequate schooling to prepare them for their work as well as for their responsibilities as citizens. With this in mind, national leaders everywhere are placing more emphasis on the education of the young.

There is no national school policy in the United States. Each of the fifty states makes its own rules and regulations for its school, but there are many similarities among the fifty school systems. In most states the children are required to attend school until they reach the age of eighteen. When they become six years old, children begin elementary school. After six years in elementary school, they go to junior high school and remain there for three years. The last three

years of their public school education are spent in senior high school, from which they graduate at the age of eighteen.

A great number of high school graduates continue their education in one of the many colleges or universities in the country. After four years they receive a bachelor's degree. Some continue studying for a master's degree and perhaps a doctor's degree.

Why do the people and the government in the United States work hard to give their children the best education available？

A．Because they will be future leaders.

B．Because they will be future teachers.

C．Because they will be future engineers.

D．Because they will be future citizen.

rstood in its own terms, and they wonder why the Western world took so long to see the folly of regarding children simply as small, inadequately socialized adults. Most psychologists, however, persist in regarding people 70 to 90 years old as though they were 35 years old who just happen to have white hair and extra leisure time. But old age is as fundamentally different from young adulthood and middle age as childhood is—a fact attested to by the organization of modern social and economic life. Surely it is time, therefore, to acknowledge that serious research into the unique psychology of advanced age has become indispensable. Which one of the following principles, if established, would provide the strongest backing for the argument？

A.Whenever current psychological practice conflicts with traditional attitudes toward people, those traditional attitudes should be changed to bring them in line with current psychological practice.

B.Whenever two groups of people are so related to each other that any member of the second group must previously have been a member of the first, people in the first group should not be regarded simply as deviant members of the second group.

C.Whenever most practitioners of a given discipline approach a particular problem in the same way, that uniformity is good evidence that all similar problems should also be approached in that way.

D.Whenever a society"s economic life is so organized that two distinct times of life are treated as being fundamentally different from one another, each time of life can be understood only in terms of its own distinct psychology.

E.Whenever psychologists agree that a single psychology is inedeuate ior two distant age groups, they should be prepared to show that there are greater differences between the two age groups than there are between individuals in the same age group.

Ramos was brilliant, handsome, wealthy, and one of Rio de Janeiro' s (里约热内卢的) beautiful people. At age thirty-six, he was a prominent plastic surgeon who owned two medical clinics. At parties, he met and talked to famous Hollywood movie personalities and sports stars. He seemed to be the perfect example of the good life. But by March of 1982, thirty - six- year old Ramos was found in a Brazilian prison charged with eighteen crimes including armed robbery, drug smuggling and murder.

According to police, Ramos used his personal friendships with wealthy people to prepare for his crimes. He would attend the parties of his friends, inspect their houses carefully for valuables, draw diagrams of their homes, and then send in professional burglars to rob them. His victims were jewel designers, diplomats, and wealthy social figures.

Sometimes Ramos even stole things himself. One of his crimes was stealing an expensive watch from the famous soccer player, Pele. He also sold stolen cars and used two private air planes to smuggle cocaine.

In the fall of 1981, however, the famous plastic surgeon, s double life came apart . He was arrested after an informant told police that Ramos was involved in s series of thefts. Ramos escaped by simply waking out the main door of the Rio de Janeiro police building, but police soon found the body of his personal pilot and accused drug - smuggling partner in an old hotel. Police believed he was murdered for informing them about Ramos. Then Ramos hid with another of his accomplices, who was later found shot to death on an old country road, In less than a month, police managed to find Ramos was hiding in as run- down neighborhood, When he was caught, he had a diamond ring worth over $ 90 000 in his jeans pocket.

In later interviews, Ramos had said he really didn't know he committed the crimes. He had denied the murders, and his lawyers are saying he is insane. Perhaps one reason for Ramos's behavior. can be found in his family history. His grandfather had murdered six members of one family, and his father was accused of killing his mother's lover, but those charges were later dropped. Ramos seemed to escape that background by studying medicine and socializing with some of the most important people in Brazilian society. But that wasn't enough.

Which of the following descriptive adjectives can be used to best describe the personality of Ramos？

A．double-faced

B．Perfect

C．beautiful

D．dissociated

or of a very private nature, a sense of disintegration sometimes seeming from inner conflicts, sometimes from a premonition of death or the fear of becoming dependent.