In spite of enormous changes in American family, most Americans remain de voted to fa

run at a profit.

A.Based on

B.Due to

C.Because of

D.In spite of

Passage 4

Many countries have a holiday to celebrate workers’rights on or around May 1, but Labour Day in Canada is celebrated on the first Monday of September. Canada&39;s Labour Day was _1_ celebrated in the spring but it was moved to the fall after 1894. The origins of Labour Day can be traced back to April 15, 1872, when the Toronto Trades Assembly organized Canada’s first significant _2_ for worker’s rights. The aim was to release the 24 leaders of the Toronto Typographical Union who were imprisoned for _3_ to campaign .for a nine-hour working day. At this time, trade unions were still illegal and what they did was seen as a criminal conspiracy to _4_ trade. In spite of this, the Toronto Trades Assembly was already a significant organization and encouraged workers to form. trade unions, _5_ in disputes between employers and employees and signaled the _6_ of workers. There was _7_ public support for the demonstration and the authorities could no longer deny the important role that the trade unions had to play in the _8_ Canadian democratic society. A few months later, a similar demonstration was organized in Ottawa and passed the house of Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John Macdonald. Later in the day, he appeared before the gathering and promised to _9_ all Canadian laws against trade unions. This happened in the same year and _10_ led to the founding of the Canadian Labour Congress In 1883. A similar holiday，Labor Day is held on the same day in the United States of America. Canadian trade unions are proud that this holiday was inspired by their efforts to improve workers’rights.

A) disrupt

B) enormous

C) lashed

D) muttering

E) striking

F) mediated

G) originally

H)perpetual eventually

J) emerging

K) gesture

L) mistreatment

M) abolish

N) parade

O) practically

第1空答案是：

essarily mean that something has become stronger, wiser, or better. It simply means changing it from being one thing to another and sometimes it turns out to be worse than before.

Consider medicine, for instance. No one can deny that medical progress has enriched our lives tremendously. Because of medical advances, we eat better, live easier and are able to take care of ourselves more efficiently. We can cure disease with no more than one injection or a pill. If we have a serious accident, surgeons can put us back together again. If we are born with something defective, they can repair it. They can make us happy, restore our normality, ease our pain, replace worn parts and give us children. They can even bring us back from the dead. These are wonderful achievements, but there is a price we have to pay.

Because medicine has reduced infant mortality and natural death so significantly, the population has been rising steadily, in spite of serious efforts to reduce the rate of population growth. Less than a century ago in the United Stales, infant mortality claimed more than half of the newborn within the first year of life. Medical advances, however, have now reduced that rate to nearly zero. A child born in the United States today has better than a 90% chance of survival. Furthermore, medical advances have ensured that most of these infants will live to be seventy years of age or more, and even that life expectancy increases every year. The result of this progress is an enormous population increase that threatens the quality of life, brought about by progress in the medical profession.

According to this passage, " progress" doesn't always mean that______.

A．something has become stronger and better

B．something has been changed from being one thing to another

C．something has become funny

D．something turns out to be worse than before

onent' s king in' a series of moves. On creating a lens, lens designers attempts to "trap" light by forcing all the rays arising from a single point in the subject to converge on a single point in the image, as a consequence of their passing through a series of transparent elements with precisely curved surfaces. Since in both cases the ultimate goal and the means by which it can be attained are known, one is tempted to think there will be a single best decision at any point along the way. The number of possible consequences flowing from any one decision is so large, however, as to be virtually, if not actually, infinite. Therefore in lens design, as in chess, perfect solutions to a problem are beyond reach. The same principles apply to all lenses.

The lens designer has one enormous advantage over the chess player. The designer is free to call on any available source of help to guide him through the countless number of possibilities. Most of that help once came from mathematics and physics, but recently computer technology, information theory, chemistry, industrial engineering and psychophysics have all contributed to making the designer' s job immeasurably more productive. Some of the lenses on the market today were inconceivable a decade ago. Others whose design is as much as a century old can now be mass-produced at low cost. With the development of automatic production methods, lenses are made by the millions, both out of glass and out of plastics. Today' s lenses are better than the best lenses used by the great photographers of the past. Moreover, their price may be lower, in spite of the fact that the 19th century craftsmen worked for only a few dollars a week and today' s lenses are more complex. The lens designer cannot fail to be grateful for the science and technology that have made his work easier and his creations more widely available, but he is also humbled: it is no longer practical for a fine photographic lens to be designed from beginning to end by a single human mind.

In what way does lens design resemble chess？

A．In the number of steps each takes towards the goal.

B．In the designs of the two activities.

C．The steps to the goals and the goal itself are known.

D．Each has a doer and a competitor.

Designing a lens can be compared to playing chess. In chess a player tries to trap his opponent's king in a series of moves. In creating a lens a lens designer attempts to “trap” light by forcing all the rays arising from a single point in the subject to focus on a single point in the image, as a consequence of their passing through a series of transparent(透明的) elements with precisely curved surfaces. Since in both cases the ultimate goal and the means by which it can be attained are known, one is tempted to think there will be a single best decision at any point along the way. The number of possible consequences flowing from any one decision is so large, however, as to bevirtually, if not actually, infinite. Therefore in lens design, as inchess, perfect solutions to a problem are beyond reach. Although this article will be concerned only with the design of photographic lenses, the same principles apply to all lenses.

The lens designer has one enormous advantage over the chess player: the designer is free to call on any available source of help to guide him through the staggering number of possibilities. Most of that help once came from mathematics and physics, but recently computer technology, information theory,chemistry, industrial engineering and psychophysics have all contributed to making the lens designer's job immeasurably more productive. Some of the lenses on the market today were inconceivable a decade ago. Others whose design is as much as a century old can now be massproduced at low cost. With the development of automatic production methods, lenses are made by the millions, both out of glass and out of plastics. Today's lenses are better than the best lenses used by the great photographers of the past.Moreover, their price may lower, in spite of the fact that 19thcentury craftsmen worked for only a few dollars a week and today's lenses are more complex. The lens designer cannot fail to be grateful for the science and technology that have made his work easier and his creations more widely available, but he is also humbled: it is no longer practical for a fine photographic lens to be designed from beginning to end by a single human mind.

Lens design and chess playing are similar in that ____

A) the final goal and the means by which it can be reached are known

B) perfect solutions to a problem can be found

C) any one decision at any point along the way to the goal can bring numerous possible results

D) both A and C

根据阅读材料回答问题。本题为单选题，请给出正确答案及解析，谢谢！

Normally a student must attend a certain number of courses in order to graduate, and each

course which he attends gives him a credit which he may count towards a degree. In many American universities the total work for a degree consists of thirty-six courses each lasting for one semester. A typical course consists of three classes per week for fifteen weeks; while attending a university a student would probably attend four or five courses each semester. Normally a student would expect to take four years attending two semesters each year. It is possible to spread the period of work for a degree over a longer period of time. It is also possible for a student to move between one university and another during his degree courses, though this is not in fact done as a regular practice.

For every course that he follows a student is given a grade, which is recorded, and the record is available for the student to show to perspective employers. All this imposes a constant pressure and strain of work, but in spite of this some students still find time for great activity in student affairs. Elections to positions in student organizations arouse much enthusiasm. The effective work of maintaining discipline is usually performed by students who advise the academic authorities. Any student who is thought to have broken the rules, for example, by cheating has to appear before a student court. With enormous numbers of students, the operation of the system does involve a certain amount of activity. A student who has held one of these positions of authority is much respected and it will be of benefit to him later in his career.

1. Normally a student would at least attend _______ classes each week.

A. 36

B. 12

C. 20

D. 15

2. According to the first paragraph an American student is allowed _______.

A. to live in a different university

B. to take a particular course in a different university

C. to live at home and drive to classes

D. to get two degrees from two different universities

3. American universities students are usually under pressure of work because _________

A. their academic performance will affect their future career

B. they are heavily involved in student affairs

C. they have to observe university disciplines

D. they want to run for positions of authority

4. Some students are enthusiastic for positions in student organizations probably because _____

A. they have the constant pressure and strain of their study

B. they will then be able to stay longer in the university.

C. such positions help them get better jobs

D. such positions are usually well-paid

5. The student organizations seem to be effective in ______.

A. dealing with the academic affairs of the university

B. ensuring that the students observe university regulations

C. evaluating students’ performance by bringing them before a court.

D. keeping up the students’ enthusiasm for social activities

ed to resign and it was never properly finished inside. None of this matters. The Sydney Opera House, by the reclusive Danish architect Jorn Utzon, is the mother and father of all modern landmark buildings. It has come to define not only a city, but an entire nation and continent.

Beyond that, it is a global expression of cultural modernity. Everyone in the world with media access knows what the Sydney Opera House looks like. First designed in 1956 and finally declared completed in 1973, the opera house was the single best known modern building in the world until the arrival of Frank Gehry's equally extraordinary Bilbao Guggenheim in 1997. But it will outlive the Guggenheim as an international architectural icon--because it did all the difficult work tint.

In the pantheon(万神殿) of classic modern buildings, Utzon's creation has the status of myth. The myth states that the unknown architect, then in his thirties, submitted rough sketches to the competition judges, that he ignored most of the rules, that his as only selected after being plucked at the last moment from the rejected pile by one of the judges, and that the design was unbuildable.

But Sydney is remarkable for another reason: it is a complete one-off. It does not fit into any stylistic or chronological category. None of Utzon's other buildings--churches, government departments, house. looks anything like it, and architects today who try to copy his concept always end up looking very second-rate indeed. It is "modern", certainly, but it is an expressive modernism that was quite at odds with the rectilinear(直线的) "international style" of its time. It has more in common with the work of the American genius Frank Uloyd Wright, for whom Utzon worked briefly. Of course its location is an enormous help, sitting as it does on a promontory with water on three sides and the famous Sydney Harbor Bridge as a picture-postcard backdrop. But Utzon masterly exploited the site as nobody else could.

Utzon left Australia in high indignation in 1966, never to return, before he could finish designing the interiors.

As with Sir Christopher Wren at St Paul's Cathedral, Utzon was humiliated and removed from overseeing the final stages of his masterwork. But for all his manifold difficulties, which other contemporary architect can claim an equivalent achievement？ The Sydney Opera House showed us that anything is possible, and it demonstrated that sheer, seductive beauty for its own sake is nothing to be ashamed of.

It can be inferred from the passage that ______.

A．the Danish architect Join Utzon totally failed in his design of Sydney Opera House and was forced to resign

B．the Danish architect Jorn Utzon has been made known as the founder of all the modern landmark buildings, in spite of his part failure in his design of Sydney Opera House

C．Sydney Opera House is hopelessly ugly and has never been finished inside

D．Sydney Opera House is the single best known modern building in the world up to now

A.In spite

B.In spite of

C.In spite of that

D.In spite of the fact that

A.A.despite

B.B.in spite

C.C.though

D.D.however