Ques:China has now mapped out plans for its next four launches in the Shenzhou program on the next flight. But one conclusion seems to have escaped most reports in the aerospace media. The flight of Shenzhou 7 could be timed to coincide with the Beijing Olympics. Plans for the 2008 Summer Olympics call for the events to be held between the 8th and 24th of August. It's reasonable to expect that China will use the event to promote its achievements before the world, and human spaceflight is China's most significant recent breakthrough. Shenzhou 7, China's next manned space mission, was originally advertised for 2007. This fit into the pattern of staging a two-year gap between crewed Shenzhou missions, which have previously launched in 2003 and 2005. But Chinese media statements have recently _ this to 2008. Chinese media have reported that while the overall program is going well, more time is needed to work on the spacesuit that will be used on this flight to stage China's first spacewalk. It's possible that Chinese engineers want to make best preparations for this complex mission. China could intend to carry out the mission of Shenzhou 7 just as media attention is focused on the lead-up to the Olympics. The crew of the flight, and possibly China's other flown astronauts, could then take part in the opening ceremony. China has previously feted her space travellers in great celebrations, such as the Hong Kong event that saw Yang Liwei singing with actor Jacky Chan. China has also suggested that the activity will be carried out by a single astronaut, and has indicated that half an hour is a rough estimate of the planned time for the spacewalk. China is apparently following suit, probably for the same reasons of conservative mission planning and safety. China has decided to carry out its human spaceflight in 2008 in order to   _  . A) make the Beijing Olympics more interesting. B) show its great achievements to the world. C) prove that China is a developed country. D) introduce its science and technology to the world.

Ans:B
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Ques:Science can't explain the power of pets, but many studies have shown that the company of pets can help lower blood pressure   and raise chances of recovering from a heart attack, reduce loneliness and spread all-round good cheer. Any owner will tall you how much joy a pet brings. For some, an animal provides more comfort than a husband/wife. A 2002 study by Karen Allen of the State University of New York measured stress   levels and blood pressure in people - half of them pet owners -while they performed 5 minutes of mental arithmetic   or held a hand in ice water. Subjects completed the tasks alone, with a husband/wife, a close friend or with a pet. People with pets did It best .Those tested with their animal friends had smaller change in blood pressure and returned  Most quickly to baseline heart rates .With pets in the room ,people also made fewer math mistakes  Than when doing in front of other companions. It seems people feel more released around Pets, says Allen, who thinks it may be because pets don't judge. A study reported last fall suggests that having a pet dog not only raises your spirits but may also have an effect on your eating habits. Researchers at Northwestern Memorial Hospital spent a Year studying 36 fat people and were put on a diet-and-exercise programs; a separate group of 56 fat people without pets were put on a diet program. On average,people lost about 11 pounds, Or 5% of their body weight .Their dogs did even better,losing an average of 12 pounds,more then 15%of their body weight .Dog owners didn't lose any more weight than those without dogs but ,say Researchers,got more exercise overall -mostly with their dogs -and found it worth doing. What does the text mainly discuss? A) What pets bring to their owners B) How pets help people calm down C) people's opinions of keeping pets D) Pet's value in medical research

Ans:A
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Ques:It's well known that our human memory can fail us. People can be forgetful, and they can sometimes also "remember" things incorrectly, with damaging consequences in the classroom, courtroom, and other areas of life. Now, researchers show for the first time that bumblebees  can be unreliable witnesses too. Bumblebees are rather clever animals, which explains why Chittka has been studying learning and memory in the insects for the last 20 years. Most times when people have studied memory in animals, errors in performance have been taken to mean that the animals failed to learn the task or perhaps learned it and then forgot. But what if animals can experience a more interesting type of memory failure? To find out, Chittka first trained bumblebees to expect a reward when visiting a yellow artificial flower followed by one with black-and-white rings. During subsequent tests, bees were given a choice between three types of flowers. Two were the types they'd seen in the training before. The third had yellow-and-white rings, representing a mixed-up version of the other two. Minutes after the training, the bees showed a clear preference for the flower that recently rewarded them. One or three days later, however, something very different happened when the bumblebees' memory was put to the test. At first, the bees showed the same preference displayed in the earlier tests, but as the time went on, they began selecting the flower with yellow rings, even though they'd never actually seen that one in training before. Chittka says that insects make similar errors in the conjunction   of long-term memories as humans do. The ability to extract   common features between different events in the environment might come at the expense of remembering every detail correctly. In bees, with their limited brain capacity  , the pressure to store main features of several objects rather than each individual object might be much greater, compared with humans. According to the passage, which of the following statements is NOT true? A) Memory failure influences students' study effects. B) Bumblebees' memory is complicated and worth studying. C) The bees couldn't make out which flower had rewarded them days later. D) Bumblebees are stupid insects with limited brain capacity.

Ans:D
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Ques:In her new book, "The Smartest Kids in the World," Amanda Ripley, an investigative journalist, tells the story of Tom, a high-school student from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, who decides to spend his senior year in Warsaw, Poland. Poland is a surprising educational success story: in the past decade, the country raised students' test scores from significantly below average to well above it. Polish kids have now outscored(......) American kids in math and science, even though Poland spends, on average, less than half as much per student as the United States does. One of the most striking differences between the high school Tom attended in Gettysburg and the one he ends up at in Warsaw is that the latter has no football team, or, for that matter, teams of any kind. That American high schools lavish more time and money on sports than on math is an old complaint. This is not a matter of how any given student who plays sports does in school, but of the culture and its priorities. This December, when the latest Program for International Student Assessment(PISA) results are announced, it's safe to predict that American high-school students will once again display their limited skills in math and reading, outscored not just by students in Poland but also by students in places like South Korea, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Singapore, and Japan. Meanwhile, they will have played some very exciting football games, which will have been breathlessly written up in their hometown papers. Why does this situation continue? Well, for one thing, kids like it. And for another, according to Ripley, parents seem to like the arrangement, too. She describes a tour she took of a school in Washington D.C., which costs thirty thousand dollars a year. The tour leader--a mother with three children in the school--was asked about the school's flaws . When she said that the math program was weak, none of the parents taking the tour reacted. When she said that the football program was weak, the parents suddenly became concerned. "Really?"... The purpose of this article is to    _   . A) draw public attention to a weakness in American school tradition B) call on American schools to learn from the Polish model C) compare Polish schools with those in America D) explain what is wrong with American schools and provide solutions

Ans:
A
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