Disney, money was now no problem, starte...

English is a language that many young people around the world         not speak perfectly but         at least understand.

From facts, scientists have        that more energy is being absorbed from the sun, throwing the earth’s energy “out of balance”.

The first edition             in 1955 and         a best seller ever since.

What do consumers really want? That’s a question market researchers would love to answer. But since people don’t always say what they think, marketers would need direct access to consumers’ thoughts to get the truth.

And now, in a way, that is possible．At the “Mind of the Market” laboratory at Harvard Business School, researchers are looking inside shoppers’ skulls to develop more effective advertisements and marketing styles．Using imaging techniques that measure blood flow to various parts of the brain, the Harvard team hopes to predict how consumers will react to particular products and to discover the most effective ways to present information．Stephen Kosslyn, a professor of psychology at Harvard, and business school professor Gerald Zaltman, oversee the lab．“The goal is not to influence people’s preferences,” says Kosslyn, “just to speak to their actual desires."

The group’s findings, though still preliminary (初步的), could change how firms develop and market new products．The Harvard group use position emission tomography (PET) scans to monitor the brain activity．These PET scans, along with other imaging techniques, enable researchers to see which parts of the brain are active during specific tasks(such as remembering a word).Correlations (相互关系) have been found between blood flow to specific areas and future behavior．Because of this, Harvard researchers believe the scans can also predict future purchasing patterns．According to an unpublished paper the group produced, “It is possible to use these techniques to predict not only whether people will remember and have specific emotional reactions to certain materials, but also whether they tend to want those materials months later.”

The Harvard group is now moving into the next stage of experiments．They will explore how people remember advertisements as part of an effort to predict how they will react to a product after having seen an ad．The researchers believe that once key areas of the brain are identified, scans on about two dozen volunteers will be enough to draw conclusions about the reactions of specific sections of the population．Large corporations-including Coca Cola, Eastman Kodak, General Motors, and Hallmark-have already signed up to fund further investigations.

    For their financial support, these firms gain access to the experiments but cannot control them．If Kosslyn and Zahman and their team really can read the mind of the market, then consumers may find it even harder to get those advertising jingles-out of their heads.

1.Which of the following statements can be the best title for this passage?

A．Reading the Mind of the Market.            

B．Influencing the Customers’ Choice.

C．Influencing the Style of Advertising．

D．Experimenting with the Way to Foretell

2.Why do the Harvard researchers use scientific technology in the experiments?

A．Because they want to find a better way to persuade people into purchasing patterns in the future in the different market.

B．Because they don’t trust the findings already done by other researchers.

C．Because they want to see how particular products can influence consumers and find out the most effective ways to advertise.

D．Because they think the marketing strategies can actually be changed after the experiments.

3.The following statements are true except that    

       A．People sometimes hide their true feelings when questioned by the marketing surveyors.

       B．Stephen Kosslyn and Gerald Zaltman are in charge of the experiment and think ill of the study.

       C．Harvard researchers have found some relation between people’s brain and future behavior.

       D．Many large companies finance the Harvard group’s further investigations.

4.What does “to speak to” in the 2nd paragraph mean?

A．To communicate with.                           B．To say to.       

C．To talk to.                                         D．To respond to.

5.The last sentence of the passage implies that ___________.

A．it is very likely that customers will buy unnecessary things just depending on the ads in the future.

B．in fact, the real purpose of Harvard group’s research is to attract more consumers into the market.

C．Coca Cola or the General Motors can exploit the findings of the experiments in their own marketing.

D．consumers may find it more difficult to get out of the advertising jungle and it may cause them headaches.

It’s hardly surprising that weather is a favorite topic for so many people around the world—it affects where we choose to love, what we wear, our moods, and perhaps even our national characteristics. Studies have shown the changeable weather can make it difficult to concentrate, cloudy skies slow sown reaction, and high humidity with hot, dry winds makes many people bad-tempered.

If you live in a place like Britain, where the weather seems to change daily if not hourly, you could be forgiven for thinking that the weather is random. In fact, the weather is controlled by systems which move around areas of the globe. In the UK the weather depends on depressions（低气压）, often called lows, and anticyclones（高气压）, also known as highs. These systems start in the Atlantic Ocean, and make their way across the British Isles from the west to the east. Highs bring sunny weather, while lows bring rain and wind. In modern times, human activities seem to be altering weather patterns. Gases produced by heavy industry change the temperature of the Earth’s surface, and affect cloud formation. Some researchers say that factories in Europe and North America may have been one of the causes of the droughts in Africa in the 1980s.

The human race has always tied to guess the weather, especially in areas of the world where there are frequent changes. Traditional rhymes point to early attempts to identify weather patterns, popular poems include:

Red sky at night, shepherds’ delight; red sky in the morning, shepherds’ warning.

Flies will swarm before a storm.

Rain before 7, clear by 11.

While folk wisdom can still provide a guide to help forecast weather, today’s methods of prediction increasingly rely on technology. Satellites, balloons, ships, aircrafts and weather centers with sensitive monitoring equipment, send data to computers. The date is them processed, and the weather is predicted. However, even this system cannot predict weather for longer than about a week.

1.When weather keeps changing,          .

       A．people become bad-tempered

       B．people’s reaction slows down

       C．people find it hard to focus on their work

       D．people become hungrier

2.What is mainly talked about in the second paragraph?

       A．Changes in weather.                             B．Weather in Britain.

       C．African droughts.                                D．Research on weather.

3.The weather in Britain is       .

       A．random               B．moist                  C．depressing           D．satisfying

4.According to a traditional rhyme, if there is red sky at night, the next day will be      .

       A．windy                 B．rainy                   C．fine                     D．snowy

5.Which of the following statements in true?

       A．Anticyclones often bring rain and wind.

       B．Weather forecasting has been done for a long time.

       C．Weather could never be predicted.

       D．Modern methods of weather prediction are developed from folk wisdom.