New York Time — A gunman killed eight people at a mall in Omaha this afternoon and then killed himself, setting off panic among holiday shoppers, the police said.
＂The person who we believe to be the shooter has died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds,＂ Sergeant Teresa Negron of the Omaha Police Department said at televised news.＂ We have been able to clear the mall,＂ she said. ＂We don’t believe we have any other shooters.＂ The police said that at least five other people had been injured in the shootings.
She did not give the shooter’s identity. ＂We are still conducting the investigation,＂ Sergeant Negron said, adding that the city's mayor, who was out of town, was on his way back to Omaha.
She said the police received a 911 call from someone inside the Westroads Mall on the west side of Omaha, and shots could be heard in the background. The first police officers arrived at the mall six minutes after the first call, she said but by then the shootings were over.
It is reported that the gunman left a suicide note that was found at his home by relatives. A law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity（匿名）said the note indicated that the gunman wanted to ＂go out in style.＂
The shootings broke the usually ordinary routine of holiday shopping. The gunman was said by some witnesses to have fired about 20 shots into a crowd. Some customers and workers ran screaming from the mall, while others dived into dressing rooms to hide from the shooter.
Shoppers and store workers were trapped inside the mall, which has roughly 135 stores. Others streamed out of mall exits with their hands raised. President Bush was in Omaha this morning to deliver a speech, but he had left the city by the time the shootings took place.
1.What do the underlined words ＂go out in style＂ probably mean?
A. To go out of the mall in particular clothes.
B. To walk in the mall with oneself focused on.
C. To stop his life in an impressive way.
D. To go to a social event by fashionable means.
2.Which of the following is true according to the passage?
A. Nobody knows why the shooter did so and nothing was found at his home.
B. The city’s mayor went to the site when the shooting took place.
C. Police arrived at the mall before the shooting was over and rescued customers.
D. The official who showed what the note meant wanted to keep himself from being known to the public.
3.Which of the following can be the best title of the news?
A. Bush Happened to Escape a Shot
B. Shoppers in Great Panic before the Holiday
C. Shooter Found Dead in a Mall on the west of Omaha
D. Gunman Killed 8 People, Then Himself at a Mall in Omaha
（题文）The Intelligent Transport team at Newcastle University have turned an electric car into a mobile laboratory named ＂DriveLAB＂ in order to understand the challenges faced by older drivers and to discover where the key stress points are.
Research shows that giving up driving is one of the key reasons for a fall in health and well-being among older people, leading to them becoming more isolated(隔绝) and inactive.
Led by Professor Phil Blythe, the Newcastle team are developing in-vehicle technologies for older drivers which they hope could help them to continue driving into later life.
These include custom-made navigation(导航) tools, night vision systems and intelligent speed adaptations. Phil Blythe explains: ＂For many older people, particularly those living alone or in the country, driving is important for preserving their independence, giving them the freedom to get out and about without having to rely on others.＂
＂But we all have to accept that as we get older our reactions slow down and this often results in people avoiding any potentially challenging driving conditions and losing confidence in their driving skills. The result is that people stop driving before they really need to.＂
Dr Amy Guo, the leading researcher on the older driver study, explains: ＂The DriveLAB is helping us to understand what the key points and difficulties are for older drivers and how we might use technology to address these problems.
＂For example, most of us would expect older drivers always go slower than everyone else but surprisingly, we found that in 30mph zones they struggled to keep at a constant speed and so were more likely to break the speed limit and be at risk of getting fined. We’re looking at the benefits of systems which control their speed as a way of preventing that. ＂
＂We hope that our work will help with technological solutions(解决方案) to ensure that older drivers stay safer behind the wheel.
What is the best title for the text?
A. A new Model Electric Car
B. A Solution to Traffic Problems
C. Driving Services for Elders
D. Keeping Older Drivers on the Road
Terrafugia Inc. said Monday that its new flying car has completed its first flight, bringing the company closer to its goal of selling the flying car within the next year. The vehicle —named the Transition – has two seats, four wheels and wings that fold up so it can be driven like a car. The Transition, which flew at 1,400 feet for eight minutes last month, can reach around 70 miles per hour on the road and 115 in the air. It flies using a 23-gallon tank of gas and burns 5 gallons per hour in the air. On the ground, it gets 35 miles per gallon.
Around 100 people have already put down a $10,000 deposit to get a Transition when they go on sale, and those numbers will likely rise after Terrafugia introduces the Transition to the public later this week at the New York Auto Show. But don’t expect it to show up in too many driveways. It’s expected to cost $279,000. And it won’t help if you’re stuck in traffic. The car needs a runway.
Inventors have been trying to make flying cars since the 1930s, according to Robert Mann, an airline industry expert. But Mann thinks Terrafugia has come closer than anyone to making the flying car a reality. The government has already permitted the company to use special materials to make it easier for the vehicle to fly. The Transition is now going through crash tests to make sure it meets federal safety standards.
Mann said Terrafugia was helped by the Federal Aviation Administration’s decision five years ago to create a separate set of standards for light sport aircraft, which are lower than those for pilots of larger planes. Terrafugia says an owner would need to pass a test and complete 20 hours of flying time to be able to fly the Transition, a requirement pilots would find relatively easy to meet.
What is the best title for the text?
A. Flying Car at Auto Show
B. The Transition’s First Flight
C. Pilots’ Dream Coming True
D. Flying Car Closer to Reality
Some of the world’s most famous musicians recently gathered in Paris and New Orleans to celebrate the first annual International Jazz Day. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) recently set April 30 as a day to raise awareness of jazz music, its significance, and its potential as a unifying(联合) voice across cultures.
Despite the celebrations, though, in the U.S. the jazz audience continues to shrink and grow older, and the music has failed to connect with younger generations.
It’s Jason Moran’s job to help change that. As the Kennedy Center’s artistic adviser for jazz, Moran hopes to widen the audience for jazz, make the music more accessible, and preserve its history and culture.
＂Jazz seems like it’s not really a part of the American appetite,＂ Moran tells National Public Radio’s reporter Neal Conan. ＂What I’m hoping to accomplish is that my generation and younger start to reconsider and understand that jazz is not black and write anymore. It’s actually color, and it’s actually digital.＂
Moran says one of the problems with jazz today is that the entertainment aspect of the music has been lost. ＂The music can’t be presented today the way it was in 1908 or 1958. It has to continue to move, because the way the world works is not the same,＂ says Moran.
Last year, Moran worked on a project that arranged Fats Waller’s music for a dance party, ＂just to kind of put it back in the mind that Waller is dance music as much as it is concert music,＂ says Moran. ＂For me, it’s the recontextualization. In music, where does the emotion(情感) lie? Are we, as humans, gaining any insight(感悟) on how talk about ourselves and how something as abstract as a Charlie Parker record gets us into a dialogue about our emotions and our thoughts? Sometimes we lose sight that the music has a wider context,＂ says Moran, ＂so I want to continue those dialogues. Those are the things I want to foster.＂
Which of the following can be the best title for the text?
A. Exploring the Future of Jazz
B. The Rise and Fall of Jazz
C. The Story of a Jazz Musician
D. Celebrating the Jazz Day
My father was always a good gardener. One of my earliest memories is standing without shoes in the freshly tilled(翻耕的)soil, my hands blackened from digging in the ground.
As a child, I loved following Dad around in the garden, I remember Dad pushing the tiller(耕作机)ahead in perfectly straight lines. Dad loved growing all sorts of things: yellow and green onions, watermelons almost as big as me, rows of yellow com, and our favorite ― red tomatoes.
As I grew into a teenager, I didn’t get so excited about gardening with Dad. Instead of magical land of possibility, it had turned into some kind of prison. As Dad grew older, his love for gardening never disappeared. After all the kids were grown and had started families of their own, Dad turned to gardening like never before. Even when he was diagnosed with cancer, he still took care of his garden.
But then, the cancer, bit by bit, invaded his body. I had to do the things he used to do. What really convinced me that Dad was dying was the state of his garden that year. The rows and rows of multicolored vegetables were gone. Too tired to weed them, he simply let them be. He only planted tomatoes.
For the first few years after he died, I couldn’t even bear to look at anyone's garden without having strong memories pour over me like cold water from a bucket. Three years ago, I decided to plant my own garden and started out with just a few tomatoes. That morning, after breaking up a fair amount of soil, something caught the comer of my eye and I had to smile, It was my eight-year-old son Nathan, happily playing in the freshly tilled soil.
1.Why did the author like the garden when he was a child?
A. The garden was planted with colorful flowers.
B. The garden was just freshly tilled by his father.
C. He loved what his father grew in the garden.
D. He enjoyed being in the garden with his father.
2.When all the kids started their own families, the author’s father .
A. devoted more to gardening
B. turned to other hobbies
C. stopped his gardening
D. focused on planting tomatoes
3.What happened to the garden when the author’s father was seriously ill?
A. The author’s son took charge of it.
B. No plant grew in the garden at all.
C. The garden was almost deserted.
D. It brought the author a great harvest.
4.We can infer from the last paragraph that .
A. the author’s son played happily in the garden
B. the author’s son reminded him of his own father
C. the author’s son was very glad to help the author
D. the author’s son will continue gardening as well
Science textbooks around the world have become suddenly out of date. Four new chemical elements(元素)have been added to the periodic table. A big decision now lies ahead-elements 113,115,117 and 118 need to be given their official names and symbols.
New elements can be named after a mythical(神话的) concept, a mineral, a place or country, a property(性质) or a scientist. The names have to be unique and maintain ＂historical and chemical consistency＂. This means a lot of ＂-iums＂.
＂They’re Latinising the name,＂ explains chemist Andrea Sella. ＂The most recent tradition is to name them after places or people.＂ The places chosen tend to be where the element was discovered or first produced.
No one has yet named an element after themselves but many elements are named in honour of important scientists. Albert Einstein was given einsteinium. This can also be a way of righting the wrongs of the past. ＂Lise Meitner was really the chemist who spotted nuclear fission(核裂变)but she was never really recognised for it because she was Jewish and a woman, ＂ says Sella. ＂Giving an element a name that reminds us of her is greatly important. ＂
The naming process isn’t quick. The scientists who discovered them will start things off by suggesting a name. But it will be down to the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) to approve it. A special division of the US-based group has to accept the suggestion. Then there is a public review period of five months before the IUPAC gets the final approval. Once it’s ready, the name is announced in the scientific journal Pure and Applied Chemistry.
Naming an element is not just about functionality. Names are always important.
1.What is the function of Paragraph 1?
A. To introduce the topic.
B. To present a finding.
C. To point out a problem.
D. To call for a decision,
2.Why was Lise Meitner mentioned in the naming process in Paragraph 4?
A. To praise her.
B. To build her reputation.
C. To correct the wrongs of the past.
D. To end racial discrimination
3.Who has the final say in the naming process of an element?
A. The scientist who discovered them.
B. The special division of US-based group.
C. The scientific journal Pure and Applied Chemistry,
D. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.
4.What is the passage mainly about?
A. How elements get their names.
B. Why science textbooks are out of date.
C. How new elements are discovered.
D. How functional naming an element is.
