【阅读选择】On the other hand, more people working for longer would create greater competition for jobs. It would make it more difficult for younger people to find a job. Top posts would be dominated by the same few individuals, making career progress more difficult. And how easily would a 25-year-old employee be able to communicate with a 125-year-old boss?All of the following are possible effects living longer might have on working life EXCEPT________.

【阅读选择】Income may be national income and personal income. Whereas national income is defined as the total earned income of all the factors of production—namely, profits, interest, rent, wages, and other compensation for labor, personal income may be defined as total money income received by individuals before personal taxes are paid. National income does not equal GNP because the factors of production do not receive payment for either capital consumption allowances or indirect business taxes, both of which are included in GNP. The money put aside for capital consumption is for replacement and thus is not counted as income. Indirect taxes include sales taxes, property taxes, and excise taxes that are paid by businesses directly to the government and so reduce the income left to pay for the factors of production. Three-fourths of national income goes for wages, salaries, and other forms of compensation to employees.Which of the following statements is true according to the paragraph?

【阅读选择】It normally takes from five days to one week for a person to adapt to a reversed routine of sleep and wakefulness, sleeping during the day and working at night. Unfortunately, it is often the case in industry that shifts are changed every week; a person may work from 12 midnight to 8 a. m. one week, 8 am to 4pm the next, and 4 pm to 12 midnight the third and so on. This means that no sooner has he got used to one routine than he has to change to another, so that much of his time is spent neither working nor sleeping very efficiently.In the last sentence of the paragraph, “another” means_____.

【阅读选择】Northern Europeans are willing to pay a lot of money and put up with a lot of inconveniences for the sun because they have so little of it. Residents of cities like London, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam spend a lot of their winter in the dark because the days are so short, and much of the rest of the year in the rain. This is the reason the Mediterranean has always attracted them. Every summer, more than 25 million people travel to Mediterranean resorts and beaches for their vacation. They all come for the same reason: sun!In the paragraph, cities like London, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam are mentioned _____.

【阅读选择】Who was this man? How and when had he died? Everybody had a different answer to these questions．Some people thought that it was from this century, perhaps the body of a soldier who died in World War I, since several soldiers had already been found in the area．A Swiss woman believed it might be her father, who had died in those mountains twenty years before and whose body had never been found．The scientists who rushed to look at the body thought it was probably much older, maybe even a thousand years old. All the followings are assumptions once made about the Iceman EXCEPT _________.

【阅读选择】And yet although the Mayas knew about the wheel, they never used it. Neither did they use metals other than copper. What is ever more surprising is that they suddenly abandoned(抛弃) many of the cities and built new ones in the jungle. Some time around AD900, Mayan civilization collapsed. By the year 1200, their last great capital, Chichen Itza, was deserted.One of the most surprising findings about Mayas was that ______.

【阅读选择】For any given task in Britain there are more men than are needed. Strong unions keep them there. In Fleet Street, home of some of London's biggest dailies, it is understood that when two unions quarrel over three jobs the argument is settled by giving each union two. That means 33 per cent over manning, 33 per cent less productivity than could be obtained.What happens when disputes over job opportunities arise among British unions?

【阅读选择】There are many other foods that have traveled from South America to the Old World. But some others went in the opposite direction. Brazil is now the world’s largest grower of coffee, and coffee is an important crop in Colombia and other South American countries. But it is native to Ethiopia, a country in Africa. It was first made into a drink by Arabs during the 1400’s.Which country is the largest coffee producer?

【阅读选择】The system has several advantages. Shepherds do not have to walk among the sheep, which tends to disturb the mother sheep that are about to give birth. Instead, they can stay inside, watching by remote control. If there is no problem, they stay away from the sheep. But when they are needed they can quickly go out to help, or to scare away foxes. The experiment is popular 'with shepherds because it means that they do not have to spend all their time outdoors waiting for the lambs to arrive in freezing weather.From the passage, we learn that walking among the sheep ______.

【阅读选择】In 1841, a book was published which astonished the world. It was called “Incidents of Travel in Central America，Chiapas and Yucatan”. The author John Loud Stephens had just returned from a long, difficult and dangerous journey through the thick rain forest of southern Mexico and Guatemala. He had once been there with Frederick Catherwood, an architect and artist, to search for the remains of a lost civilization known as the Mayas(玛雅). Very little was known about the Mayas at that time, but Catherwood’s drawing in the book showed incredible cities with temples, pyramids and other buildings as impressive as those of their northern neighbors, the Aztecs. These cities, however, were deserted. The inhabitants(居民) had disappeared almost a thousand years before.Stephen’s book astonished the world because ______.