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Climate and Country Wealth Why are some countries stupendously rich and others horrendously poor? Social theorists have been captivated by this question since the late 18th century, when Scottish economist Adam Smith argued in his magisterial work The Wealth of Nations that the best prescription for prosperity is a free-market economy in which the government allows businesses substantial freedom to pursue profits. Smith, however, made a second notable hypothesis: that the physical geography of a region can influence its economic performance. He contended that the economies of coastal regions, with their easy access to sea trade, usually outperform the economies of inland areas. Coastal regions and those near navigable waterways are indeed far richer and more densely settled than interior regions, just as Smith predicted. Moreover, an area's climate can also affect its economic development. Nations in tropical climate zones generally face higher rates of infectious disease and lower agricultural productivity (especially for staple foods) than do nations in temperate zones. Similar burdens apply to the desert zones. The very poorest regions in the world are those saddled with both handicaps: distance from sea trade and a tropical or desert ecology. The basic lessons of geography are worth repeating, because most economists have ignored them. In the past decade the vast majority of papers on economic development have neglected even the most obvious geographical realities. The best single indicator of prosperity is gross national product (GNP) per capita – the total value of a country's economic output, divided by its population. A map showing the world distribution of GNP per capita immediately reveals the vast gap between rich and poor nations. The great majority of the poorest countries lie in the geographical tropics. In contrast, most of the richest countries lie in the temperate zones. Among the 28 economies categorized as high income by the World Bank, only Hong Kong, Singapore and part of Taiwan are in the tropical zone, representing a mere 2 percent of the combined population of the high-income regions. Almost all the temperate-zone countries have either high-income economies (as in the cases of North America, western Europe, Korea and Japan) or middle-income economies (as in the cases of eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and China). In addition, there is a strong temperate-tropical divide within countries that straddle both types of climates. Most of Brazil, for example, lies within the tropical zone, but the richest part of the nation – the southernmost states – is in the temperate zone. There are two major ways in which a region’s climate affects economic development. First, it affects the prevalence of disease. Many kinds of infectious diseases are endemic to the tropical and subtropical zones. This tends to be true of diseases in which the pathogen spends part of its life cycle outside the human host: for instance, malaria (carried by mosquitoes) and helminthic infections (caused by parasitic worms). Although epidemics of malaria have occurred sporadically as far north as Boston in the past century, the disease has never gained a lasting foothold in the temperate zones, because the cold winters naturally control the mosquito-based

1 2002年8月TOEFL试题

Section Three: Reading Comprehension

Question 1-9

Often enough the craft worker’s place of employment in ancient Greece was set in rural

isolation. Potter, for instance, found it convenient to locate their workshops near their source of

clay, regardless of its relation to the center of settlement, At Corinth and Athens, however, two

of the best-known potters’ quarters were situated on the cities’ outskirts, and potters and makers

of terra-cotta figurines were also established well within the city of Athens itself. The techniques

of pottery manufacture had evolved well before the Greek period, but marked stylistic

developments occurred in shape and in decoration, for example, in the interplay of black and

other glazes with the red surface of the fired pot.

Athenian black-figure and red-figure decoration, which emphasized human figures rather

【2008辽宁大连卷】

1．《西游记》中写到孙悟空被老魔(狮王)吞下，用 ，迫使老魔答应送唐僧师徒四人过山。

答案：1．用绳子拴着妖怪的心肝／不扯不紧，一扯紧就痛。

（2009年恩施市）

8．《西游记》第二十七回“尸魔三戏唐三藏，圣僧恨逐美猴王”写了“孙悟空三打白骨精”的故事。联系相关内容完成下面习题。

（1）请简述“孙悟空三打白骨精”的经过。

（2）请为“孙悟空三打白骨精”的英雄行为写一段颁奖词。

8．（1）唐僧师徒取经路上经过一座高山，山中的妖精“白骨夫人”想吃唐僧肉，又惧惮唐僧身边的徒弟，因此她先后三次变幻成斋僧的村姑、寻找女儿的老婆婆及老公公来欺骗唐僧，伺机下手，可每次都被火眼金睛的孙悟空识破。孙悟空三次棒打白骨精，前两次被她逃脱了真身，第三次在土地山神的帮助下终于打杀了这个妖怪，让她现出了原形。

（2）是你火眼金睛让妖魔鬼怪原形毕露，是你不畏艰险一心除妖保护师傅，是你意志坚定为取经大业无怨无悔。

（2009苏州市）4.名著阅读。（5分）

《西游记》中孙悟空偷吃蟠桃、盗饮御酒、窃走仙丹被捉住之后，又发生了哪些事他才被降伏的？

答题要点：⑴太上老君把孙悟空放入炼丹炉内烧了四十九日，以为他已化为灰烬。老君开炉取丹时，孙悟空竟跳出丹炉往外就跑。众神打他不过，请如来佛祖帮忙，最后被佛祖压在“五行山”下。

（2009年厦门市）4．名著阅读：（9分）

(2)吴承恩《西游记》中的孙悟空有许多神奇之处。请从下列提示中任选一个，简述其相关故事情节。（4分）

①发现“水帘洞” ②获取“金箍棒” ③炼就“火眼金睛”

(2)（4分）要点与评分：抓住关键词“发现”，“获取”，“炼就”。能体现其过程，情节基本完整，

3分；表达，1分。

例一：有一天，群猴在水边洗澡，顺流而上发现一股瀑布。石猴率先跃入瀑布中，发现瀑布后有个天然的大石洞，他就率领群猴入住其中„„

例二：石猴想要一件合适的兵器，就去找东海龙王。试用了几件兵器都不满意，最后他看中了龙宫的定海神珍铁，便取来做他的兵器„„

96年10月TOFEL 阅读 (Page47-48)

C

Question 1-8

When Jules Verne wrote Journey to the Center of the Earth in 1864, there were many

conflicting theories about the nature of the Earth's interior. Some geologists thought that it

contained a highly compressed ball of incandescent gas, while others suspected that it consisted of

separate shells, each made of a different material. Today, well over a century later, there is still

little direct evidence of what lies beneath our feet. Most of our knowledge of the Earth's interior

comes not from mines or boreholes, but from the study of seismic waves - powerful pulses of

energy released by earthquakes.

The way that seismic waves travel shows that the Earth's interior is far from uniform. The

continents and the seabed are formed by the crust - a thin sphere of relatively light, solid rock.