1. A novel way of making computer memories, using bacteria FOR half a century, the (1)of progress in the computer industry has been to do more with less.Moore's law famously observes that the number of transistors which can be crammed into a given space(2)every 18 months.The amount of data that can be stored has grown at a similar rate.Yet as (3)get smaller, making them gets harder and more expensive.On May 10th Paul Otellini, the boss of Intel, a big American chipmaker, put the price of a new chip factory ataround $10 billion.Happily for those that lack InteVs resources, there may be a cheaper option一namely to mimic Mother Nature, who has been building tiny (4), in the fonn of living cells and their components, for billions of years, and has thus got rather good at it.A paper published in Small, a nanotechnology journal , sets out the latest example of the (5).In it, a group of researchers led by Sarah Staniland at the University of Leeds, in Britain, describe usingnaturally occurring proteins to make arrays of tiny magnets,similar to those employed to store information in diskdrives.The researchers took their (6)from Magnetospirillum magneticum, a bacterium that is sensitive to the Earth'smagnetic field thanks to the presence within its cells of flecks of magnetite, a form of iron oxide.Previous work has isolated the protein that makes these miniature compasses. Using genetic engineering, theteam managed to persuade a different bacterium——Escherichia coli, a ubiquitous critter that is a workhorse ofbiotechnology一to (7)this protein in bulk.Next, they imprinted a block of gold with a microscopic chessboard pattern of chemicals.Half the squares contained anchoring points for the protein.The other half were left untreated as controls.They then dipped the gold into a solution containing the protein, allowing it to bind to the treated squares, anddunked the whole lot into a heated (8)of iron salts.After that, they examined the results with an electron microscope.Sure enough, groups of magnetite grains had materialised on the treated squares, shepherded into place by thebacterial protein.In principle, each of these magnetic domains could store the one or the zero of a bit of information, accordingto how it was polarised.Getting from there to a real computer memory would be a long road.For a start, the grains of magnetite are not strong enough magnets to make a useful memory, and the size ofeach domain is huge by modern computing (9)・But Dr Staniland reckons that, with enough tweaking, both of these objections could be dealt with.The (10)of this approach is that it might not be so capital-intensive as building a fab.Growing things does not need as much kit as making them.If the tweaking could be done, therefore, the result might give the word biotechnology a whole new meaning.A)components B) advantage C) standards D) compliments E) essence F) inspiration G) disadvantage H)doubles I) solution J) resolution K) devices L) manufactureM) spirit N) product O) technique2.Nice juicy AppleALTHOUGH he is still (1)things up at Dell, an ailing computer-maker, Carl Icahn has found time to tilt at another tech titan. On August 13th the veteran shareholder activist (2)that he had built up a stake in Apple, though he stayed mum about exactly how many shares he had bought. Mr Icahn's intentions, however, are crystal clear: he wants the consumer-electronics behemoth to expand plans to return some of its whopping $147 billion of cash and marketable securities to shareholders.Mr Icahn is also after more money at Dell, where he has been lobbying with allies against a (3) buy-out plan put forward by Michael Dell, the firm's founder, and Silver Lake, a private-equity firm. His pressing has already forced the buy-out group to raise its initial offer by over $350m, to $24.8 billion and he has taken his(4)to the courts in a bid to extract an even higher price.Other tech firms have been attracting the attention of activist investors too. Earlier this year ValueAct Capital, an investment fund, said it had built up a S2 billion stake in Microsoft. Jaguar Financial, a Canadian bank, has been(5)fresh thinking at troubled BlackBerry, which announced on August 12th that it is exploring various(6)options, including alliances and a possible sale. And Elliott Management, a hedge fund, has been lobbying for change at NetApp, a data-storagc firm that it thinks could do more to improve returns to (7).One reason tech firms have found themselves in activists' crosshairs is that, like Apple, some built up big cash piles during the economic downturn and have been slow to use the money. Financiers hope to get them to loosen their purse-strings faster and to pocket some of the cash. Mr Icahn wants Apple to increase and (8)a share buy-back programme that is currently set to return $60 billion to shareholders by the end of 2015.Another reason that tech firms make tempting targets for shareholder activists is that swift changes in technologies can trip up even the mightiest. Witness the case of Microsoft, which ruled the roost during the personal-computer era but has struggled to adapt to a world in which tablets and smartphones are all the rage. Investors hope to mint money by pushing companies to change more rapidly in response to such upheavals in their markets.The rewards can be substantial. Egged on by Third Point, an activist hedge fund, Yahoo (9)Marissa Mayer as its new chief executive in July 2012. By the time she celebrated a year in the job last month, the troubled web giant's share price had risen by over 70%. In July the hedge fund sold a big chunk of shares back to Yahoo. Mr Icahn thinks Apple's share price, which closed at $499 on August 14th, could soar too if the firm follows his advice on buy-backs. He tweeted this week that he had had a “nice (10)‘‘ with Tim Cook, Apple's boss, ab out his idea, though he did not say what Mr Cook thought of it. If Apple drags its feet, expect things to turn nasty.A) shareholders B) strategic C) communication D) battle E) conversation F) encouragingG) exciting H) stirring I) appointed J) race K) revealed L) method M) accelerate N) proposed3.Thc rewards can be substantial. Egged on by Third Point, an activist hedge fund, Yahoo appointed MarissaMayer as its new chief executive in July 2012. By the time she celebrated a year in the job last month, the troubled web giant's share price had risen by over 70%. In July the hedge fund sold a big chunk of shares back to Yahoo. Mr Icahn thinks Apple's share price, which closed at $499 on August 14th, could soar too if the firm follows his advice on buy-backs. He tweeted this week that he had had a "nice conversation" with Tim Cook, Apple's boss, about his idea, though he did not say what Mr Cook thought of it. If Apple drags its feet, expect things to turn nasty.A recent study found that men consume an (3) 433 calories (equivalent to a McDonald's double cheeseburger) on days they drink a moderate amount of alcohol. About 61% of the caloric increase comes from the alcohol itself. Men also report eating higher amounts of saturated fats and meat, and less fruit and milk, on those days than on days when they aren't drinking, the study showed.Women fared a bit better, taking in an extra 300 calories on moderate-drinking days, from the alcohol and eating fattier foods. But women's increase in calories from additional eating wasn't statistically significant, the study said.'Men and women ate less healthily on days they drank alcohol/ said Rosalind Brcslow, an epidemiologist with the federal National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and lead author of the study. Poorer food choices on drinking days have public-health (4)she said.The findings dovetail with controlled lab studies in which (5)generally cat more food after consuming alcohol. Researchers suggest that alcohol may enhance 'the short-term rewarding effects1 of consuming food, according to a 2010 report in the journal Physiology & Behavior that reviewed previous studies on alcohol, appetite and obesity.But other studies have pointed to a different trend. Moderate drinkers gain less weight over time than either heavy drinkers or people who abstain from alcohol, particularly women, this research has shown. Moderate drinking is (6)having about two drinks a day for men and one for women.People who gain the least weight arc moderate drinkers, regardless of [alcoholic] beverage choice,' said Eric Rimm, an associate professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard Medical School and chairman of the 2010 review of alcohol in the federal dietary (7). The weight-gain difference is modest, and 'starting to drink is not a weight-loss diet/ he said.The various research efforts form part of a long-standing (8)about how alcohol affects people's appetites, weight and overall health. Researchers say there aren't simple answers, and suggest that individuals' metabolism, drinking patterns and gender may play a role.Alcohol is 'a real wild card when it comes to weight management/ said Karen Miller-Kovach, chief scientific officer of Weight Watchers International. At seven calorics per gram, alcohol is closer to fat than to carbohydrate or protein in caloric content, she said. Alcohol tends to lower restraint, she notes, causing a person to become more (9)with what they're eating.Research bolstering the role of moderate drinking in helping to control weight gain was published in 2004 in the journal Obesity Research. That study followed nearly 50,000 women over eight years. An earlier study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in 1994, followed more than 7,000 people for 10 years and found that moderate drinkers gained less weight than nondrinkers. Studies comparing changes in waistcircumference among different groups have yielded similar results.Dr. Rimm said it isn't clear why moderate drinking may be (10)against typical weight gain, but it could have to do with metabolic adjustments. After people drink alcohol, their heart rate increases so they burn more calories in the following hour.It's a modest amount/ he said. 'But if you take an individual that eats 100 calories instead of a glass of wine, the person drinking the glass of wine will have a slight increase in the amount of calorics burned/ A:indulgcnt B participants C: debate D:considcrcd E:contributcs F:contcstG:guidelines H:protective I: moderate J:index K:implications Lrconsiderate M:additional N:experienced O:owcs4.Nearly half the (1)believes UFOs could be a (2)of extraterrestrial visitation.A HuffPost/YouGov poll reveals that 48 percent of adults in the United States are open to the idea that alien spacecraft are observing our planet 一and just 35 percent outright (3)the idea.The poll was seen as vindication from the community of UFO researchers who often feel they are laughed off by government officials."It's always been intriguing to me how we act as though only kooks and quacks and little old ladies in tennis shoes believe in flying saucers. And it's never been true, at least for 30 or 40 years,” said former nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman, who was the original civilian investigator of the events surrounding the (4) Roswell, NM, UFO crash of 1947.Friedman is very outspoken on the idea that some UFOs arc (5) controlled extraterrestrial vehicles."The believers are far more quiet, but far more on the side of reality/ Friedman told The Huffington Post.H When you look at the polls, ifs clear. And I see the benefit of that, (6), because I've only had 11 hecklers in over 700 lectures. I've been out there, all over the place, in every state, 18 other countries, and I know that my (7)is more than tolerant 一they're accepting. It's been one of the things that really has kept me going.H In the HuffPost/YouGov poll, conducted between Sept. 6-7, 1,000 adults were asked if they either believed or didn't believe that some people have (8)UFOs that have an extraterrestrial origin.When YouGov offered (9) the choice between "slightly disagree/1 "disagree" and "strongly disagree/1 those numbers added up to 35 percent who are skeptical of the notion that any UFOs may be alien-related.However, nearly half of the adults surveyed (48 percent) resounded in the affirmative, leaving 16 percent who (10)that they weren't sure on either side of the ET issue.A: legendary B:accept C: reject D: respondents E: personally F: implied G: population H: rcsposib山ty I: intelligently J: indicated K: sign L: signal M: witnessedN: story O: audience5 .The typical pre-industrial family not only had a good many children, but numerous other dependents as well---grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousions. Such "extended” families were suited for survival in slow paced —1—societies. But such families are hard to _2—・They are immobile.Industrialism demanded masses of workers ready and able to move off the land in pursuit of jobs, and to move again whenever necessary. Thus the extendedfamily _3_ shed its excess weight and the so-called "nucle ar” family emerged—a stripped-down, portable family unit _4— only of parents and a small set of children. This new style family, far more _5— than the traditional extended family, became the standard model in all the industrial counties. Super-industrialism, however, the next stage of eco-technological development, —6— even higher mobility. Thus we may expect many among the people of the future to carry the streamlinling process, a stePfurther by remaining children, cutting the family down to its more _7_ components, aman and a woman. Two people, perhaps with matched careers, will prove more efficient at navigating through education and social status, through job changes and geographic relocations, than teh ordinarily child-cluttered family.A _8—may be the postponement of children, rather than childlessness. Men and women today arc often torn in _9_ between a commitment to career and a commitment to children. In the future, many _10— will sidcstcPthis problem by deferring the entire task of raising children until after retirement.A)transplant B)solution C)gadually D)transport E)elemental F)conflict G)continually H)mobilc I)couplcs J)agricultural K)including L)compromisc M)rcquircsN)primary O)consisting6.英语六级新题型选词填空模拟题一Two astronauts face a not-so-merry Christmas after being told to ration their food and hope a cargo ship with extra supplies docks on Dec. 21. Russian cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov and American Leroy Chiao have been asked to cut out calories equal to three cans of Coke from their daily diet一around 10 percent of their daily 1 and an amount that would be little noticed, NASA said.Russian officials, quoted in the local media, have 2 blamed the previous crew for overeating during their one-month mission earlier this year, leaving a 3 of meat and milk and a suiplus of juice and confectionery (糖果).The Dee. 24 launch of the next Progress is now 4 for the crew, stationed in orbit since October. It is due to 5 with the ISS on Dec. 21.NASA officials said their situation was not so different from being cut off on Earth, and their lives were not at risk. If they do not receive 6 supplies, the astronauts would have to 7 the station and return to Earth on the Soyuz capsule that is docked there.Russia has been the sole lifeline to the ISS for almost two years when the United States grounded its 8 fleet after the fatal Columbia accident.Russia has often 9 of its financial struggle to keep the ISS fully serviced single-handedly. Shuttle flights couldJ) dock K) resume L) vital M) trivial F) shuttle O) fresh10 in May, officials have said, but in the meantime Russia will continue to launch all manned and cargo ships. I) adequateA) deficitB) complainedC) severelyD) allowanceE) consideratelyN) evaluateG) evacuateH) absently7. 英语六级新题型选词填空模拟题二Tea is the steady companion of the Scottish day. Each hotel, no matter how humble? stocks its rooms with supplies for brew-ups ('，包茶)；electric pot for 1 water, ceramic pot for brewing, china cups and smalltea-creamers, a great number of teas, honey, fresh milk, and lemons. This is a delight and 2, for not only is there no such thing in American hotels, but room service even in 3 ones, when asked for teawith milk, can 4 a plastic kettle of hot water covered by a square of Saran Wrap, and a glass of milk.It is nearing four o' clock in the afternoon. We come upon a small caravan camper with its door open to a late-middle -aged Scottish couple, sitting at a folding table, taking tea and biscuits. Passing by, one only has a 5: his thick, white socks and heavy black shoes; her plump pear form and print dress; the electric kettle on the table. The archaeologists are 6 as to why the people of ancient Skara Brae would locatetheir huts so close to the sea, and have guessed that in fact the settlement was 7 located in a protectedhollow, that time has eroded the shoreline inland toward the huts. That would make sense. Indeed, when presented at Skara Brae with the lure of a (an) 8 sea and the howling wind, we ourselves tucked into the hollowof a dune for lunch, eating chccsc and apples in the sun with wind 9 our heads, blowing the sand intorippling ridges, flattening the beach grasses. Probably the archaeologists arc right, but this utterly typical sense of Scottish 10 merrily planted at the edge of harsh cliffs, afternoon tea conducted in the wind and cold,suggests another possibility.A) deliver B) sparkling C) confused D) considerate E) slash F) immediately G) astonishment H) glimpse I) skimming J) domesticity K) cooperate L) boiling M) respectable N) glowing0) originally8. Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always _1_ such people, but I also explain that there 9 sa big difference between "being a writer" and writing. In most cases these individuals are dreaming of_2— and fame, notthe long hours alone at a typewriter. "You've got to want to write,” I say to them, M not want to be a writer 「'The reality is that writing is a _3—, private and poor-paying affair. For every writer kissed by fortune there arethousands more whose longing is never _4—. When I left a 20-year career in the US. Coast Guard to become a frA) barely B) genuineF)poverty G) persuadeK) encourage L)awardcd 9.C) rewarded D) doubtH) prospects I) uncertaintyM) alone N)wcalthE) lonelyJ)impossiblyO)cold[A]comparc[F]rcfcrcncc[K]Necessarily 10. [B]rcsponsiblc[G]indircct[L]capacity[C]uscful [D]addcd [E]find[H] method [I]succcssful [J]combincd[M]ability [N]Basically [OJadopteelancewriter.Ihad no _5_ at all. What I did have was a friend who found me my room in a New York apartment building. It didn't even matter that it was _6—and had no bathroom. I immediately bought a used manual typew riter and feltlike a _7— writer.After a year or so, however, I still hadn't gotten a break and began to _8— mysel f. It was so hard to sell a storythat _9— made enough to cat. But I knew I wanted to write. I had dreamed about it for years. I wasn't going to be one ofthosc people who die wondering, what if? I would kcco putting my dream to the test——even though it meant living with _10—and fear of failure. This is the Shadow land of hope, and anyon ewith a dream learn to live there.As is known to all, the organization and management of wages and salaries are very complex. Generally speaking, the Accounts Department is _1— for calculations of pay, while the Personnel Department is interested in discuss ions with the employees about pay.If a firm wants to _2— a new wage and salary structure, it is essential that the firm should decide on a _3_ _ of job evaluation and ways of measuring the performance of its employees. In order to be _4_, that new pay st ructurc will need agreement between Trade Unions and employers. In job evaluation, all of the requirements of ca ch job are defined in a detailed job description. Each of thsoe requirements is given a value, usually in "points", w hich arc _5_ together to give a total value for the job. For middle and higher management, a special method is u sed to evaluate managers on their knowledge of the job, their responsibility, and their _6— to solve problems. Be cause of the difficulty in measuring management work, however, job grades for managers are often decided witho ut _7_ to an evaluation system based on points.In attempting to design a pay system, the Personnel Department should _8— the value of each job with these i n the job market. —9—, payment for a job should vary with any differences in the way that the job is performed. Where it is simple to measure the work done, as in the works done with hands, monetary encouragement schemes arc often chosen, for _10— workers, where measurement is difficult, methods of additional payments arc employed.Americans arc proud of their variety and individually, yet they love and respect few things more than a uniform. Why are uniforms so _1— in the United States?Among the arguments for uniforms, one of the first is that in the eyes of most people they look more _2— thancivilian()clothcs. People have become conditioned to _3_ superior quality from a man who wears a uniform. T he television repairman who wears a uniform tends to _4— more trust than one who appears in civilian clothes.Faith in the _5— of a garage mechanic is increased by a uniform. What an easier way is there for a nurse, a polic cman, a barber, or a waiter to _6— professional idcntity(份)than to step out of uniform? Uniforms also have ma ny —7— benefits- They save on other clothes. They save on laundry bills. They are often more comfortable and m orc durable than civilian clothes.Primary among the arguments against uniforms is their lack of variety and the consequent loss of_8— exp erienced by people who must wear them. Though there are many types of uniforms, the wearer of any particular ty pe is generally stuck with it, without _9—, until retirement. When people look alike, they tend to think, speak, an d act _10—, on the job at least.[A]skill [B]popular [C]get [D]change [E]similarly[F]profcssional[ G]charactcr [H]individuality [I]inspirc [J]diffcrcntly [K]cxpcct [L]practical [M]rccall [N]losc [O]ordinary 11.2013年12月英语六级选词填空习题及答案(1)A novel way of making computer memories, using bacteria FOR half a century, the (1)of progress in the computer industry has been to do more with less. Moore's law famously observes that the number of transistors which can be crammed into a given space (2)every 18 months. The amount of data that can be stored has grown at a similar rate.Yet as (3)get smaller, making them gets harder andmore expensive. On May 10th Paul Otellini, the boss of Intel, a big American chipmaker, put the price of a new chip factory at around $10 billion. Happily for those that lack IntePs resources, there may be a cheaper option一namely to mimic Mother Nature, who has been building tiny (4), in the form of living cells and their components, for billions of years, and has thus got rather good at it. A paper published in Small, a nanotechnology journal , sets out the latest example of the (5). In it, a group of researchers led by Sarah Staniland at the University of Leeds, in Britain, describe using naturally occurring proteins to make arrays of tiny magnets, similar to those employed to store information in disk drives. The researchers took their (6) from Magnetospirillum magneticum, a bacterium that is sensitive to the Earth's magnetic field thanks to the presence within its cells of flecks of magnetite, a form of iron oxide. Previous work has isolated the protein that makes these miniature compasses. Using genetic engineering, the team managed to persuade a different bacterium一Escherichia coli, a ubiquitous critter that is a workhorse of biotechnology一to (7)this protein in bulk. Next, they imprinted a block of gold with a microscopic chessboard pattern of chemicals. Half the squares contained anchoring points for the protein. The other half were left untreated as controls. They then dipped the gold into a solution containing the protein, allowing it to bind to the treated squares, and dunked the whole lot into a heated (8)of iron salts. After that, they examined the results with an electron microscope. Sure enough, groups of magnetite grains had materialised on the treated squares, shepherded into place by the bacterial protein. In principle, each of these magnetic domains could store the one or the zero of a bit of information, according to how it was polarised. Getting from there to a real computer memory would be a long road. For a start, the grains of magnetite arc not strong enough magnets to make a useful memory, and the size of each domain is huge by modern computingL) manufacture M) spirit N) product O) technique(9)・ But Dr Staniland reckons that, with enough tweaking, both of these objections could be dealt with. The (10)of this approach is that it might not be so capital-intensive as building a fab. Growing things does not need as much kit as making them. If the tweaking could be done, therefore, the result might give the word biotechnology a whole new meaning.A) componentsI) solution B) advantageJ) resolution C) standardsK) devices D) complimentsE) essenceF) inspirationG) disadvantage H) doubles 12.2013年12月英语六级选词填空习题及答案(2) Nice juicy Apple ALTHOUGH he is still (1)things up at Dell, an ailing computer-maker, Carl Icahn has found time to tilt at another tech titan. On August 13th the veteran shareholder activist (2) that he had built up a stake in Apple, though he stayed mum about exactly how many shares he had bought. Mr Icahn's intentions, however, are crystal clear: he wants the consumer-electronics behemoth to expand plans to return some of its whopping $147 billion of cash and marketable securities to shareholders. Mr Icahn is also after more money at Dell, where he has been lobbying with allies against a (3)buy-out plan put forward by Michael Dell, the firm's founder, and Silver Lake, a private-equity firm. His pressing has already forced the buy-out group to raise its initial offer by over S350m, to $24.8 billion and he has taken his(4)to the courts in a bid to extract an even higher price. Other tech firms have been attracting the attention of activist investors too. Earlier this year ValueAct Capital, an investment fund, said it had built up a $2 billion stake in Microsoft. Jaguar Financial, a Canadian bank, has been (5)fresh thinking at troubled BlackBerry, which announced on August 12th that it is exploring various (6) options, including alliances and a possible sale. And Elliott Management, a hedge fund, has been lobbying for change at NetApp, a data-storagc firm that it thinkscould do more to improve returns to (7). One reason tech firms have found themselves in activists' crosshairs is that, like Apple, some built up big cash piles during the economic downturn and have been slow to use the money.Financiers hope to get them to loosen their purse-strings faster and to pocket some of the cash. Mr Icahn wantsApple to increase and (8) a share buy-back programme that is currently set to return $60 billion to shareholders by the end of 2015. Another reason that tech firms make tempting targets for shareholder activists is that swiftchanges in technologies can trip up even the mightiest. Witness the case of Microsoft, which ruled the roost during the personal-computer era but has struggled to adapt to a world in which tablets and smartphones arc all the rage. Investors hope to mint money by pushing companies to change more rapidly in response to such upheavals in their markets. The rewards can be substantial. Egged on by Third Point, an activist hedge fund, Yahoo (9)MarissaMayer as its new chief executive in July 2012. By the time she celebrated a year in the job last month, the troubled。
