The government-run command post in Tunis is staffed around the clock by military personnel, meteorologists and civilians. On the wall are maps, crisscrossed with brightly colors arrows that painstakingly track the fearsome path of the enemy.
　　What kind of invader gives rise to such high-level monitoring? Not man, not beast, but the lowly desert locust(蝗虫). In recent months, billions of the 3-inch-long winged warriors have descended on Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia, blackening the sky and eating up crops and vegetation. The insect invasion, the worst in 30 years, is already creating great destruction in the Middle East and is now treating southern Europe. The current crisis began in late 1985 near the Red Sea. Unusually rainy weather moistened the sands of the Sudan, making them ideal seedbed for the locust, which lays its eggs in the earth. The insect onslaught threatens to create yet another African famine. Each locust can eat its weight (not quite a tenth of an ounce) in vegetation every 24 hours. A good-size swarm of 50 billion insects eats up 100,000 tons of grass, trees and crops in a single night.
　　All ﹩150 million may be needed this year. The U.S. has provided two spraying planes and about 50,000 gal. of pesticide. The European Community has donated ﹩3.8 million in aid and the Soviet Union, Canada, Japan and China have provided chemical-spraying aircraft to help wipe out the pests. But relief efforts are hampered by the relative mildness of approved pesticides, which quickly lose their deadly punch and require frequent replications. The most effective locust killer dieldrin has been linked to cancer and is banned by many Western countries and some of the affected African nations. More than 5 million acres have been dusted with locust-killing chemicals; another 5 million will be treated by the end of June.
　　On May 30, representatives of Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Mauritania will meet in Algiers to discuss tactics to wipe out the ravenous swarms. The move is an important step, but whatever plan is devised, the locust plague promised to get worse before the insects can be brought under control.
【小题1】The main idea of the first sentence in the passage is that ______.

A．the command post is stationed with people all the time.

B．the command post is crowded with people all the time.

C．there are clocks around the command post.

D．the clock in the command post is taken care of by the staff.

【小题2】 The favorable breeding ground for the locust is ______.

A．rich soil.	B．wet land
C．paces covered crops and vegetation	D．the Red Sea

【小题3】 People are alert at the threat of the locust because ______.

A．the insects are likely to create another African famine.

B．the insects may blacken the sky.

C．the number of the insects increases drastically.

D．the insects are gathering and moving in great speed.

【小题4】Which of the following is true?

A．Once the pesticides are used, locust will die immediately.

B．Relief efforts are proved most fruitful due to the effectiveness of certain pesticides.

C．Dieldrin, the most effective locust killer, has been widely accepted in many countries.

D．Over 10 million acres of affected area will have been treated with locust-killing chemicals by the end of June.

【小题5】 The purpose for affected nations to meet in Algiers on May 30 is ______.

A．to devise anti-locust plans.

B．to wipe out the swarms in two years.

C．to call out for additional financial aid from other nations.

D．to bring the insects under control before the plague gets worse.

　　Albert Einstein (1879～1955) was one of the greatest and most original scientific thinkers of all time.

　　Born of Jewish parents at Ulm in Germany, he completed his education in Switzerland and got his Ph. D at the University of Zurich. He went to live in the United States in 1933 because of the rise of Nazism（纳粹）in Germany and Hitler’s persecution（迫害）of the Jews.

　　In 1905, while still at Zurich, he published his Special Theory of Relativity, which was based on things everyone may have noticed. If two trains are standing alongside each other and one train starts to move, a person sitting in the train may wonder whether his own train is moving or the other is moving, and before he finds out what is happening, he can see that one train is moving relatively to the other. From this and also from other more complicated facts, Einstein came to the conclusion that all motion is relative and that there are really no such things as absolute（绝对）motion. Some of the other conclusions he drew are that nothing can go faster than light, and that if something such as a ruler was moving faster and faster it would seem to get shorter and shorter as its speed was near the speed of light. By 1915, Einstein had made known his General Theory of Relativity. He also improved on Newton’s theory of gravity. Most of his theories have been tested and found to be true though some may sound strange. For his important work he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics.

(1) In 1933, Einstein wanted to live in the United States because ________.

A．he loved the USA．more than his own country

B．he had got some friends there with whom he could work together

C．he wanted to live quietly in the USA

D．he could no longer work in Germany when Hitler came into power

(2) Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity when he was ________.

A．in the United States

B．in Ulm, Germany after he got his Ph．D

C．still in Switzerland at the age of twenty-six

D．still at the University of Zurich at the age of thirty-six

(3) One of the conclusions drawn by Einstein is that ________.

A．places go faster than trains and buses

B．people couldn’t run as fast as vehicles

C．light gobs the fastest of all the things

D．two trains can go in different directions

(4) Einstein added that if something such as a ruler was moving it would seem to get shorter and shorter ________.

A．because the ruler itself was short

B．when it was moving faster and faster

C．because we can’t see it clearly

D．because the ruler was broken into pieces

(5) Einstein was world-famous for his ________.

A．Special Theory of Relativity

B．General Theory of Relativity

C．improving on Newton’s theory of gravity

D．all of the above

More surprising, perhaps, than the current difficulties of traditional marriage is the fact that marriage itself is alive and thriving（旺盛的）. As Skolnich notes, Americans are a marrying people: relative to Europeans, more of us marry and we marry at a younger age. Moreover, after a decline（衰退）in the early 1970s, the rate of marriage in the United States is now increasing. Even the divorce（离婚）rate needs to be taken in this pro- marriage context: some 80 percent of divorced individuals remarry. Thus, marriage remains by far the preferred way of life for the vast majority of the people in our society.

　　What has changed more than marriage is the nuclear family. Twenty- five years ago, the typical American family consisted of the husband, the wife, and two or three children. Now, there are many marriages in which couples have decided not to have any children, and there are many marriages where at least some of the children are from the wife’s previous marriage, or the husband’s, or both. Sometimes these children spend all of their time with one parent from the former marriage; sometimes they are shared between the two former spouses （配偶）．

　　Thus, one can find every type of tamely arrangement. There are marriages without children; marriages with children from only the present marriages; marriages with “full - time” children from both the present and former marriages; marriages with“full- time”children from the present marriage and“ part- time”children from former marriages. There are stepfathers, stepmothers, half- brothers and half - sisters. It is not all that unusual for a child to have four parents and eight grandparents! These are enormous changes from the traditional nuclear family. But even so, even in the midst of all this, there remains one constant: most Americans spend most of their adult lives married.

By calling Americans a marrying people the writer means that ________.

　　A. Americans are more traditional than Europeans

　　B. Americans expect more out of marriage than Europeans

　　C. there are more married couples in the USA than in Europe

　　D. more of Americans, as compared with Europeans, prefer marriage and they accept it at a younger age

Divorced Americans ________ .

　　A. prefer the way they live

　　B. will most likely remarry

　　C. have lost interest in marriage

　　D. are the majority of people in the society

Which of the following can be presented as the picture of today’s American families？

　　A. Which types of family arrangements have become socially acceptable.

　　B. A typical American family consists of only a husband and a wife.

　　C. Americans prefer to have more kids than before.

　　D. There are no nuclear families any more.

Many university courses are not really _____ to the needs of students or their future employers.

　　A.associated  B. relative   C. geared  D. sufficient

Many university courses are not really _____ to the needs of students or their future employers.

　　A.associated  B. relative   C. geared  D. sufficient