The United States is usually given credit for creating and developing the musical comedy as it is known today. The first musical shows were based (1) everyday American life and the (2) development of the form took place in the United States for more than half a century. (3) the early 1970s, (4) , the London theater has (5) the Broadway stage.
The Black Crook, which opened at Niblo’s Garden in New York City on Sept. 12, 1866, is usually (6) as the inspiration for musical comedy. A troupe of French ballet dancers (7) to be stranded in New York without work (8) a fire damaged the theater (9) they had been booked. In order to keep a (10) to them, the theater producer put the dancers into a melodrama written by Charles M. Barres.
The first stage production that was (11) a musical comedy was a show that was (12) from the Prince of Wales Theater to the Gaiety Theater in London in 1892. Staged by George Edwards, the show called In Town featured a chorus line of Gaiety Girls. The (13) year A Gaiety Girl was equally successful, and a (14) of the show played in New York in the same year. When it was (15) in newspapers, it was designated a musical comedy and regarded as a new (16) of entertainment.
It did not take the form long to (17) in the United States. Almost (18) one of the most renowned talents of the American stage went to work on his own musicals. The singer-dancer George M. Cohan staged Little Johnny Jones in 1904. Cohan, (19) own life story was made into the musical George M (1968), also wrote the books, words, and (20) for Forty-five Minutes from Broadway ( 1906 ), The Little Millionaire ( 1911 ), The Song and Dance Man ( 1923 ), and American Born (1925).

A:dominated B:ruled C:performed D:acted

Whether you think the human story begins in a garden in Mesopotamia known as Eden, or in present-day east Africa, it is clear that human beings did not start life as an urban creature. Man’s habitat at the outset was dominated by the need to find food, and hunting and gathering were rural pursuits. Not until around 11,000 years ago, did he start building anything that might be called a village. It took another 6000 years for cities of more than 100,000 people to develop.
In terms of human history this may seem a welcome development. It would be questionable to say that nothing of consequence has ever come out of the countryside. The wheel was presumably a rural invention. Even city-dwellers need bread as well as circuses. And if Dr. Johnson and Shelley were right to say that poets are the true legislators of mankind, then all those hills and lakes and other rural delights must be given credit for inspiring them.
But the rural contribution to human progress seems slight compared with the urban one. Cities’ development is synonymous with human development. The first villages came with the emergence of agriculture and the domestication of animals: people no longer had to wander but could instead draw together in settlements, allowing some to develop particular skills. After a while the farmers could produce surpluses, and the various products could be exchanged.
Living together meant security. But people also drew together for the practical advantages of being in a particular place: by a river or spring, on a defensible hill or peninsula, next to an estuary (the mouth of a river) or other source of food. Also important, argue historians, was a settlement’s capacity to draw people to it as a meeting-place, often for sacred or spiritual purposes. Graves, groves, even caves might become places for ceremonies and rituals. Man did not live by bread alone.
But bread, in the broadest sense, was important. People came to cities not just to worship but to trade and the goods they bought and sold were not just farm products but the manufactures of urban craftsmen and skilled workers. The city became a centre of exchange, both of goods and of ideas, and so it also became a centre of learning, and innovation.
Cities were much more than all of this, of course, and they were not all the same. As they developed, some were most notable for their religious role, as the hub of an empire, as centres of administration, political development, learning, or commerce. Some flourished, some died, their longevity depending on factors as varied as conquest, plague, misgovernment or economic collapse.
The first paragraph suggests that early human beings’ living places______.

A:started either in Eden or east Africa B:had much to do with food in the beginning C:were dominated by their pursuits D:developed into large cities 6,000 years ago

For years, researchers have struggled to understand why so many women leave careers inscience and engineering. Theories run the gamut (整个范围), from family-unfriendly work schedules to natural differences between the genders. A new paper by McGill University economist Jennifer Hunt offers another explanation: women leave such jobs when they feel disappointed about pay and the chance of promotion.
Her first finding was that women actually don’t leave jobs in science at an above average rate. The difference, Hunt found, comes from the engineering sector.
That’s not simply because women are exiting the workforce to raise families. About 21% of all graduates surveyed were working in a field unrelated to their highest college degree. That proportion held steady for both men and women. Yet in engineering, there was a gap. About 10% of male engineers were working in an unrelated field, while some 13% of female engineers were. Women who became engineers disproportionately left for other sectors.
The survey suggests options such as working conditions, pay, promotion-opportunities, job location and family-related reasons. As it turned out, more than 60% of the women leaving engineering did so because of dissatisfaction with pay and promotion opportunities. More women than men left engineering for family-related reasons, but that gender gap was no different than what Hunt found in nonengineering professions. "It doesn’t have anything to do with the nature of the work," says Hunt.
The question then becomes why women engineers feel so stifled (窒息) when it comes to pay and promotion. Women also left fields such as financial management and economics at higher than expected rates. The commonality, like engineering, those sectors are male-dominated. Some 74% of financial-management degree holders in the survey sample were male. Men made up 73% of economics graduates. And to take one example from engineering, some 83% of mechanical-engineer grads were male.
Jennifer Hunt concludes that focusing on making engineering jobs more family-friendly alone—by offering flexible work schedules, say—misses an important part of the mark. If we desire to keep women working as engineers, whether for their sakes or society’s, then a better focus may be creating work environments where women feel more able to climb the career ladder.
Why do female engineers feel upset when talking about pay and the chance of promotion

A:Because in a male-dominated field women have no advantage. B:Because women are not good at engineering and science. C:Because fewer women engineers could graduate from college. D:Because other fields have more magic to women.

Throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, citizens of the United States maintained a bias against big cities. Most lived on farms and in small towns and believed cities to be centres of (1) , crime, poverty and moral (2) Their distrust was caused, (3) , by a national ideology that (4) farming the greatest occupation and rural living (5) to urban living. This attitude (6) even as the number of urban dwellers increased and cities became an essential (7) of the national landscape. Gradually, economic reality overcame ideology. Thousands (8) the precarious (不稳定的) life on the farm for more secure and better paying jobs in the city. But when these people (9) from the countryside, they carried their fears and suspicions with them. These new urbanities, already convinced that cities were (10) with great problems, eagerly (11) the progressive reforms that promised to bring order out of the (12) of the city.
One of many reforms came (13) the area of public utilities. Water and sewerage systems were usually operated by (14) governments, but the gas and electric networks were privately owned. Reformers feared that the privately owned utility companies would (15) exorbitant (过渡的) rates for these essential services and (16) them only to people who could afford them. Some city and state governments responded by (17) the utility companies, but a number of cities began to supply these services themselves. (18) of these reforms argued that public ownership and regulation would (19) widespread access to these utilities and guarantee a (20) price.

A:predominated B:dominated C:commanded D:prevailed

Whether you think the human story begins in a garden in Mesopotamia known as Eden, or in present-day east Africa, it is clear that human beings did not start life as an urban creature. Man’s habitat at the outset was dominated by the need to find food, and hunting and gathering were rural pursuits. Not until around 11,000 years ago, did he start building anything that might be called a village. It took another 6000 years for cities of more than 100,000 people to develop.
In terms of human history this may seem a welcome development. It would be questionable to say that nothing of consequence has ever come out of the countryside. The wheel was presumably a rural invention. Even city-dwellers need bread as well as circuses. And if Dr. Johnson and Shelley were right to say that poets are the true legislators of mankind, then all those hills and lakes and other rural delights must be given credit for inspiring them.
But the rural contribution to human progress seems slight compared with the urban one. Cities’ development is synonymous with human development. The first villages came with the emergence of agriculture and the domestication of animals: people no longer had to wander but could instead draw together in settlements, allowing some to develop particular skills. After a while the farmers could produce surpluses, and the various products could be exchanged.
Living together meant security. But people also drew together for the practical advantages of being in a particular place: by a river or spring, on a defensible hill or peninsula, next to an estuary (the mouth of a river) or other source of food. Also important, argue historians, was a settlement’s capacity to draw people to it as a meeting-place, often for sacred or spiritual purposes. Graves, groves, even caves might become places for ceremonies and rituals. Man did not live by bread alone.
But bread, in the broadest sense, was important. People came to cities not just to worship but to trade and the goods they bought and sold were not just farm products but the manufactures of urban craftsmen and skilled workers. The city became a centre of exchange, both of goods and of ideas, and so it also became a centre of learning, and innovation.
Cities were much more than all of this, of course, and they were not all the same. As they developed, some were most notable for their religious role, as the hub of an empire, as centres of administration, political development, learning, or commerce. Some flourished, some died, their longevity depending on factors as varied as conquest, plague, misgovernment or economic collapse.

A:started either in Eden or east Africa B:had much to do with food in the beginning C:were dominated by their pursuits D:developed into large cities 6,000 years ago

Scientists have long struggled to understand what lies at the planet’s center. Direct observation of its center is impossible, so researchers must (1) to other evidence.
In 1889, a German scientist detected a severe earthquake in Japan. Geophysicists concluded that shock waves (2) jolts (晃动) from one side of Earth through the center to the other side. Then in 1936, Danish geophysicist Inge Lehmann studied the waves’ (3) to determine that within Earth’s core of molten (溶化了的) iron lies a solid inner core—but (4) that core was made of eluded (难倒) her. Other geophysicists quickly determined that Lehmann’s inner core was composed mostly (5) iron. Since then, Lehmann’s discovery has (6) conventional Earth science.
But now scientists are challenging traditional theory with new and radical (7) . For example, Earth’s center could actually contain an "inner core within the inner core. " claim Ishii and colleague Adam Dziewonski.
Analyzing hundreds of thousands of earthquake wave (8) , they maintain that the inner core has at its heart a tiny, even more solid sphere (球体). This sphere "may be the oldest fossil (9) from the formation of Earth," says Dziewonski.
Dziewonski and Ishii speculate that shortly (10) Earth formed around 4. 8 billion years ago, a giant asteroid (小行星) smashed into the young planet and nearly melted it. But Earth’s center didn’t quite melt; it (11) mass as the planet cooled. The core within a core may be the kernel (核心) that endured. "Its presence could change our basic ideas about the (12) of the planet," Dziewonski says.
Dziewonski’s idea is tame (温和的) compared to the (13) theories of independent geophysicist J. Marvin Herndon. Earth’s inner core is made not of iron, he claims, but a (14) of nickel and silicon. Herndon has a truly revolutionary notion. Within the nickel silicide (硅化物) inner core is also an "inner" inner core—an 8km-wide ball of the element uranium. Uranium is radioactive. Herndon thinks the uranium releases heat energy as its atoms (15) fission-split and crash into one another in a chain reaction. In other words, we may live on top of a gigantic, "natural" nuclear power plant.

A:followed B:dominated C:restored D:opposed

阅读下面的短文，文中有15处空白，每处空白给出了4个选项，请根据短文的内容从 4个选项中选择1个最佳答案。

A:followed B:dominated C:restored D:opposed

Earth’s Inner Core Scientists have long struggled to understand what lies at the planet’s center, Direct observation of its center is impossible，so researchers must_____(51)to other evidence． In 1889，a German scientist detected a severe earthquake in Japan．Geophysicists concluded that shock waves_____(52)jolts(晃动)from one side of Earth through the center to the other side．Then in 1936，Danish geophysicist Inge Lehmann studied the waves______(53) to determine that within Earth’s core of molten(熔化了的)iron lies a solid inner core-but_____ (54)that core was made of eluded(难倒)her．Other geophysicists quickly determined that Lehmann’s inner core was composed mostly_____(55)iron. Since then，Lehmann’s discovery has_____(56)conventional Earth science． But now scientists are challenging traditional theory with new and radical _____(57) For example，Earth’s center could actually contain an“inner core within the inner core，claim Ishii and colleague Adam Dziewonski．Analyzing hundreds of thousands of earthquake wave _____(58),they maintain that the inner core has at its heart a tiny, even more solid sphere(球体) . This sphere‘‘may be the oldest fossil____(59)from the formation of Earth，”says Dziewonski．Dziewonski and Ishii speculate that shortly_____(60) Earth formed around 4.8billion years ago，a giant asteroid(小行星)smashed into the young planet and nearly melted it. But Earth’s center didn’t quite melt；it______(61)mass as the planet cooled. The core within a core may be the kernel(核心)that endured．“Its presence could change our basic ideas about the_____ (62)of the planet，”Dziewonski says idea is tame(温和的)compared to the_____(63)theories of independent geophysicist J．Marvin Herndon．Earth’s inner core is made not of iron，he claims but a_____(64)of nickel and silicon Hemdon has a truly revolutionary notion：Within the nickel silicide(硅化物)inner core is also an“inner”inner core—an 8 km—wide ball of the element uranium．Uranium is radioactive．Hemdon thinks the uranium releases heat energy as its atoms_____(65)fission-split and crash into another in a chain reaction. In other words,we may live on top of a gigantic, “natural”nuclear power plant.

A:followed B:dominated C:restored D:opposed

Her interest in redecorating the big house kept her {{U}}occupied{{/U}} for a whole week.

A:constrained B:dominated C:restricted D:busy