- Câu hỏi 113842:
Read the text and decide that the statement is True (T), False (F) or Not Given (NG).
The lake was shallow, and during the nearly 200 years until 1519, the Aztecs expanded the inhabited area by land refill and the creation of artificial islands. Canals were dug for the transportation of goods and people. Aqueducts were constructed to bring drinking water from natural springs outside the city, dams to protect it against floods, and causeways and bridges to connect the city with the shore. There were many houses, palaces, temples, squares, markets and even a zoo. Perhaps the most striking construction of this period is the Templo Mayor, a double pyramid which still survives. As the capital of an empire stretching from Texas to Honduras, Tenochtitlan was a magnificent and important city. When the Spanish arrived, they called it the 'Venice of the New World'.
The Spanish began their conquest of Mexico in 1519 and came close to Tenochtitlan the same year. In 1521, they took control of it, after fierce fighting that destroyed most of the city. A new capital, with a new name, was built on the ruins, using Spanish architectural styles. One part of the lake was filled in to join the island to the shore, and Mexico City became the capital of the wealthiest colony in the Americas, the centre of trade between Spain and China.
The Aztec inhabitants of Tenochtitlan left when the city was conquered
- Câu hỏi 113846:
Read the text and choose the best answer.
The first two decades of this century were dominated by the microbe hunters. These hunters had tracked down one after another of the microbes responsible for the most dreaded scourges of many centuries: tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria. But there remained some terrible diseases for which no microbe could be incriminated: scurvy, pellagra, rickets, beriberi. Then it was discovered that these diseases were caused by the lack of vitamins, a trace substance in the diet. The diseases could be prevented or cured by consuming foods that contained the vitamins. And so in the decades of the 1920's and 1930's, nutrition became a science and the vitamin hunters replaced the microbe hunters.
In the 1940's and 1950's, biochemists strived to learn why each of the vitamins was essential for health. They discovered that key enzymes in metabolism depend on one or another of the vitamins as coenzymes to perform the chemistry that provides cells with energy for growth and function. Now, these enzyme hunters occupied center stage.
You are aware that the enzyme hunters have been replaced by a new breed of hunters who are tracking genes-the blueprints for each of the enzymes-and are discovering the defective genes that cause inherited diseases-diabetes, cystic fibrosis. These gene hunters, or genetic engineers, use recombinant DNA technology to identify and clone genes and introduce them into bacterial cells and plants to create factories for the massive production of hormones and vaccines for medicine and for better crops for agriculture. Biotechnology has become a multibillion-dollar industry.
In view of the inexorable progress in science, we can expect that the gene hunters will be replaced in the spotlight. When and by whom? Which kind of hunter will dominate the scene in the last decade of our waning century and in the early decades of the next? I wonder whether the hunters who will occupy the spotlight will be neurobiologists who apply the techniques of the enzyme and gene hunters to the functions of the brain. What to call them? The head hunters. I will return to them later.
What is the main topic of the passage?
- Câu hỏi 113859:
Read the text and choose the best answer.
The first two decades of this century were dominated by the microbe hunters. These hunters had tracked down one after another of the microbes responsible for the most dreaded scourges of many centuries: tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria. But there remained some terrible diseases for which no microbe could be incriminated: scurvy, pellagra, rickets, beriberi. Then it was discovered that these diseases were caused by the lack of vitamins, a trace substance in the diet. The diseases could be prevented or cured by consuming foods that contained the vitamins. And so in the decades of the 1920's and 1930's, nutrition became a science and the vitamin hunters replaced the microbe hunters.
In the 1940's and 1950's, biochemists strived to learn why each of the vitamins was essential for health. They discovered that key enzymes in metabolism depend on one or another of the vitamins as coenzymes to perform the chemistry that provides cells with energy for growth and function. Now, these enzyme hunters occupied center stage.
How do vitamins influence health?
- Câu hỏi 113862:
Read the text and choose the best answer.
You are aware that the enzyme hunters have been replaced by a new breed of hunters who are tracking genes-the blueprints for each of the enzymes-and are discovering the defective genes that cause inherited diseases-diabetes, cystic fibrosis. These gene hunters, or genetic engineers, use recombinant DNA technology to identify and clone genes and introduce them into bacterial cells and plants to create factories for the massive production of hormones and vaccines for medicine and for better crops for agriculture. Biotechnology has become a multibillion-dollar industry.
The word "them" refers to
- Câu hỏi 113866:
Read the text and choose the best answer.
The first two decades of this century were dominated by the microbe hunters. These hunters had tracked down one after another of the microbes responsible for the most dreaded scourges of many centuries: tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria. But there remained some terrible diseases for which no microbe could be incriminated: scurvy, pellagra, rickets, beriberi. Then it was discovered that these diseases were caused by the lack of vitamins, a trace substance in the diet. The diseases could be prevented or cured by consuming foods that contained the vitamins. And so in the decades of the 1920's and 1930's, nutrition became a science and the vitamin hunters replaced the microbe hunters.
The word "which" refers to
- Câu hỏi 113870:
Read the text and choose the best answer.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the United States had tremendous natural resources that could be exploited in order to develop heavy industry. Most of the raw materials that are valuable in the manufacture of machinery, transportation facilities, and consumer goods lay ready to be worked into wealth. Iron, coal, and oil-the basic ingredients of industrial growth - were plentiful and needed only the application of technical expertise, organizational skill, and labor.
One crucial development in this movement toward industrialization was the growth of the railroads. The railway network expanded rapidly until the railroad map of the United States looked like a spider's web, with the steel filaments connecting all important sources of raw materials, their places of manufacture, and their centers of distribution. The railroads contributed to the industrial growth not only by connecting these major centers, but also by themselves consuming enormous amounts of fuel, iron, and coal.
Many factors influenced emerging modes of production. For example, machine tools, the tools used to make goods, were steadily improved in the latter part of the nineteenth century-always with an eye to speedier production and lower unit costs. The products of the factories were rapidly absorbed by the growing cities that sheltered the workers and the distributors. The increased urban population was nourished by the increased farm production that, in turn, was made more productive by the use of the new farm machinery. American agricultural production kept up with the urban demand and still had surpluses for sale to the industrial centers of Europe.
The labor that ran the factories and built the railways was recruited in part from American farm areas where people were being displaced by farm machinery, in part from Asia, and in part from Europe. Europe now began to send tides of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe-most of whom were originally poor farmers but who settled in American industrial cities. The money to finance this tremendous expansion of the American economy still came from European financiers for the most part, but the Americans were approaching the day when their expansion could be financed in their own "money market."
According to the passage, all of the following were true of railroads in the United States in the nineteenth century EXCEPT that
- Câu hỏi 113871:
Read the text and choose the best answer.
One crucial development in this movement toward industrialization was the growth of the railroads. The railway network expanded rapidly until the railroad map of the looked like a spider's web, with the steel filaments connecting all important sources of raw materials, their places of manufacture, and their centers of distribution. The railroads contributed to the industrial growth not only by connecting these major centers, but also by themselves consuming enormous amounts of fuel, iron, and coal.
Many factors influenced emerging modes of production. For example, machine tools, the tools used to make goods, were steadily improved in the latter part of the nineteenth century-always with an eye to speedier production and lower unit costs. The products of the factories were rapidly absorbed by the growing cities that sheltered the workers and the distributors. The increased urban population was nourished by the increased farm production that, in turn, was made more productive by the use of the new farm machinery. American agricultural production kept up with the urban demand and still had surpluses for sale to the industrial centers of .
The labor that ran the factories and built the railways was recruited in part from American farm areas where people were being displaced by farm machinery, in part from Asia, and in part from . now began to send tides of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe-most of whom were originally poor farmers but who settled in American industrial cities. The money to finance this tremendous expansion of the American economy still came from European financiers for the most part, but the Americans were approaching the day when their expansion could be financed in their own "money market."
According to the passage, who were the biggest consumers of manufactured products?
- Câu hỏi 113876:
Read the text and choose the best answer.
One of the most renowned Spanish architects of all time was Antoni Gaudi. Gaudi's emergence as one of 's preeminent artists at the end of the nineteenth century marked a milestone in the art world.
Gaudi's popularity helped to bring about the acceptance and rebirth of the Catalan language, which had been banned during the literature and art. Gaudi shares his Catalonian background with two other famous Spanish artists, Pablo Picasso and Miro. The diverse ethnic background of the region greatly influenced the work of Picasso and Miro, as well as Gaudi. Thus, their works were a combination of an old history and an active, vivid imaginary world. This has sometimes been referred to as the “Catalan Mind.” Yet it was perhaps Gaudi who had the greatest talent for bringing together diverse groups, ones which others viewed as being too diametrically opposed to be capable of coming together and co-existing amicably.
This was apparent not only in the artists and other individuals who surrounded him, but also in the varied styles and techniques he employed in his architecture. Much of his work can be seen in , where his structures are known as a fine representation of modernism. He also used a great variety of color in his buildings, and this art nouveau is often associated with his own unique style of design. All of these factors are what helped put him at the forefront of art movements to come: his unique ability to take on and transform traditional Spanish elements with the emerging diverse ethnic groups, merging these with his own fertile imagination, and consequently turning these forces into some of the greatest architecture the world has ever seen.
Miro has been viewed as being a prototype of
- Câu hỏi 113877:
Read the text and answer the question.
When was the last time you saw a frog? Chances are, if you live in a city, you have not seen one for some time. Even in wet areas once teeming with frogs and toads, it is becoming less and less easy to find those slimy, hopping and sometimes poisonous members of the animal kingdom. All over the world, even in remote jungles on the far side of the globe, frogs are losing the ecological battle for survival, and biologists are at a loss to explain their demise. Are amphibians simply over-sensitive to changes in the ecosystem? Could their rapid decline in numbers be signalling some coming environmental disaster for us all?
To what does the pronoun one in the passage refer?
- Câu hỏi 113880:
Read the text and decide that the statement is TRUE (T), FALSE (F) or NOT GIVEN (NG).
This frightening scenario is in part the consequence of a dramatic increase over the last quarter century in the development of once natural areas of wet marshland; home not only to frogs but to all manner of wildlife. Yet, there are no obvious reasons why certain frog species are disappearing from rainforests in the Southern Hemisphere which are barely touched by human hand. The mystery is unsett1ing to say the least, for it is known that amphibian species are extremely sensitive to environmental variations in temperature and moisture levels. The danger is that planet Earth might not only lose a vital link in the ecological food chain (frogs keep populations of otherwise pestilent insects at manageable levels), but we might be increasing our output of air pollutants to levels that may have already become irreversible. Frogs could be inadvertently warning us of a catastrophe.
There are many reasons why certain frog species are disappearing from rainforests in the Southern Hemisphere.
