Europe is now the biggest market for organic food in the world, having grown by 25  percent a year over the past 10 years. Denmark's agriculture minister is herself an organic farmer. The UK market for organic food grew by 55 percent in 2000, while the food market as a whole grew by only one percent. Yet only seven percent of British shoppers account for nearly 90 percent of organic sales. However popular the idea of organic farming may be, it is still an interest for only a few people.

    So what makes the idea of organic farming popular? Organic farming means farming with natural materials, rather than with man-made fertilizers or pesticides. Organic farmers rely on many  methods — such as crop rotation (农作物的轮作) and the use of resistant varieties, because they are necessary for organic farmers to compensate for the shortage of man-made chemicals.

    Organic farming is often supposed to be safer than traditional farming for the environment. Yet after a long research on organic farming worldwide for a number of years, science continues to be against this opinion. The House of Commons committee on agriculture publicized that, even with complete research work, it would fail to find any scientific evidence to prove “that any of claims （宣称） made for organic farming is always true”.

    However, the talk about the benefits of organic farming is going on. This is partly because many people depend on their individual farm, the soil, the weather, and so on.

    Suddenly another thought went through Kate's mind like an electric shock. An express train was due to go past about thirty minutes later. If it were not stopped, that long train, full of passengers, would fall into the stream. “Someone must go to the station and warn the station-master，” Kate thought. But who was to go? She would have to go herself. There was no one else.

    In wind and rain she started on her difficult way. Soon she was at the bridge that crossed the Des Moines River, a bridge also built of wood, just like the bridge across Honey Creek. The storm had not washed this away, but there was no footpath across it. She would have to cross it by stepping from sleeper (枕木)to sleeper. With great care she began the dangerous crossing, sometimes on her hands and knees, hardly daring to look down between the sleepers into the wild flood waters below. If she should slip, she would fall between the sleepers, into the rapidly flowing stream.

At last -- she never knew how long it had taken her一 she felt solid ground under her feet. But there was no time to rest. She still had to run more than half a mile and had only a few minutes left. Unless she reached the station before the express did, many, many lives would be lost.

    She did reach the station just as the train came into sight. Fortunately the station-master was standing outside. “The bridge is down! Stop the train! Oh, please stop it!” Kate shouted breathlessly.

    The station-master went pale. He rushed into the station building and came back with a signal light. He waved the red light as the train came into the station. It was not a second too early.

根据短文内容，选择最佳答案，并将选定答案的字母标号填在题前括号内。

    Americans always attach great weight to the business of the country. President Coolidge's statement, “the business of America is business.” Still points to an important truth today—that business institutions have more prestige(威望) in American society than any other kind of organization, including the government. Why do business institutions possess this great prestige?

    One reason is that Americans view business as being more firmly based on the ideal of competition than other institutions in society. Since competition is seen as the major source of progress and prosperity by most Americans, competitive business institutions are respected. Competition is not only good in itself, it is the means by which other basic American values such as individual freedom, equality of opportunity, and hard work are protected.

    Competition protects the freedom of the individual by ensuring that there is no monopoly (垄断、垄断者) of power. In contrast to one, all-powerful government, many businesses compete against each other for profits. Theoretically, if one business tries to take unfair advantage of its customers, it will lose to competing business which treats its customers more fairly. Where many businesses compete for the customers' dollar, they cannot afford to treat them like inferiors(下属) or slaves.

    A contrast is often made between business, which is competitive, and government, which is a monopoly. Because is competitive, many Americans believe that it is more supportive of freedom than government, even though government leaders are elected by the people and business leaders are not. Many Americans believes, then, that competition is as important, or even more important, than democracy in preserving freedom.

    Competition in business is also believed to strengthen the ideal of equality of opportunity. Competition is seen as an open and fair where success goes to the swiftest person regardless of his or her social class background. Competitive success is commonly seen as the American alternation to social rank based on family background. Business is therefore world as an expression of the idea of equality of opportunity in America rather than the aristocratic(贵族的) idea of inherited privilege in many other countries

根据短文内容，选择最佳答案，并将选定答案的字母标号填在题前括号内。

    Mr. Parker was born in a small village. His father was so poor that he couldn't send him to school. The boy had to help his parents to do some farming and learned English and maths by himself when he was free. Later on he was made to leave his home village and hoped to find a job in a city. And as soon as war broke out, he joined the army. He couldn't forget his terrible past and fought with the enemies bravely. So he became a general when he was fifty. He was honest and friendly to his soldiers and often punished those who tried to pocket a portion of the soldiers' pay (克扣军饷). And his soldiers liked him very much.

    Once Mr. Parker heard from a soldier. In the letter the young man said the food in their military camp was very bad and he wished the general could go to find out the reasons, the old man went there at once, without telling anybody. He went in the kitchen and examined everything carefully and found it was very dirty. Then he went in the soldiers' bedrooms and found there were a lot of fleas. He became angry and asked the soldiers, “What do you think of your food, young men?”

    The soldiers saw their officer standing by the general and said nothing Only a new soldier said, “Very bad, sir!”

    “What did you have for lunch today?” asked Mr. Parker.

    “A fried chicken, some fish and pork, a cake, six eggs and I had three cups of wine.”

    “Really?” Mr. Parker called out in surprise. “It's the King's lunch, I think!”

    “So do I. General,” said the young man. “But it's my birthday today. I paid three hundred dollars for them all in the restaurant!”

New App Helps People Remember Faces

    Large gatherings such as weddings and conferences can be socially overwhelming. Pressure to learn people's names only adds to the stress. A new facial-recognition app could come to the rescue, but privacy experts recommend proceeding with caution.

    The app, called SocialRecall, connects names with faces via smartphone cameras and facial recognition, potentially avoiding the need for formal introductions. "It breaks down these social barriers we all have when meeting somebody," says Barry Sandrew, who created the app and tested it at an event attended by about 1,000 people.

    After receiving an invitation to download SocialRecall from an event organizer, the user is asked to take two selfies and sign in via social media. At the event, the app is active within a previously defined geographical area. When a user points his or her phone camera at an attendee's face, the app identifies the individual, displays the person's name, and links to his or her social media profile. To protect privacy, it recognizes only those who have agreed to participate. And the app's creators say it automatically deletes users' data after an event.

    Ann Cavoukian, a privacy expert who runs the Privacy by Design Center of Excellence praises the app's creators for these protective measures. She cautions, however, that when people choose to share their personal information with the app, they should know that "there may be unintended consequences down the road with that information being used in another context that might come back to bite you."

    The start-up has also developed a version of the app for individuals who suffer from prosopagnosia, or "face blindness," a condition that prevents people from recognizing individuals they have met. To use this app, a person first acquires an image of someone's face, from either the smartphone's camera or a photograph, and then tags it with a name. When the camera spots that same face in real life, the previously entered information is displayed. The collected data are stored only on a user's phone, according to the team behind the app.

    In today's society, language plays a key role in defining gender (性别) by vocabulary, and also their non-verbal (非语言的) vocabulary. Each one of these different types of ways of communicating is obviously different between men and women.

    Many different studies show that men tend to talk much more than women. It has also been proven that women tend to speak faster than men; this is due to the fact that women tend to be interrupted more often than men are, and also have the ability to speak more clearly, precisely, and more quickly than men. In one study it was found that women spoke for an average of three minutes describing a painting, as opposed to the thirteen-minute average it took men to describe it.

    Men and women also tend to have a very different non-verbal way of communicating, which can also make it very hard for one another to understand what the opposite sex is trying to say. Men's body language is much more reserved when talking to women. Men tend not to make as much eye contact and they generally stay farther away from women when talking to them. Men avoid other people's body space while talking, and they also tend to sit back when talking. All of these have given off the impression of disinterest or boredom. Women are by far better listeners and much more enjoyable to talk with and they tend to raise more topics for conversation.

    Women also make it clearer whether or not the conversation is going somewhere or just stuck in neutral. After learning about our styles of communicating with each other, I have decided that although men have not quite mastered communicating, what fun would it be if we all spoke the same "language"? The little games men and women play with each other while conversing would be lost. The question everyone asks himself or herself after talking with someone of the opposite sex, "I wonder if there's something there?" would no longer exist.