未知题型 It takes a while, as you walk around the streets of Nantes, a city of half a million people on the banks of the Loire River, to realize just what it is that is odd. Then you get it: there are empty parking slots, which is highly unusual in big French towns.Two decades of effort to make life more livable by dissuading people from driving into town has made Nantes a beacon for other European cities seeking to shake dependence on the automobile.The effects were clear recently during Mobility Week, a campaign sponsored by the European Union that prompted more than 1,000 towns across the Continent to test ways of making their streets, if not car- free, at least manageable. 'That is an awfully difficult problem,' acknowledges Joel Crawford, an author and leader of the 'car free' movement picking up adherents all over Europe. 'You can't take cars oat of cities until there is some sort of alternative in place. But there are a lot of forces pointing in the direction of a major reduction in car use, like the rise in fuel prices, and concerns about global warming.'Last week, proclaiming the slogan 'In Town, Without my Car !' hundreds of cities closed off whole chunks of their centers to all but essential traffic. Nantes closed just a few streets, preferring to focus on alternatives to driving so as to promote 'Clever Commuting', the theme of this year's EU campaign. Volunteers pedaled rickshaws along the cobbled streets, charging passengers $1.20 an hour; bikes were available for free; and city workers encouraged children to walk to school along routes supervised by adults acting as Pied Pipers and picking up kids at arranged stops.The centerpiece is a state-of-the-art tramway providing service to much of the town, and a network of free, multistory parking lots to encourage commuters to 'park and ride'. Rene Vincendo, a retired hospital worker waiting at one such parking lot for his wife to return from the city center, is sold. 'To go into town, this is brilliant,' he says. 'I never take my car in now.'It is not cheap, though. Beyond the construction costs, City Hall subsidizes fares to the tune of 60 million euros ($ 72 million) a year, making passengers pay only 40 percent of operating costs.That is the only way to draw people onto trams and buses, says de Rugy, since Nantes, like many European cities, is expanding, and commuters find themselves with ever-longer distances to travel. The danger, he warns, is that 'the further you go down the route of car dependence, the harder it is to return, because so many shops, schools and other services are built beyond the reach of any financially feasible public-transport network.' This, adds de Rugy, means that 'transport policy is only half the answer. Urban planners and transport authorities have to work hand in hand to ensure that services are provided close to transport links.'The carrot-and-stick approach that Nantes has taken — cutting back on parking in the town center and making it expensive, while improving public transport — has not reduced the number of cars on the road. But it has 'put a brake on the increase we would have seen otherwise' and that other European cities have seen, says Dominique Godineau, head of the city's 'mobility department'.(31)

未知题型 For this part, you are allowed to write a composition on the topic Our Bad Habits in Life Should Be Removed. You should write at least 120 words and you should base your composition on the outline.1. 我们在生活中有很多不良习惯，如随地吐痰等。2. 我们应该改掉这些坏习惯，防止疾病的传播。

未知题型 Aspirin -- a New Miracle Drug1. Using aspirin, an over-the-counter pill on sale in every supermarket without a prescription, to treat serious circulatory disease may seem almost like quackery. But today doctors recognize this drug as a potent compound as important as antibiotics, digitalis and other miracle drugs.2. In its natural form. as willow bark and leaves, this remarkable remedy dates back to Hippocrates2. In 1829 the chemical in the willow tree that can relieve pain and reduce fever was discovered to be salicin. By 1899 the Bayer Company in Germany had marketed a variant, acetylsalicylic acid, under the name of aspirin.3. Since then, aspirin and compounds containing aspirin have been taken by tens of millions of arthritis patients. As a pain killer aspirin is, according to one study, more effective than all other analgesics and narcotics available for oral use. It also acts on4the body's thermostat, turning down fever.4. But some of its powers remained unsuspected until recently. In 1950 the late Dr. Craven wrote to a small western medical journal about 400 overweight, sedentary male patients to whom he had given one or two aspirin tablets a day. None had had a heart attack. He enlarged his group to 8,000 and in 1956 reported: 'Not a single case of detectable coronary or cerebral thrombosis 'and 'no major stroke' had occurred in patients who had taken one or two tablets daily for from one to ten years. But his observations were largely ignored.5. Then Dr. Vane proved that aspirin turned off the body's prostaglandins hormonelike chemicals that can be secreted by every cell. Some potent prostaglandins are harmful compounds that create fever, pain and arthritis. One of them stimulates platelets in the blood to begin forming clots inside arteries. Aspirin blocks this dangerous effect.6. Vane's finding caused some researchers to recall Craven's 1956 observations, which now had a possible scientific explanation. Numerous studies were begun to find out whether aspirin could indeed inhibit heart attacks and stroke.7. In 1972, ten US medical institutions began two 'double-blind' trials of 303 patients who suffered from transient ischemic attacks (TIAs). Four aspirin tablets a day were given to 153 patients, while placebo tablets were given to 150. Neither patients nor doctors knew which was which. After six months, the patients on aspirin had experienced much fewer TIAs, and fewer strokes and deaths from strokes than the 'controls'. The results were so conclusive that aspirin has been used for this purpose widely.Confirmation of the New EffectB. Pain-relieving and Fever-reducing Effects of AspirinC. The Ignored Significant ObservationsD. The Origin of AspirinE AnExplanation of Craven's ObservationsF Further Findings of Dr. VaneParagraph 2 ______