【推荐1】One very important institution in our economy is the bank. Banks_________ money for individual people, corporations, and the government. Banks provide a number of important services for you and your family. Most importantly, they’re a_________ place to store your money. They also provide an easy way for you to_________ money from one place to another. When you write a personal cheque, the cheque authorizes the bank to give your money to the person or business whose name is on the cheque.

Of course, banks also lend money. Ordinary people take out bank_________ for a number of reasons-to pay for college, to buy or remodel a home, to start or expand a business, and so forth. Banks provide these services to individuals; _________ , their main function is to lend large sums of money, for example, to corporations. When people or corporations borrow money from a bank, they must, of course, pay_________ —a percentage of the money they have borrowed.

Banks pay interest on the money they hold, and charge interest on the money they lend. For a bank to make a_________ , it has to collect more interest than it pays out.

Sometimes banks invest money as well as lend it. To invest money means to put it into a corporation or some other project—for example, building a housing complex or doing medical research— _________ a share of the profits. Most businesses need loans and investments at some time, and banks are an important source of_________

You might wonder what would happen if all the people with money in a bank wanted to take their money out at the same time. I mean, how would the bank be able to give everyone their money, if it had lent out or __________ most of it? In fact, this can be a serious problem for banks. They__________ the fact that most people won’t want their money for a long time once it’s deposited. That leaves the bank free to lend or invest the money. If every person—or even lots of people-tried to__________ their money at the same time, the bank might not be able to honour all of its__________ . This causes some banks to __________ , or go bankrupt.

Bank failures used to be __________ during times of recession or depression. They were especially common during the Great Depression of the 1930s. When Franklin Roosevelt became president in 1933, one of the first things he did was close all the banks, so depositors wouldn’t panic and try to take all their money out.

【推荐1】As the Chinese saying goes, a seed can change the world; a variety can benefit a nation.

Zhang Daorong, who has spent the last 26 years _________ 13 new varieties of wheat and contributing to national food security, has done both. The 50-year-old, who is called the “mother of wheat”, is a _________ at the Xiangyang Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Xiangyang city.

The research into new varieties requires strict standards and _________ experiments. “The first _________ is to find suitable parental types for a specific cultivation purpose. Then we try a hybrid combination,” Zhang explained. “After several generations of _________ and selection, and when characteristics remain stable, we _________ a two-year process of yield testing and disease identification.” And after several more rounds of tests, a(n) _________ for evaluation and approval can be made for market production.

“Generally speaking, a good new _________ should produce high yields, have stable production, and _________ good resistance to bad conditions,” she added. “ __________ , it also should be accepted by the market.”Zhang added that the team __________ 70,000 to 80,000 seedlings (幼苗) each year. All year round they were busy with __________ experiments on the growth of the new seedlings and making records and analyses.

“Agricultural research work is __________ and complicated. Sometimes your efforts do not __________ . All we can do then is think more, discuss more and find __________ on the land,” she said.

【推荐2】HER moon-shaped head appears on everything from schoolbags to fashionable watches. And _______ she actually has no mouth, her lovely poses have made her one of the most famous _______ in the world.

Now 2007, Hello Kitty is celebrating her _______ birthday, and her “parents”, Japanese character goods maker Sanrio，will make it a _______ to remember. From July, a series of _______ events will be held.

And, in keeping with her_______ as “United Nations Children’s Fund（UNICEF）Special Friend of Children,” the cat will donate US＄150,000 to the organization’s _______ education programmes. There are 10 million more girls than boys out of _______ across the world, and these programmes are meant to _______ the gap.

When she first went ________ in 1974, Hello Kitty became an immediate hit. There have been many style changes since then. In 1995, she appeared in a nurse's uniform and, two years later, the ribbons in her hair were ________by flowers. This style was then ________by millions of Japanese schoolgirls.

“All I did was to make Kitty do the sorts of things I wanted to do myself,” said Yuko Yamaguchi, the cat’s ________ since the early 1980s.

Most popular ________, such as Snoopy or Mickey Mouse, started life in cartoon strips and films ________ going on to earn money from their image.

The makers of Hello Kitty just started ________ the cat straight away. Sanrio now receives US＄500 million a year from companies who ________ to use the cat’s face on their ________

“Hello Kitty is a good ________ of how commercially-minded the Japanese are,” explained Brian Brenner of Business Week magazine. “Adapt it, sell it, ________it and sell it again, hopefully all within the same week.”

【推荐3】Antarctica is the continent which is the most southern area of land on the Earth and is mostly ________ with ice. This is one of the driest and ________ places in the world. But people from all over the world come to ________ there. Near the South Pole, three thousand people live together in a place ________ Amundsen­Scott Station.

The Station ________ libraries, cinemas, shops, sports rooms, canteens and laboratories. There is electricity, and they have telephone — the system ________ they use to have a conversation with someone in ________ place. And they have     ________ — electronic machines that store information and use programs to help them find, organize, or change the information.

But the people here ________ travel by car, or train or bus, because there aren’t any roads or railways near the Station. They ________ by ship, helicopter, plane, or snow tractor, or ________ dogs.

There aren’t ________ trees or flowers there, but there are hundreds of different birds and other ________.

Most of the people here are________. They study plant and animal life and how ice ________. The ice can ________ us about changes in climate. Ray Kingman is an expert at Amundsen­-Scott Station, telling us ________ the phone, “This is my second year here. It’s a very interesting and beautiful place, but life is very ________ in winter. In summer we can go ________ in hot pools of water. We welcome newcomers here for further ________ of the continent！”