Computers can help many workers. They can also help thieves.
There was one thief who worked in a bank of the United States. He paid for everything he needed by check (支票). Then he told the computer not to take any money from his account for the checks he wrote. The bank’s computer did what he said. And it did not take any money from his bank account. One day the computer broke down. People had to do the computer’s work. They soon found out what was happening.
Another thief, who worked for a bank saw people filling in deposit forms (存款单). Many of these people did not know their account numbers, so they wrote only their names on the forms. They left empty places for their account numbers. The thief wrote his own account number in this place. When the computer read these forms it looked only at the account numbers. It did not look at the customers’ names. It paid the money on these deposit forms into the thief’s account .                           
Then there was the bank worker who told the bank computer to take ten cents off every customer’s account each month and put it into his own account. For a long time the bank’s customers did not notice that they were losing ten cents every month. But then someone did notice and told the bank. That was the end of that little game!
【小题1】What was the first thief?

At least thirty times Bobby had tried to climb the snowy mountain, but he had never   46   the top. His friend old Peeper, who knew a lot about his failures,  47  Bobby to try again. He gave Bobby a pair of sunglasses and said, “If it starts clouding over, put on the glasses, or if your feet start hurting, put them on too. The glasses are very 48 . They’ll help you.” Bobby received the gift without much thought.
The day came when he was to have another   49 . About two hours after he started, he felt his feet hurting. Then he  50 what Peeper had said, and put on the glasses. The pain was pretty bad, but   51  the sunglasses he could clearly see the snow-covered mountain top, so he went on.
  52 , clouds were gathering. But this time Bobby could still see the  53 through the clouds. He kept climbing , leaving the clouds behind, forgetting his pain, and finally arriving at the top. It was certainly worth it. His feeling of   54  was extremely good, almost as great as that  55 view. The mountain below was surrounded (包围) by a sea of clouds. He couldn’t believe that the clouds were as thick as that, so he looked more closely at the sunglasses, and discovered the  56  . Peeper had engraved (镌刻) the snow-covered mountain top on the sunglasses,  57  Bobby could see it when he was looking upwards!
Bobby __58  that the only difficulty to reaching the top had been losing   59  when he couldn’t see the mountain top. He was thankful that Peeper had used that little trick to help him see that his   60   was never impossible, and that it was still there, where it had always been.

Do you know that women’s brains are smaller than men’s? Normally the women’s brain weighs 10% less than men’s. Since research has shown that the bigger the brain, the cleverer the animal, men must be more intelligent（聪明的） than women. Right? Wrong. Men and women always score similarly on intelligence tests, despite the difference in brain size. Why? After years of study, researchers have concluded that it’s what’s inside that matters, not just the size of the brain. The brain is made up of “grey matter” and “white matter”. While men have more of the white matter, the amount（数量）of “thinking” brain is almost the same in both men and women.
It has been suggested that smaller brain appears to work faster, perhaps because the two sides of the brain are better connected in women. This means that little girls may learn to speak earlier, and that women can understand sorts of different information at the same time. When it comes to talking to the boss on the phone, cooking dinner and keeping an eye on the baby all at the same time, it’s women who come out on top every time.
There are other important differences between two sexes（性别）. As white matter is the key to spatial（空间的）tasks, men know better where things are in relation to other things. “A great footballer always knows where he is in relation to the other players, and he knows where to go,” says one researcher. That may explain one of life’s great mysteries: why men refuse to ask for directions … and women often need to!
The differences begin when fetuses（胎儿）are about nine weeks old, which can be seen in the action of children when they are very young. A boy would try to climb a barrier before him or push it down while a girl would ask for help from others. These brain differences also explain the fact that more men take up jobs that require good spatial skills, while more women speech skills. It may all go back to our ancestors, among whom women needed speech skills to take care of their babies and men needed spatial skills to hunt, according to one research.
【小题1】Which of the following is TRUE according to Paragraph 1?

Bobby was sitting out in his back yard in the snow. There were a few holes in his shoes. He thought hard, but he could not come up with an idea for his mother’s Christmas gift.

Ever since his father had died three years ago, his mother worked nights at the hospital, but the small money she made could hardly be enough for their needs.

Although the family lacked in money and material things, they got more love in the family. The children ran the family when their mother was absent. All three of Bobby’s sisters had already made beautiful gifts for their mother.

It was Christmas Eve already, and he had nothing. Bobby started to walk down to the street. He walked from shop to shop. Everything seemed so beautiful and so far away. It was getting dark. Suddenly he found a shiny dime (一角硬币) on the ground. Never has anyone felt so wealthy as Bobby did at the moment. It was enough to buy a rose with one dime.

He went inside a flower shop. When the owner asked if he could help him, Bobby took out the dime and asked if he could buy one flower. The shop owner looked at Bobby, then said, “You just wait here and I’ll see what I can do for you.”

The shop owner returned holding a dozen of red roses in his hand. Bobby’s heart sank (下沉) as the owner put them gently into a long white box. “That will be a dime, young man,” said the shop owner, reaching out his hand for the dime. Slowly, Bobby moved his hand to give the man his dime.

Then the shopkeeper’s wife appeared. “Where are the red roses?”

The shop owner said, “A strange thing happened to me this morning. I thought I heard a voice telling me to leave a dozen of my best roses for a special gift. When I saw that little boy tonight, I knew who that voice was.”

1.The underlined phrase “lacked in” means _____.

     A. had less            B. gave up      C. had more     D. looked down upon

2.Bobby slowly gave the dime to the shop owner because _____.

    A. he wanted to buy other things

    B. he needed to give the dime to his mum

    C. the roses were too expensive

        D. he could hardly believe what had happened

3.From the last two paragraphs we can infer that the shop owner _____.

    A. was moved by the boy’s voice

    B. was ready to help others

    C. knew the boy before

   D. was good at telling stories