单选题The horns have sounded and the hounds are baying. Across the developed world the hunt for more taxes from the wealthy is on. Recent austerity budgets in France and Italy slapped 3% surcharges on those with incomes above 500, 000 ($680, 000) and 300, 000 respectively. Now Barack Obama has produced a new deficit-reduction plan that aims its tax increases squarely at the rich, including a "Buffett rule" to ensure that no household making more than $1m a year pays a lower average tax rate than "middle-class" families do. Tapping the rich to close the deficit is "not class warfare", argues Mr. Obama. "It's math." Actually, it's not simply math. The question of whether to tax the wealthy more depends on political judgments about the right size of the state and the appropriate role for redistribution. The math says deficits could technically be tamed by spending cuts alone—as Mr. Obama's Republican opponents advocate. Class warfare may be a loaded term, but it captures a fundamental debate in Western societies: who should suffer for righting public finances? There are three good reasons why the wealthy should pay more tax—though not, by and large, in the ways that the rich world's governments currently propose. First, the West's deficits should not be closed by spending cuts alone. Public spending should certainly take the brunt. But experience also argues that higher taxes should be part of the mix. In America the tax take is historically low after years of rate reductions. There, and elsewhere, tax rises need to bear some of the burden. Second, there is a political argument for raising this new revenue from the rich. Spending cuts fall disproportionately on the less well-off; and, even before the crunch, median incomes were stagnating. Meanwhile, globalization has been rewarding winners ever more generously. Voters' support for ongoing austerity depends on a disproportionate share of any new revenue coming from the wealthy. Given the rich world's need for faster growth, governments should be wary of sharp tax increases—especially since they are unnecessary. Indeed, the third argument for raising more money from the rich is that it can be done not by increasing marginal tax rates, but by making the tax code more efficient. The scope for doing so is most obvious in America, which relies far more than other countries on income taxes and has a mass of deductions on everything from interest payments on mortgages to employer-provided health care, so taxes are levied on a very narrow base. Since the main beneficiaries of the deductions are the wealthy, richer folk would pay most of that. And since marginal rates would be untouched (or reduced), such a reform would do less to discourage them from creating wealth.

单选题 Couples are restricting the size of their families in the UK because of cash worries brought on by the financial crisis and the subsequent decline. We're now up to nearly 3.7 million families where there is an only child, a rise from about 3.3 million in 2005. That means nearly half of all parents have only one child. Financial worries aren't the only driver. The trend towards later motherhood has been mentioned as a cause, as have soaring costs of raising a child, which have been calculated as ￡222,500 from birth to 21 years of age. This is an increase of nearly 40% in 10 years. The increasing availability of IVF (试管婴儿) is also a factor and an interesting one. Couples who might have remained childless in the past now invest in IVF and get pregnant. And because of the cost they stop after one child. It may not be a bad thing; there are outstanding examples of talented only children. Some argue that being an only child promoted their success. These include actors Natalie Portman and Al Pacino, golfer Tiger Woods and even Queen Victoria. A study from the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex also showed that the fewer brothers and sisters a child has, the happier they are. It seems fighting for parental attention and affection—which sometimes descends into physical fights—is more stressful than any adult had previously thought. And it's not compensated (弥补) by having a playmate.

单选题To broaden their voting appeal in the presidential election of 1796, the Federalists selected Thomas Pinckney, a leading South Carolinian, as running mate for the New Englander John Adams. But Pinckney's Southern friends chose to ignore their party's intentions and regarded Pinckney as a presidential candidate, creating a political situation that Alexander Hamilton was determined to exploit. Hamilton had long been wary of Adams' stubbornly independent brand of politics and preferred to see his running mate, over whom he could exert more control, in the President's chair. The election was held under the system originally established by the Constitution. At that time there was but a single tally, with the candidate receiving the largest number of electoral votes declared President and the candidate with the second largest number declared Vice-President, Hamilton anticipated that all the Federalists in the North would vote for Adams and Pinckney equally in an attempt to ensure that Jefferson would not be either first or second in the voting. Pinckney would be solidly supported in the south while Adams, yet both Federalists would outpoll Jefferson. Various methods were used to persuade the electors to vote as Hamilton wished. In the press, anonymous articles were published attacking Adams for his monarchial tendencies and Jefferson for being overly democratic, while pushing Pinckney as the only suitable candidate. In private correspondence with state party leaders the Hamiltonians encouraged the idea that Adams' popularity was slipping, that he could not win the election, and that the Federalists could defeat Jefferson only by supporting Pinckney. Had sectional Pride and loyalty not nm as high in New England as in the deep south, Pinckney might well have become Washington' s successor. New Englanders, however, realized that equal votes for Adams and Pinckney in their states would defeat Adams, therefore, eighteen electors scratched Pinckney's name from their ballots and deliberately threw away their second votes to men who were not even running. It was fortunate for Adams that they did, for the electors from South Carolina completely abandoned him, giving eight votes to Pinckney and eight to Jefferson. In the end, Hamilton's interference in Pinckney' s candidacy lost even the Vice-Presidency of South Carolina. Without New England's support, Pinckney received only 59 electoral votes, finishing third to Adams and Jefferson. He might have been President in 1979, or as Vice-President a serious contender for the Presidency in 1800; instead, stigmatized by a plot he had not devised, he served a brief term in the United States Senate and then dropped from sight as a national influence.

单选题Our culture has caused most Americans to assume not only that our language is universal but that the gestures we use are understood by everyone. We do not realize that waving good-bye is the way to summon a person from the Philippines to one's side, or that in Italy and some Latin-American countries, curling the finger to oneself is a sign of farewell. Those private citizens who sent packages to our troops occupying Germany after World War Ⅱ and marked them GIFT to escape duty payments did not bother to find out that "Gift" means poison in German. Moreover, we like to think of ourselves as friendly, yet we prefer to be at least 3 feet or an arm's length away from others. Latins and Middle Easterners like to come closer and touch, which makes Americans uncomfortable. Our linguistic and cultural blindness and the casualness with which we take notice of the developed tastes, gestures, customs and languages of other countries, are losing us friends, business and respect in the world. Even here in the United States, we make few concessions to the needs of foreign visitors. There are no information signs in four languages on our public buildings or monuments; we do not have multilingual guided tours. Very few restaurant menus have translations, and multilingual waiters, bank clerks and policemen are rare. Our transportation systems have maps in English only and often we ourselves have difficulty understanding them. When we go abroad, we tend to cluster in hotels and restaurants where English is spoken. The attitudes and information we pick up are conditioned by those natives--usually the richer--who speak English. Our business dealings, as well as the nation's diplomacy, are conducted through interpreters. For many years, America and Americans could get by with cultural blindness and linguistic ignorance. After all, America was the most powerful country of the free world, the distributor of needed funds and goods. But all that is past. American dollars no longer buy all good things, and we are slowly beginning to realize that our proper role in the world is changing. A 1979 Harris poll reported that 55 percent of Americans want this country to play a more significant role in world affairs; we want to have a hand in the important decisions of the next century, even though it may not always be the upper hand.

单选题Her office in the First National Bank building is provisional.

单选题 Sleep is a funny thing. We're taught that we should get seven or eight hours a night, but a lot of us get by just fine on less, and some of us actually sleep too much. A study out of the University of Buffalo last month reported that people who routinely sleep more than eight hours a day and are still tired are nearly three times as likely to die of stroke--probably as a result of an underlying disorder that keeps them from snoozing(睡)soundly. Doctors have their own special sleep problems. Residents (住院医生) are famously sleep deprived. When I was training to become a neurosurgeon, it was not unusual to work 40 hours in a row without rest. Most of us took it in stride, confident we could still deliver the highest quality of medical care. Maybe we shouldn't have been so sure of ourselves. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association points out that in the morning after 24 hours of sleeplessness, a person's motor performance is comparable to that of someone who is legally intoxicated. Curiously, surgeons who believe that operating under the influence is grounds for dismissal often don't think twice about operating without enough sleep. "I could tell you horror stories." says Jaya Agrawal, president of the American Medical Student Association, which runs a website where residents can post anonymous anecdotes. Some are terrifying. "I was operating after being up for over 36 hours," one writes. "I literally fell asleep standing up and nearly face planted into the wound." "Practically every surgical resident I know has fallen asleep at the wheel driving home from work." writes another. "I know of three who have hit parked cars. Another hit a 'Jersey barrier' on the New Jersey Turnpike. going 65 m. p·h." "Your own patients have become the enemy," writes a third, because they are "the one thing that stands between you and a few hours of sleep." Agrawal's organization is supporting the Patient and Physician Safety and Protection Act of 2001, introduced last November by Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan. Its key provisions, modeled on New York State's regulations, include an 80-hour workweek and a 24-hour work-shift limit. Most doctors, however, resist such interference. Dr. Charles Binkley, a senior surgery resident at the University of Michigan, agrees that something needs to be done but believes "doctors should be hound by their conscience, not by the government'. The U. S. controls the hours of pilots and truck drivers. But until such a system is in place for doctors, patients are on their own. If you're worried about the people treating you or a loved one, you should feel free to ask how many hours of sleep they have had and if more-rested staffers are available. Doctors, for their part, have to give up their pose of infallibility(不出错)and get the rest they need.

单选题Three university departments have been ______ $600,000 to develop good practice in teaching and learning.

单选题The sense relation which holds the pair of words sweet—suite is ______.

单选题The most widespread fallacy of all is that colds are caused by cold. They are actually caused by viruses passing on from person to person. You catch a cold by coming into contact, directly or indirectly, with someone who already has one. If cold causes colds, it would be reasonable to expect the Eskimos to suffer from them forever. But they do not. And in the isolated Arctic Regions explorers have reported being free from colds until coming into contact again with infected people from the outside world by way of packages and mail dropped from airplanes. At the Common Cold Research Unit in England, volunteers took part in experiments in which they gave themselves to the discomforts of being cold and wet for long stretches of time. After taking hot baths, they put on bathing suits, allowed themselves to be with cold water, and then stood about dripping wet in drafty rooms. Some wore wet socks all day while others exercised in the rain until close to exhaustion. Not one of the volunteers came down with a cold unless a cold virus was actually dropped in his nose. If, then, cold and wet have nothing to do with catching colds, why are they more frequent in the winter? Despite the most pains-taking research, no one has yet found the answer. One explanation offered by scientists is that people tend to stay together indoors more in cold weather than at other times, and this makes it easier for cold viruses to be passed on. No one has yet found a cure for the cold. There are drugs and pain suppressors such as aspiring, but all they do is relieve the symptoms.

单选题"The message" Dr. Farid's work focuses on is close to ______.

单选题With only about 1,000 pandas left in the world, China is desperately trying to clone the animal and save the endangered species. That's a move similar to what a Texas A＆M University researcher has been undertaking for the past five years in a project called "Noah's Ark". Dr. Duane Kraemer, a professor in Texas A＆M's College of Veterinary Medicine and a pioneer in embryo transfer work and related procedures, says he salutes the Chinese effort and "I wish them all the best success possible. It's a worthwhile project, certainly not an easy one, and it's very much like what we're attempting here at Texas A＆M—to save animals from extinction. " Noah's Ark is aimed at collecting eggs, embryos, semen and DNA of endangered animals and storing them in liquid nitrogen. If certain species should become extinct, Kraemer says there would be enough of the basic building blocks to reintroduce the species in the future. It is estimated that as many as 2,000 species of mammals, birds and reptiles will become extinct over the next 100 years. The panda, native only to China, is in danger of becoming extinct in the next 25 years. This week, Chinese scientists said they grew an embryo by introducing cells from a dead female panda into the egg cells of a Japanese white rabbit. They are now trying to implant the embryo into a host animal. The entire procedure could take from three to five years to complete. "The nuclear transfer of one species to another is not easy, and the lack of available panda eggs could be a major problem," Kraemer believes. "They will probably have to do several hundred transfers to result in one pregnancy. It takes a long time and it's difficult, but this could be groundbreaking science if it works. They are certainly not putting any live pandas at risk, so it is worth the effort , "adds Kraemer, who is one of the leaders of the Missyplicity Project at Texas A＆M, the first-ever attempt at cloning a dog. "They are trying to do something that's never been done, and this is very similar to our work in Noah's Ark. We're both trying to save animals that face extinction. I certainly applaud their effort and there's a lot we can learn from what they are attempting to do. It's a research that is very much needed. /

单选题I enjoy the concert last night; they played ______ beautiful music. A. such B. such a C. so D. so a

单选题If you smoke, you'd better hurry. From July 1st pubs all over England will, by law, be no-smoking areas. So will restaurants, offices and even company cars, if more than one per-son uses them. England's smokers are following a well-trodden path. The other three bits of the United Kingdom have already banned smoking in almost all enclosed public spaces, and there are anti-smoking laws of varying strictness over most of Western Europe. The smoker' s journey from glamour through toleration to suspicion is finally reaching its end in pariah status. But behind this public-health success story lies a darker tale. Poorer people are much more likely to smoke than richer ones—a change from the 1950s, when professionals and la-borers were equally keen. Today only 15% of men in the highest professional classes smoke, but 42% of unskilled workers do. Despite punitive taxation—20 cigarettes cost around ￡ 5.00 ($10.00), three-quarters of which is tax—55% of single mothers on benefits smoke. The figure for homeless men is even higher; for hard-drug users it is practically 100% . The message that smoking kills has been heard, it seems, but not by all. Having defeated the big killers of the past—want, exposure, poor sanitation—governments all over the developed world are turning their attention to diseases that stem mostly from how individuals choose to live their lives. But the same deafness afflicts the same people when they are strongly encouraged to give up other sorts of unhealthy behavior. The lower down they are on practically any pecking order—job prestige, income, education, background-the more likely people are to be fat and unfit, and to drink too much. That tempts governments to shout ever louder in an attempt to get the public to listen and nowhere do they do so more aggressively than in Britain. One reason is that pecking orders matter more than in most other rich countries: income distribution is very unequal and the unemployed, disaffected, ill-educated rump is comparatively large. Another reason is the frustration of a government addicted to targets, which often aim not only to improve some-thing but to lessen inequality in the process. A third is that the National Health Service is free to patients, and paying for those who have arguably brought their ill-health on themselves grows alarmingly costly. Britain' s aggressiveness, however, may be pointless, even counter-productive. There is no reason to believe that those who ignore measured voices will listen to shouting. It irritates the majority who are already behaving responsibly, and it may also undermine all government pronouncements on health by convincing people that they have an ultra-cautious margin of error built in. Such hectoring may also be missing the root cause of the problem. According to Mr. Marmot, who cites research on groups as diverse as baboons in captivity, British civil servants and Oscar nominees, the higher rates of ill health among those in more modest walks of life can be attributed to what he calls the "status syndrome". People in privileged positions think they are worth the effort of behaving healthily, and find the will-power to do so. The implication is that it is easier to improve a person's health by weakening the connection between social position and health than by targeting behavior directly. Some public-health experts speak of social cohesion, support for families and better education for all. These are bigger undertakings than a bossy campaign; but more effective, and quieter.

单选题As home prices continue to decline and loan defaults mount, federal regulators are bracing for dozens of American banks to fail over the next year. But after a large mortgage lender in California collapsed late Friday, Wall Street analysts began posing two crucial questions: Just how many banks might falter? And, more urgently, which one could be next? The nation"s banks are in far less danger than they were in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when more than 1,000 federally insured institutions went under during the savings-and-loan crisis. The debacle , the greatest collapse of American financial institutions since the Depression, prompted a government bailout that cost taxpayers about $125 billion. But the troubles are growing so rapidly at some small and midsize banks that as many as 150 out of the 7,500 banks nationwide could fail over the next 12 to 18 months, analysts say. Other lenders are likely to shut branches or seek mergers. "Everybody is drawing up lists, trying to figure out who the next bank is, No. 1, and No. 2, how many of them are there," said Richard X. Bove, the banking analyst with Ladenburg Thalmann, who released a list of troubled banks over the weekend. "And No. 3, from the standpoint of Washington, how badly is it going to affect the economy?" Many investors are on edge after federal regulators seized the California lender, IndyMac Bank, one of the nation"s largest savings and loans, last week. With $32 billion in assets, IndyMac, a spinoff of the Countrywide Financial Corporation, was the biggest American lender to fail in more than two decades. Now, as the federal administration grapples with the crisis at the nation"s two largest mortgage finance companies (住宅信贷公司), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a rush of earnings reports in the coming days and weeks from some of the nation"s largest financial companies are likely to provide more gloomy reminders about the sorry state of the industry. The future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is vital to the banks, savings and loans and credit unions, which own $1.3 trillion of securities issued or guaranteed by the two mortgage companies. If the mortgage giants ever defaulted on those obligations, banks might be forced to raise billions of dollars in additional capital.

单选题Why do some philosophers hold the view that animals cannot have rights?

单选题You are legally entitled to take faulty goods back to the store where you bought them.