单选题In times of severe ______ companies are often forced to make massive job cuts in order to survive. A. retreat B. retrospect C. reduction D. recession

单选题{{B}}Passage Two{{/B}} The Internet can make the news more democratic, giving the public a chance to ask questions and seek out facts behind stories and candidates, according to the head of the largest US on-line service. "But the greatest potential for public participation is still in the future," Steven Case, chairman of America On-line, told a recent meeting on Journalism and the Internet sponsored by The Freedom Forum(讨论会), though some other speakers say the new technology of computers is changing the face of journalism, giving reporters access to more information and their readers a chance to ask questions and turn to different sources. "You don't have to buy a newspaper and be confined to the four comers of that paper anymore," Sam Meddis, on-line technology editor at USA Today, observed about the variety of information available to computer users. But the speakers noted the easy access to the Internet also means anyone can post information for others to see. "Anyone can say anything they want, whether it's right or wrong," said Case. Readers have to determine for themselves who to trust. "In a world of almost infinite voices, respected journalists and respected brand names will probably become more important, not less," Case said. The Internet today is about where radio was 80 years ago, or television 50 years ago or cable 25 years ago, he said. But it is growing rapidly because it provides people fast access to news and a chance to comment on it.

单选题The trading company requires that payment ______ on time.

单选题The Security Council is the most powerful body in the UN. It is responsible for maintaining international peace, and for restoring peace when conflicts arise. Its decisions are binding on all UN members. The Security Council has the power to define what is a threat to security, to determine how the UN should respond, and to enforce its decisions by ordering UN members to take certain actions. The Council convenes (召集) any time there is a threat to peace. A representative from each member country who sits on the Council must be available at all times so that the Council can meet at a moment's notice. The Security Council also frequently meets at the request of a UN member—often a nation with a grievance about another nation's actions. The Security Council has 15 members, five of which hold permanent seats. The assembly elects the other ten members for two-year terms. The five permanent members—the United States, Britain, France, Russia (formerly the Soviet Union), and China—have the most power. These nations were the winning powers at the end of World War Ⅱ, and they still represent the bulk of the world's military might. Decisions of the Council require nine votes. But any one of the permanent members can veto an important decision. This authority is known as the veto right of the great powers. As a result, the Council is effective only when its permanent members can reach a consensus (一致同意) . The Council has a variety of ways it can try to resolve conflicts among countries. Usually the Council's first step is to encourage the countries to settle their disagreements without violence. The Council can mediate a dispute or recommend guidelines for a settlement. It can send peacekeeping troops into a distressed area. If war breaks out, the Council can call for a ceasefire. It can enforce its decisions by imposing economic sanctions on a country, or through joint military action.

单选题In 1910, Henry Van Dyke wrote a book called "The Spirit of America, " which opened with this sentence: "The Spirit of America is best known in Europe by one of its qualities— energy. " This has always been true. Americans have always been known for their manic dynamism. Some condemned this ambition as a scrambling after money. Others saw it in loftier terms. But energy has always been the country"s saving feature. So Americans should be especially alert to signs that the country is becoming less vital and assiduous . One of those signs comes to us from the labor market. According to figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has a smaller share of prime age men in the work force than any other G-7 nation. Part of the problem has to do with human capital. More American men lack the emotional and professional skills they would need to contribute. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 35 percent of those without a high school diploma are out of the labor force, compared with less than 10 percent of those with a college degree. Part of the problem has to do with structural changes in the economy. Sectors like government, health care and high-tech have been growing, generating jobs for college grads. Sectors like manufacturing, agriculture and energy have been getting more productive, but they have not been generating more jobs. Instead, companies are using machines or foreign workers. The result is this: There are probably more idle men now than at any time since the Great Depression, and this time the problem is mostly structural, not cyclical . This is a big problem. It can"t be addressed through the sort of short-term Keynesian stimulus some on the left are still fantasizing about. It can"t be solved by simply reducing the size of government, as some on the right imagine. It will probably require a broad menu of policies attacking the problem all at once: expanding community colleges and online learning; changing the corporate tax code and labor market rules to stimulate investment; adopting German-style labor market practices like apprenticeship programs, wage subsidies and programs that extend benefits to the unemployed for six months as they start small businesses. Reinvigorating the missing fifth—bringing them back into the labor market and using their capabilities—will certainly require money. If this were a smart country, we"d be having a debate about how to shift money from programs that provide comfort and toward programs that spark reinvigoration. But, of course, that"s not what is happening. Discretionary spending, which might be used to instigate dynamism, is declining. Health care spending, which mostly provides comfort to those beyond working years, is expanding. Attempts to take money from health care to open it up for other uses are being crushed . We"re locking in the nation"s wealth into the Medicare program and closing off any possibility that we might do something significant to reinvigorate the missing fifth. Next time you see a politician demagoguing Medicare, ask this : Should we be using our resources in the manner of a nation in decline or one still committed to stoking the energy of its people and continuing its rise?

单选题The fundamental reason why people in general do not speak foreign languages very much better than they do is that they fail to grasp the true nature of the problem of learning to pronounce, and consequently never ______ tackling it in the right way. A. turn to B. insist on C. set about D. work at

单选题According to the passage, Disneyland in France ______.

单选题Most of the illusions that defined the tate global economic boom—the notion that global growth had moved to a non-stop higher plane and housing prices from Miami to Mumbai would rise indefinitely—are now indeed exhausted. Yet one idea still has the power to capture imaginations and markets: it is that commodities like oil, copper, grains and gold are all destined to rise over time. Lots of smart people believe that last year's increase in commodities prices represented a pause in a long-term bull market. It's view rooted in powerful and real trends, like the growth of India, the decline in global reserves, fears over resource nationalization and long-term lack of investment in energy and agriculture, which limits supply. At any point in time, there are always new economic powers emerging on the global scene, yet product prices have continued to fall. The 1980s and 1990s were a relatively strong period for the global economy, and India was growing at an average pace of 7 percent. But prices for most commodities did not follow, oil, for example, never broke through the upper limit of $40 a barrel. The reason oil prices did not spike higher is simple: demand for any product is price-elastic, which means that once the price goes too high, consumers stop buying it or make heroic efforts to find a substitute. There is good reason to believe that the world just passed a similar turning point. The last boom in the oil prices collapsed in 1979, when total spending on oil exceeded 7 percent of global GDP. Last year, spending on oil hit a similar share of global GDP, and the price has since fallen by more than two thirds. Yet markets are still betting that the price of oil is poised to spike again. Some analysts predict $90 a barrel by 2012. It's worth noting that until as recently as 2005, the markets acted on the exact opposite assumption. For years, sport prices ran much higher than futures prices, because most investors assumed prices would follow the historic trend line: down. Today investors are sill reacting to any sign of health in the global economy by pouring money back into commodities, producing the unstable upward price swing we've seen in recent weeks.

单选题It was last night ______ I see the comet.

单选题Any property that a bankrupt person may still have is usually divided among the various people to whom money are owed.

单选题{{B}}Passage Four{{/B}} Tests administered to most elementary and high-school students in the United States exert an unfavourable influence on science and math teaching, according to a new $1 million study performed for the National Science Foundation. And because schools with high minority enrollments (入学) generally place a greater reliance on scores from these tests, the study finds, there tends to be "a gap in instructional emphases between high- and low-minority classrooms that differ from our national concern for the quality of education". George F. Madaus and his colleagues at Boston College analyzed not only the six most widely used national standardized tests, but also the tests designed to accompany the four most commonly used science and math texts in fourth-grade, eighth-grade, and high-school classrooms. Though curriculum (teaching program) experts argue that schools should place greater emphasis on problem solving and reasoning, the new study indicates that the tests focus on lower-level skills -- primarily mechanical memorization of routine formulas. Researchers surveyed more than 2 200 math and science instructors, interviewing in depth some 300 teachers and administrators. Especially in schools with high minority enrollments; teachers reported feeling pressured to help students perform well. on these tests. Some states judge schools and some schools determine teacher assignments based on students' test scores. With so much worry, Madaus says, teachers feel compelled to focus their instruction on drilling what the tests will measure -- at the expense of the more valuable, higher-level skills.

单选题Speaker A: I'm awfully sorry. I hope I haven't spoiled it. Speaker B: ______ A. Oh, it's nothing. Don't let a little thing like that worry you. B. I know you are unintentional. Just be more careful next time. C. There is no need for you to say sorry. Anyway, I can buy a new one. D. You are right. You haven't spoiled it. You see, it's still in good condition.

单选题Long time ago, the ancient people could not travel to any far away places for they had no vehicle to carry them across the wide oceans, deep valleys, long rivers or high mountains. Nowadays people take advantage of steamships, trains, airplanes and modern bridges. Airplanes can carry us to the far countries in a short time; steamships can travel across the wide oceans. It is convenient to the modern people. Travelling is a good idea to us because we can get more knowledge, such as the customs, the geography of other countries. And people could travel among the different countries in the world. For it is easy to travel from the land by trains, or from the sea by ships. We learnt that the Italian who made the world large was Mr. Columbus. He was a brave man. Up to the middle of the 15th century, the people were afraid of traveling because they believed it was a dangerous thing. There is a saying in China, which is "Travelling for thousands is better than reading for ten years." It is to say that we can learn more in different places than we can learn from books.

单选题I ______ ping-pong quite well, but I haven't had time to play since the new year.A. will playB. have playedC. playedD. play

单选题Industrial production managers coordinate the resources and activities required to produce millions of goods every year in the United States. Although their duties vary from plant to plant, industrial production managers share many of the same major responsibilities. These responsibilities include production scheduling, staffing, procurement and maintenance of equipment, quality control, inventory control, and the coordination of production activities with those of other departments. The primary mission of industrial production managers is planning the production schedule within budgetary limitations and time constraints. They do this by analyzing the plant's personnel and capital resources to select the best way of meeting the production quota. Industrial production managers determine, often using mathematical formulas, which machines will be used, whether new machines need to be purchased, whether overtime or extra shifts are necessary, and what the sequence of production will be. They monitor the production run to make sure that it stays on schedule and correct any problems that may arise. Industrial production managers also must monitor product standards. When quality drops below the established standard, they must determine why standards are not being maintained and how to improve the product. If the problem relates to the quality of work performed in the plant, the manager may implement better training programs, reorganize the manufacturing process, or institute employee suggestion or involvement programs. If the cause is substandard materials, the manager works with the purchasing department to improve the quality of the product's components. Because the work of many departments is interrelated, managers work closely with heads of other departments such as sales, procurement, and logistics to plan and implement company goals, policies, and procedures. For example, the production manager works with the procurement department to ensure that plant inventories are maintained at their optimal level. This is vital to a firm's operation because maintaining the inventory of materials necessary for production ties up the firm's financial resources, yet insufficient quantities cause delays in production. A breakdown in communications between the production manager and the purchasing department can cause slowdown and a failure to meet production schedules. Just-in-time production techniques have reduced inventory levels, making constant communication among the manager, suppliers, and purchasing departments even more important. Computers play an integral part in this coordination. They also are used to provide up-to-date information on inventory, the status of work in progress, and quality standards. Production managers usually report to the plant manager or the vice president for manufacturing, and may act as liaison between executives and first line supervisors. In many plants, one production manager is responsible for all aspects of production. In large plants with several operations, there are managers in charge of each operation, such as machining, assembly, or finishing.

单选题Some people do not like anything to be out of place; they are never late for work; they return their books on time to the library; they remember people"s birthdays; and they pay their bills as soon as they arrive. Mr. Hill is such a man. Mr. Hill works in a bank, and lives alone. The only family he has is in the next town: his sister lives there with her husband, and her son, Jack. Mr. Hill does not see his sister, or her family, from one year to the next, but he sends them Christmas cards, and he has not forgotten one of Jack"s seventeen birthdays. Last week Mr. Hill had quite a surprise. He drove home from the bank at the usual time, driving neither too slowly nor too fast; he parked his car where he always parked it, out of the way of other cars, and he went inside to make his evening meal. Just then, there was a knock at the door. He opened the door, to find a policeman standing on the door-step. "What have I done wrong?" Mr. Hill asked himself. "Have I driven on the wrong side of the road? Has there been some trouble at the bank? Have I forgotten to pay an important bill?" "Hello, Uncle," said the policeman, "My name is Jack."

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Well, he made it up. All of it, apparently. According to a report published on December 29th by Seoul National University in South Korea, its erstwhile employee Hwang Woo-suk, who had tendered his resignation six days earlier, deliberately falsified his data in the paper on human embryonic stem cells that he and 24 colleagues published in Science in May 2005. In particular, Dr Hwang claimed he had created 11 colonies of human embryonic stem cells genetically matched to specific patients. He had already admitted that nine of these were bogus, but had said that this was the result of an honest mistake, and that the other two were still the real McCoy. A panel of experts appointed by the university to investigate the matter, however, disagreed. They found that DNA fingerprint traces conducted on the stem-cell lines reported in the paper had been manipulated to make it seem as if all 11 lines were tailored to specific patients. In fact, none of them matched the volunteers with spinal-cord injuries and diabetes who had donated skin cells for the work. To obtain his promising "results", Dr Hwang had sent for testing two samples from each donor, rather than a sample from the donor and a sample of the cells into which the donor's DNA had supposedly been transplanted. The panel also found that a second claim in the paper-that only 185 eggs were used to create the 11 stem-cell lines-was false. The investigators said the actual number of eggs used was far larger, in the thousands, although they were unable to determine an exact figure. The reason this double fraud is such a blow is that human embryonic stem-cell research has great expectations. Stem cells, which have not yet been programmed to specialise and can thus, in principle, grow into any tissue or organ, could be used to treat illnesses ranging from diabetes to Parkinson's disease. They might even be able to fix spinal-cord injuries. And stem cells cloned from a patient would not be rejected as foreign by his immune system, Dr Hwang's reputation, of course, is in tatters. The university is now investigating two other groundbreaking experiments he claims to have conducted-the creation of the world's first cloned human embryo and the extraction of stem cells from it, and the creation of the world's first cloned dog. He is also in trouble for breaching ethical guidelines by using eggs donated by members of his research team. And it is even possible that the whole farce may have been for nothing. Cloned embryos might be the ideal source of stem cells intended to treat disease, but if it proves too difficult to create them, a rough-and-ready alternative may suffice.