单选题In an age of perpetual digital connectedness, why do people seem so disconnected? In a Duke University study, researchers found that from 1985 to 2004, the percentage of people who said there was no one with whom they discussed important matters tripled, to 25%; the same study found that overall, Americans had one-third fewer friends and confidants than they did two decades ago. Another recent study, by researchers at the University of Michigan, found that college students today have significantly less empathy than students of generations past did. The reason, psychologists speculate, may have something to do with our increasing reliance on digital communication and other forms of new media. It's possible that instead of fostering real friendships off-line, e-mail and social networking may take the place of them—and the distance inherent in screen-only interactions may breed feelings of isolation or a tendency to care less about other people. After all, if you don't feel like dealing with a friend's problem online, all you have to do is log off. The problem is, as empathy wanes, so does trust. And without trust, you can't have a cohesive society. Consider the findings of a new study co-authored by Kevin Rockmann of George Mason University and Gregory Northcraft at the University of Illinois who specializes in workplace collaboration. Northcraft says high-tech communications like e-mail and (to a lesser extent) videoconferencing—which are sometimes known as "lean communication" because they have fewer cues like eye contact and posture for people to rely on—strip away the personal interaction needed to breed trust. In a business setting—as in all other social relationships outside the workplace—trust is a necessary condition for effective cooperation within a group. "Technology has made us much more efficient but much less effective," said Northcraft in a statement. "Something is being gained, but something is being lost. The something gained is time, and the something lost is the quality of relationships. And quality of relationships matters." In Rockmann and Northcraft's study, 200 students were divided into teams and asked to manage two complicated projects: one having to do with nuclear disarmament; the other, price fixing. Some groups communicated via e-mail, some via videoconference and others face to face. In the end, those who met in person showed the most trust and most effective cooperation; those using e-mail were the least able to work together and get the job done. Northcraft thinks this is because real-life meetings, during which participants can see how engaged their colleagues are, breed more trust. Over e-mail, meanwhile, confirmation of hard work gets lost, which tends to encourage mutual slacking off.

单选题It took ______ for the world to increase its population from 1 billion to 4 billion.

单选题"Sorry I forgot to post the letter for you."" ______. I'll post it myself tonight." A. Never mind B. No matter C. That's good D. Not care

单选题Many superstitious people are afraid of black cats. They believe that black cats have a strange power. If a black cat crosses their path, they think they will have bad luck. Black cats haven't always had such a bad reputation. Long ago, the Egyptians thought that black cats were holy animals. They even worshipped them. Pasht was an Egyptian goddess who had a woman's body and a cat's head. Because the Egyptians had so much respect for black cats, they often buried the sacred creatures with great ceremony. Mummies of cats have often been found in ancient cemetery ruins. To keep the cats company after they died, mice were sometimes buried beside them. Feelings about black cats have always been strong. People have thought they were either very good or very bad. The people of Europe, in the Middle Ages, believed black cats were the evil friends of witches and the Devil. Witches were said to have the power to change themselves into black cats. People believed that you could not tell whether a black cat was just a cat, or whether it was a witch disguising herself as she plotted some evil scheme. The brain of a black cat was thought to be a main ingredient in witch's brew. Unlike their ancestors of the Middle Ages, Englishmen today consider black cats to be good luck charms. Fishermen's wives often keep a black cat around so that their husbands will be protected when they are out at sea.

单选题Now, we should like to discuss again this question of acting as your ______ agent in Sweden. A．sale B．sole C．solo D．sell

单选题Text 1 Among Bloomberg's web pages on April 7th appeared a story that looked ordinary enough: PairGain, an American telecom equipment manufacturer, was to be bought by an Israeli company for about twice its market value. The company's stock price, predictably, rocketed from $8.50 to $11.13. All fine and normal—except that the story wasn't true. Somebody had copied Bloomberg's logo and layout and posted a bogus report on the Bloomberg site. When Pair Gain queried the report, it was taken off, and the share price crashed again. Bloomberg is now suing unnamed parties who posted the page. As more and more of life moves on to the Internet, so the difficulty of distinguishing fact from fiction on it becomes more and more of a worry. This problem springs from the Internet's central virtue: low barriers to entry. In the real world, being a publisher costs a great deal of money. You have to have manufacturing facilities and distribution networks. So real-world publishers have a great deal invested in their reputations and consequently need to be careful about what they print. On the Internet, being a publisher costs next to nothing. Many Internet publishers, therefore, have little to lose from printing untruths and plenty to gain in notoriety if the story they put out is sensational enough. What's more, faking the real-world newspaper, which has to be both manufactured and distributed, would be next to impossible; faking an Internet page is dead easy. Not all the efforts of the lowering of the barriers to entry are bad. Big, established news organisations can be too cautious and too protective of their more powerful sources. Many scandals have been unearthed first by outsiders with scrappy news sheets and little to lose by way of influential contacts. The Internet is a golden age for what used to be the newsletter. The downside is the ease with which error spreads. Rarely, though, falsehood takes the form of international fraud, more often it appears as malicious gossip, slovenly reporting and Chinese whispers. Last year everybody on the Internet knew that Tommy Hilfiger, a fashion designer, had made racist comments on the Operah Winfrey Show. Except that he didn't. Pierre Salinger, former television newsman, claimed at a news conference that TWA 800, a passenger plane that crashed into the Atlantic killing all aboard in 1996, had been downed by a missile—all on the basis of a web page of dubious origin. Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune wrote her column one week as a spoof graduation speech. Somehow this column became tagged on the web, as Kurt Vonnegut's commencement speech at MIT. Cyberspace can also be risky, for now, because even sophisticated people can be gullible about what they read there. This may be because of a lag between technology and perception. Smartly produced pages, and things on screens, impress us with an authority that springs from the resources needed to produce them in the old paper medium. Perhaps everyone should be more worldly wise about what can turn up on the web.

单选题______, he is not a very bright pupil. A. As far as his intelligence is concerned B. As far his intelligence is concerned C. So his intelligence is concerned D. As far as his intelligence are concerned

单选题If you want to pass the exam, you should change your attitude ______ learning.

单选题Having come from an {{U}}affluent{{/U}} society, Dick found it difficult to adjust to a small, country town.

单选题General Wolfe died in ______.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Most of us have seen a dog staring at, sometimes snarling at, and approaching a reflection of itself. For most animals, seeing their own image in a mirror acts as a social stimulus. But does the dog recognize itself, or does the reflection simply signal a potential companion or threat? This question is interesting for a number of masons. Apart from curiosity about the level of animals' understanding, research on serf- recognition in animals has several benefits. It provides some insight into the evolutionary significance of this skill of serf-recognition and into the level and kinds of cognitive competence that the skill requires. Such research also indicates the kinds of learning experiences that determine the development of self-recognition. In addition, work with animals fosters the use of techniques that are not dependent on verbal responses and that may therefore be suitable for use with preverbal children. The evidence indicates that dogs and almost all other nonhumans do not recognize themselves. In a series of clever experiments, however, Gallup has shown that the chimpanzee does have this capacity. Gallup exposed chimpanzees in a small cage to a full-length mirror for ten consecutive days. It was observed that over this period of time the number of serf-directed responses increased. These behaviors included grooming parts of the body while watching the results, guiding fingers in the mirror, and picking at teeth with the aid of the mirror. Describing one chimp, Gallup said, "Marge used the mirror to play with and inspect the bottom of her feet; she also looked at herself upside down in the mirror while suspended by her feet from the top of the cage; she was also observed to stuff celery leaves up her nose using the mirror for purposes of visually guiding the stems into each nostril." Then the researchers devised a further test of serf-recognition. The chimps were anesthetized and marks were placed over their eyebrows and behind their ears, areas the chimps could not directly observe. The mirror was temporarily removed from the cage, and baseline data regarding their attempts in touch these areas were recorded. The data clearly suggest that chimps do recognize themselves, or are self-aware, for their attempts to touch the marks increased when they viewed themselves. Citing further evidence for this argument, Gallup noted that chimpanzees with no prior mirror experience did not direct behavior to the marks when they were first exposed to the mirror; that is, the other chimpanzees appeared to have remembered what they looked like and do have responded to the marks because they noticed changes in their appearance.

单选题Our point is that nuclear science should be developed to benefit people ______ harm them.

单选题— Your ______, please! — Why don't you ring and ask Mr. King inside the hall? It was he who asked me to come to the party.A. foodB. moneyC. invitationD. suggestion

单选题 {{B}}Bookkeeper Wanted{{/B}} Job type Temp Full time/Part time Full -Time Diploma/Degree required Associates Salary/Pay rate Please contact us for more information. Job description/qualifications Adecco is looking for Bookkeepers to work for top companies. These are long-term temporary positions with the possibility of temp to hire. Job responsibilities include processing accounts payable and accounts receivable.Prepare and post monthly and yearly journal entries.Process payroll, and some light administrative work.{{B}}Qualifications:{{/B}}Three years experienceExcellent communication skillsSolid organizational skillsStrong analytical and problem-solving skillsMicrosoft ExcelQuickbooksAdecco is a global leader in employment and HR service, connecting people to jobs and jobs to people through its network of more than 6,000 offices in 71 countries/territories around the world. Our temporary and full-time assignments offer competitive pay and excellent benefits. Adecco is an equal opportunity employer. Contact Information Adecco San Mateo Branch1065 E. Hillsdale Blvd.Foster City, CA 94404Phone: 650-350-1308E-mail: sanmateo@ adeccona.com

单选题Passage Four The frog is an amphibian, which means "double living" or both water and land living. That is, it is able to get oxygen from water at one stage in its life and from the air at another stage. Perhaps you have heard the term amphibian used for military vehicles which can travel on both land and water. Toads and salamanders, as well as frogs, are amphibians. In the development of animals over the world's history, amphibians were the first vertebrates to live at least part time on land. As a tadpole, the frog spends the beginning of its life living in the water. The tadpole breathes by means of tiny gills. When the lungs begin to develop, the gills disappear. By the time they are adults, all frogs have lungs for breathing while on land. In this way, the animal becomes essentially a land-adapted animal. In addition to having lungs, frogs and salamanders have a moist skin through which oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged. This moist skin is very important in the winter weather when amphibians hibernate in the mud at the bottom of ponds and lakes. They get what little oxygen they need through the skin. Like fish, amphibians are cold-blooded animals. This means that their body temperature rises and falls with that of their surroundings.

单选题The chairperson of a woman' s club being addressed by Adlai Stevenson during his campaign indulged in a lengthy introduction full of ______ remarks;

单选题English is as ______ as Chinese. You should learn it well. A. important B. more important C. the most important D. much more important

单选题He takes his ______ home to his wife every Friday.

单选题 This time last year three out of four 16 to 24-year-olds were wearing the white band of Make Poverty History. Whatever the campaign may or may not have achieved in Africa, it briefly inspired millions in Britain. A joy, but also a revelation, for this was the moment when I saw how ready people were to take a little bit of action for a big cause. It may also explain how the small movement I helped to found has become a rather large phenomenon. Don't think changing the world can start by something as simple as shutting down your computer at night? Those marching were different crowds from 20 years ago. Make Poverty History made few formal demands. No slogans, no forms, not even meetings if you didn't fancy them. It was activism lite-more a brand than an organization. Show solidarity wherever you go-fashionably of course-do more, if and when you can. The future of active citizenship may depend on understanding why it ignited a generation. If social engagement is a funnel (a tube or pipe that is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom) turned on its side, about a quarter of a million people in the UK are at the narrow end, serial activists, responsible for 80 per cent of our community action. Most charities are here, focusing their efforts on these committed citizens. Our organization, We Are What We Do, is at the mouth of the funnel targeted at people who don't recycle or think about fair trade. It is styled as a brand, inspiring people to make the small changes that will make a big difference if enough of us do the same. Our first book-Change the World for a Fiver-featured 50 simple actions, from not spitting out your gum to declining plastic bags. All began by doing something small. Some of the 800 who are buying the book every day remain usefully but lightly engaged. For our new book, Change the World 9 to 5, we decided to focus on the workplace, where most of us spend most of our waking hours. Actions range from the entertaining (smile!); the symbolic (turn off your phone charger when not in use) and the serious (learn to save a life). In working with We Are What We Do I have moved from the view that the sum of individual actions can help to make a difference to the belief that ultimately it is the only thing that ever does. The smallest act has a value of its own.