单选题In recent years, railroads have been combining with each other, merging into super systems, causing heightened concerns about monopoly. As recently as 1995, the top four railroads accounted for under 70 percent of the total ton-miles moved by rails. Next year, after a series of mergers is completed, just four railroads will control well over 90 percent of all the freight moved by major rail carriers. Supporters of the new super systems argue that these mergers will allow for substantial cost reductions and better coordinated service. Any threat of monopoly, they argue, is removed by fierce competition from trucks. But many shippers complain that for heavy bulk commodities traveling long distances, such as coal, chemicals, and grain, trucking is too costly and the railroads therefore have them by the throat. The vast consolidation within the rail industry means that most shippers are served by only one rail company. Railroads typically charge such "captive" shippers 20 to 30 percent more than they do when another railroad is competing for the business. Shippers who feel they are being overcharged have the right to appeal to the federal government's Surface Transportation Board for rate relief, but the process is expensive, time consuming, and will work only in truly extreme cases. Railroads justify rate discrimination against captive shippers on the grounds that in the long run it reduces everyone's cost. If railroads charged all customers the same average rate, they argue, shippers who have the option of switching to trucks or other forms of transportation would do so, leaving remaining customers to shoulder the cost of keeping up the line. It's theory to which many economists subscribe, but in practice it often leaves railroads in the position of determining which companies will flourish and which will fail. "Do we really want railroads to be the arbiters of who wins and who loses in the marketplace?" asks Martin Bercovici, a Washington lawyer who frequently represents shipper. Many captive shippers also worry they will soon be hit with a round of huge rate increases. The railroad industry as a whole, despite its brightening fortunes, still does not earn enough to cover the cost of the capital it must invest to keep up with its surging traffic. Yet railroads continue to borrow billions to acquire one another, with Wall Street cheering them on. Consider the 1.02 billion bid by Norfolk Southern and CSX to acquire Conrail this year. Conrail's net railway operating income in 1996 was just 427 million, less than half of the carrying costs of the transaction. Who's going to pay for the rest of the bill? Many captive shippers fear that they will, as Norfolk Southern and CSX increase their grip on the market.

单选题Your library has ______ books about computer science than ours. A. even more B. still one C. many more D. much more

单选题All the following expenses are included in the term bill EXCEPT ______.

单选题When language is used to get information from others, it serves an informative function. (清华2001研)

单选题3 Psychologist George Spilich and colleagues at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, decided to find out whether, as many smokers say, smoking helps them to "think and concentrate. " Spilich put young non-smokers, active smokers and smokers de prived (被剥夺) of cigarettes through a series of tests. In the first test, each subject (实验对象) sat before a computer screen and pressed a key as soon as he or she recognized a target letter among a grouping of 96. In this simple test, smokers, deprived smokers and nonsmokers performed equally well. The next test was more complex, requiring all to scan sequences of 20 identical letters and respond the instant one of the letters was transformed into a different one. Non-smok ers were faster, but under the stimulation of nicotine (尼古丁), active smokers were fas ter than deprived smokers. In the third test of short-term memory, non-smokers made the fewest errors, but de prived smokers committed fewer errors than active smokers. The fourth test required people to read a passage, then answer questions about it. Non-smokers remembered 19 percent more of the most important information than active smokers, and deprived smokers bested those who had smoked a cigarette just before testing. Active smokers tended not only to have poorer memories but also had trouble separating important information from insignificant details. "As our tests became more complex," sums up Spilich, "non-smokers performed bet ter than smokers by wider and wider margins. " He predicts, "smokers might perform ad equately at many jobs until they got complicated. A smoking airline pilot could fly ade quately if no problems arose, but if something went wrong, smoking might damage his mental capacity. /

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Search engine Google was aiming to float on Wall Street this week, valued at up to $ 36 billion. But the Internet company's advisers are meeting this weekend to discuss possibly delaying the public listing after a sharp fall in share prices in New York on Friday. An insider said last night:' "The float is teetering on the brink -- it really is 50/50 at this stage, although many of us are optimistic." The initial public offering (IPO) of shares in Google, which could raise nearly $ 4bn, will amount to one of the biggest IPOs for years. But many US firms have shelved their IPOs amid volatile market conditions and investors appear unwilling to subscribe to new equity. A Wall Street analyst said that the Google IPO "would be a seminal event for the American stock market" as its real significance was that it would test whether or not the recovery in equity prices since the end of the Iraq war had taken hold. "If this float works, a lot of other companies will be encouraged and come to the market later in the year," the insider added. "But it will be bad news if the IPO is pulled or the shares fall sharply after the company is listed. If that happens, it could kill off the IPO market in America and elsewhere for at least 12 months." Several fund managers have already expressed reservations about Google, in particular its high valuation and the complex way the shares are being sold. Moreover, the Google flotation is taking place at a time when technology companies in the US have been shunned. On Thursday, the IPO hit a technical hitch over the failure of the company to meet its legal obligations concerning its employees' stock option plans. But the company did not think that the disclosure would mean a delay to the IPO, which is due on Tuesday. At the top of the suggested price range, Google would be valued not far short of its rival Internet firm Yahoo! -- and this has raised eyebrows within the industry. The auction is being conducted over the Internet, and potential buyers will have to register by signing on to a Google website. But only investors who have brokerage accounts with one of the 28 US banks and brokers underwriting the stock sale, will be able to apply. Google suffered a setback last month after it re- ported an unexpected slowdown in its huge growth rate. But sources close to Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, said that the tailing-off of growth was due to seasonal factors and would not affect the IPO.

单选题The producers of instant coffee found their product strongly resisted in the market places despite their manifest advantages. Furthermore, the advertising expenditure for instant coffee was far greater than that for regular coffee. Efforts were made to find the cause of the consumers" seemingly unreasonable resistance to the product. The reason given by most people was dislike for the taste. The producers suspected that there might be deeper reasons, however. This was confirmed by one of motivation research"s classic studies, one often cited in the trade. Mason Haire, of the University of California, constructed two shopping lists that were identical except for one item. There were six items common to both lists: hamburger, carrots, baking powder, bread, canned peaches and potatoes, with the brands or amounts specified. The seventh item, in the fifth place on both lists, read "I lb. Maxwell House coffee" on one list and "Nescafe instant coffee" on the other. One list was given to each person in a group of fifty women, and the other list to those in another group of the same size. The women were asked to study their lists and then to describe, as far as they could, the kind of woman ("personality and character") who would draw up that shopping list. Nearly half of those who had received the list including instant coffee described a housewife who was lazy and a poor planner. On the other hand, only one woman in the other group described the housewife, who had included regular coffee on her list, as lazy, only six of that group suggested that she was a poor planner. Eight women felt that the instant-coffee user was probably not a good wife! No one in the other group drew such a conclusion about the housewife who intended to buy regular coffee.

单选题The police ______ outside the hall in large numbers. A．have stationed B．were stationed C．stationed D．has been stationed

单选题I prefer ______ a term paper ______ an examination.

单选题People joke that no one in Los Angeles reads; everyone watches TV, rents videos, or goes to the movies. The most popular reading material is comic books, movie magazines, and TV guides. City libraries have only 10 percent of the traffic that car washes have. But how do you explain this? An annual book festival in west Los Angeles is flourishing year after year. People wait haft an hour for a parking space to become available. This outdoor festival, sponsored by a newspaper, occurs every April for one weekend. This year's attendance was estimated at 70,000 on Saturday and 75,000 on Sunday. The festival consisted of 280 exhibitors. There were about 90 talks given by authors, with an audience question-and-answer period following each talk. Autograph(亲笔签名)seekers sought out more than 150 authors. A food court sold all kinds of popular food and diverse foreign foods, from American hamburgers to Hawaiian shave ice drinks. Except for a $ 7 parking fee, the festival was free. Even so, some people avoided the food court prices by staying away and having their own sandwiches and drinks. Passage Three People came from all over California. One couple drove down from San Francisco. "This is our sixth year here now. We love it, "said the husband. "It's just fantastic to be in the great outdoors, to be among so many books and authors, and to get some very good deals, too." The idea for the festival occurred years ago, but nobody knew if it would succeed. Although book festivals were already popular in other US cities, would Los Angeles residents welcome one? "The citizens of the city are very unpredictable, "said one of the festival founders.

单选题The majority of people, about nine out of ten, are right-handed. (1) until recently, people who were left-handed were considered (2) , and once children showed this tendency they were forced to use their right hands. Today left-handedness is generally (3) , but it is still a disadvantage in a world (4) most people are right-handed. For example, most tools and implements are still (5) for right-handed people. In sports (6) contrast, doing things with the left hand or foot, .is often an advantage. Throwing, kicking, punching or batting from the" (7) "side may result in throwing (8) many opponents who are more accustomed to dealing with the (9) of players who are right-handed. This is why, in many (10) at a professional level, a (11) proportion of players are left-handed than in the population as a whole. The word "right" in many languages means "correct" or is (12) with lawfulness, whereas the words associated (13) "left", such as "sinister", generally have (14) associations. Moreover, among a number of primitive peoples, there is (15) close association between death and the left hand. In the past, in (16) western societies, children were often forced to use their right hands, especially to write with. In some cases the left hand was (17) behind the child's back so that it could not be used. If, in the future, they are allowed to choose, (18) will certainly be more left-handers, and probably (19) people with minor psychological disturbances as a result of being forced to use their (20) hand.

单选题The development of the English language falls into three reasonably ______periods: Old English, Middle English, and Modern English.

单选题The new teacher was ______ to the needs of all the children in her care. A. attentive C. earnest C. careful D. observant

单选题By the end of last year the railway ______.

单选题Professor Smith has already retired but his teachings still_____a strong influence on his students.

单选题That Arctic sea ice is disappearing has been known for decades. The underlying cause is believed by all but a handful of climatologists to be global warming brought about by greenhouse-gas emissions. Yet the rate the ice is vanishing confuses these climatologists' models. These predict that if the level of carbon dioxide, methane and so on in the atmosphere continues to rise, then the Arctic Ocean will be free of floating summer ice by the end of the century. At current rates of shrinkage, by contrast, this looks likely to happen sometime between 2020 and 2050. The reason is that Arctic air is warming twice as fast as the atmosphere as a whole. Some of the causes of this are understood, but some are not. The darkness of land and water compared with the reflectiveness of snow and ice means that when the latter melt to reveal the former, the area exposed absorbs more heat from the sun and reflects less of it back into space. The result is a feedback loop that accelerates local warming. Such feedback, though, does not completely explain what is happening. Hence the search for other things that might assist the ice's rapid disappearance. One is physical change in the ice itself. Formerly a solid mass that melted and refroze at its edges, it is now thinner, more fractured, and so more liable to melt. But that is (literally and figuratively) a marginal effect. Filling the gap between model and reality may need something besides this. The latest candidates are "short-term climate forcings". These are pollutants, particularly ozone and soot (also called "black carbon") that do not hang around in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide does, but have to be renewed continually if they are to have a lasting effect. If they are so renewed, though, their impact may be as big as CO2's. Reducing soot would not stop the summer sea ice disappearing, but it might delay the process by a decade or two. According to a recent report by the United Nations Environment Program, reducing soot and ozone in the lower part of the atmosphere, especially in the Arctic countries of America, Canada, Russia and Scandinavia, could cut warming in the Arctic by two-thirds over the next three decades. Indeed, the report suggests, if such measures—preventing crop burning and forest fires, cleaning up diesel engines and wood stoves, and so on—were adopted everywhere they could halve the wider rate of wanning by 2050. The rapid melting of the Arctic sea ice, then, illuminates the difficulty of modeling the climate—but not in a way that brings much comfort to those who hope that fears about the future climate might prove exaggerated. When reality is changing faster than theory suggests it should, a certain amount of nervousness is a reasonable response.

单选题The Charter had been ratified by a majority of the participants who were the ones that asked for its draft.

单选题City traffic jam—one of the least wanted effects of the motor vehicle—is something with which we're all familiar and for which most of us have an answer. But which solution is best? Some people suggest for better roads, others for cars to be banned (禁止) from city centers and yet others say better public transport would attract drivers from their lonely and boring journeys. But the important question is what natural power creates a big city center. We are, after all, in an age of electronic communication; our big shopping areas have moved out of city centers, and our living areas moved out of them long ago. Yet some force causes offices and service industries related to them to gather in London or New York or Tokyo. This suggests that far from the problems of a crowded environment forcing companies and people to move out, there is a critical (重大的) size beyond which more companies are attracted to move in. Nobody seems to know why, yet the answer is important to the way traffic jam is dealt with.

单选题 As NASA prepares to set twin robots loose on the Martian surface and makes plans to send another in 2007, the agency's long term goal is clear: determine whether the red planet does or ever did harbor life. But the current search for life is necessarily limited to life as we know it, organisms dependent on liquid water. A SPACE.com reader recently suggested that "We as humans are arrogant, simply believing that any other form of life will be just like us." Researchers devoted to the search for extraterrestrial (ET) have a similar view. "Scientists' approach to finding life is very Earth-centric," says Kenneth Nealson, a geobiologist at the University of Southern California. "Based on what we know about life on Earth, we set the limits for where we might look on other planets," Nealson said. Within that framework, however, there are extreme cases of life on Earth that suggest the range of places to look on frigid Mars. Nealson and his colleagues recently found the most extreme sort of organism in a salty liquid lake under the permafrost of Siberia. The organism, named cryopegella, can exist at colder temperatures than any previously discovered. Nealson's team figures that if the ice at the polar caps of Mars warmed to liquid water, organisms like cryopegella could have awakened and repaired any damage that might have occurred to their various cellular components. That does not mean there are necessarily dormant microbes within the ice caps of Mars. But it does suggest a broader range of potential cradles for life. Other researchers agree, and a host of so-called "extremophile" discoveries on Earth in recent years indicate the polar regions of Mars might be prime hunting grounds. As on Earth, organisms there might be slathered in natural antifreeze or be able to go dormant for tens of thousands of years, waiting for a brief thaw, their moment in the Sun. Meanwhile, scientists recognize that there could indeed be life elsewhere in the universe that does not require water. And some astrobiologists are trying to explore the possibilities. But it is a tough problem to approach. In looking for "life as we don't know it," it's hard to even imagine what to expect. Life might or might not exist on Mars. If there are critters there, they might or might not be like bacteria on Earth. In laboratory conditions, scientists in 2001 were able to get one-celled organisms to incorporate an amino acid—a fundamental building block of life—that no other known life uses. The discovery borders on the creation of artificial life, experts said. It also suggests that ET might operate by entirely different rules than those we're used to. If life on Mars is fundamentally different from what scientists understand life to be, then current spacecraft and others in the works may well not recognize what's right under their mechanical noses.