单选题This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Alar apple scare, in which many American consumers were driven into a panic following the release of a report by an environmental organization claiming that apples containing the chemical Alar posed a serious health threat to preschoolers. The report was disseminated through a PR (Problem Report) campaign and bypassed any legitimate form of scientific peer review. Introduced to the American public by CBS' "60 Minutes," the unsubstantiated claims in the report led some school districts to remove apples from their school lunch programs and unduly frightened conscientious parents trying to develop good eating habits for their children. Last month, Consumers Union released a report warning consumers of the perils of consuming many fruits and vegetables that frequently contained "unsafe" levels of pesticide residues. This was especially true for children, they claimed. Like its predecessor 10 years earlier, the Consumers Union report received no legitimate scientific peer review and the public's first exposure to it was through news coverage. Not only does such reporting potentially drive children from consuming healthful fruits and vegetables, the conclusions were based on a misleading interpretation of what constitutes a "safe" level of exposure. Briefly, the authors used values known as the "chronic reference doses," set by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, as their barometers of safety. Used appropriately, these levels represent the maximum amount of pesticide that could be consumed daily for life without concern. For a 70-year lifetime, for example, consumers would have to ingest this average amount of pesticide every day for more than 25, 000 days. It is clear, as the report points out, that there are days on which kids may be exposed to more; it is also clear that there are many more days when exposure is zero. Had the authors more appropriately calculated the cumulative exposures for which the safety standards are meant to apply, there would have been no risks and no warnings. Parents should feel proud, rather than guilty, of providing fruits and vegetables for their children. It is well established that a diet rich in such foods decreases the risk of heart disease and cancer. Such benefits dramatically overwhelm the theoretical risks of tiny amounts of pesticides in food. So keep serving up the peaches, apples, spinach, squashes, grapes and pears.
单选题 The Alzheimer's Association and the National Alliance for Caregiving estimate that men make up nearly 40 percent of family care providers now, up from 19 percent in a 1996 study by the Alzheimer's Association. About 17 million men are caring for an adult. Women still provide the bulk of family care, especially intimate tasks like bathing and dressing. Many complain that their brothers are treated like heroes just for showing up. But with smaller families and more women working full-time, many men have no choice but to take on roles that would have been alien to their fathers. Often they are overshadowed by their female counterparts and faced with employers, friends, support organizations and sometimes even parents who view caregiving as an essentially female role. Male caregivers are more likely to say they feel unprepared for the role and become socially isolated, and less likely to ask for help. 'Isolation affects women as well, but men tend to have fewer lifeline. They are less likely to have friends going through similar experiences, and depend more on their jobs for daily human contact,' Dr. Donna Wagner, the director of gerontology (老年学) at Towson University and one of the few researchers who has studied sons as caregivers, said. In past generations, men might have pointed to their accomplishments as breadwinners or fathers. Now, some men say they worry about the conflict between caring for their parents and these other roles. In a 2003 study at three Fortune 500 companies, Dr. Donna Wagner found that men were less likely to use employee-assistance programs for caregivers because they feared it would be held against them. 'Even though the company has endorsed the program, your supervisors may have a different opinion,' Dr. Wagner said. Matt Kassin, 51, worked for a large company with very generous benefits, and his employer had been understanding. But he was reluctant to talk about his caregiving because he thought 'when they hire a male, they expect him to be 100 percent focused.' And he didn't want to appear to be someone who had distractions that detracted (破坏) from performance. For many men, the new role means giving up their self-image as experts, said Louis Colbert, director of the office of services for the aging in Delaware County, Pa., who has shared care of his 84-year-old mother with his siblings since her Alzheimer's made it necessary. Once a year, Mr. Colbert organizes a get-together for male caregivers. The concerns they raise, he said, are different from those of women in support groups. 'Very clearly, they said they wanted their role as caregivers validated, because in our society, as a whole, men as caregivers have been invisible,' he said.
单选题Realizing that he hadn"t enough money and ______ to borrow from his father, he decided to sell his watch.
单选题On the ground floor of the Federal Reserve building in Washington, DC, there is an electronic game which tests a visitor's skill at setting interest rates. You have to decide how to respond to events such as rising inflation or a stockmarket crash. If you get all the answers right, the machine declares you the next Fed chairman. In real life, because of huge uncertainties about data and how the economy works, there is no obviously right answer to the question of when to change interest rates. Nor is there any easy test of who will make the best Fed chairman. So who would The Economist select for the job? Alan Greenspan will retire as Fed chairman on January 31st, after a mere 181/2 years in the job. So George Bush needs to nominate a successor soon. Mr. Bush has a penchant for picking his pals to fill top jobs: last week he nominated his personal lawyer Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. But his personal bank manager really would not cut the mustard as Fed chairman. This is the most important economic-policy job in America—indeed in the whole world. The Fed chairman sets interest rates with the aim of controlling inflation, which in turn helps determine the value of the dollar, the world's main reserve currency. It is hardly surprising that financial markets worldwide can rise or fall on his every word. Financial markets are typically more volatile during the first year after the handover to a new chairman than during the rest of his tenure. In October 1987,barely two months after Mr. Greenspan took office, the stock market crashed. Current conditions for a handover are hardly ideal. America's economy has never looked so unbalanced, with a negative household savings rate, a housing bubble, a hefty budget deficit, a record current-account deficit and rising inflation. Figures due on October 14th are expected to show that the 12-monthrate of inflation has risen above 4% —its highest since 1991.
单选题Cut off by the storm, they were forced to ______ food for several days.
单选题When college students ______ future employment, they often think of status, income and prestige.
单选题A: If you like, I can help you paint the room tomorrow. B: ______
单选题Because of its intimacy, radio is usually more than just a medium; it is______.
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单选题Ted: Thanks for your watermelon. It is very nice. ______ James: At the farmer's market round the comer.
单选题Speaker A : I've got a fever and a really bad headache.
Speaker B :______
A. Why are you so careless about yourself?
B. This kind of thing happens to everyone.
C. You should take good care of yourself.
D. Oh, that' s too bad. Why don' t you take some aspirin?
单选题Special may be too impoverished a word to describe this triumph for a man who climbed to the pinnacle of sport from ______ beginnings as the sponsor of a roller-hockey team. A. providential B. illicit C. obscure D. urbane
单选题How efficient is our system of criminal trial? Does it really do the basic job we ask of it—convicting the guilty and acquitting the innocent? It is often said that the British trail system is more like a game than a serious attempt to do justice. The lawyers on each side are so engrosses in playing hard to win, challenging each other and the judge on technical points, that the object of finding out the truth is almost forgotten. All the effort is concentrated on the big day, on the dramatic cross examination of the key witnesses in front of the jury. Critics like to compare our "adversarial" system (resembling two adversaries engaged in a contest) with the continental "inquisitorial" system, under which the judge plays a more important inquiring role. In early times, in the Middle Ages, the systems of trial across Europe were' similar. At that time trial by "ordeal"—especially a religious event--was the main way of testing guilt or innocence. When this way eventually abandoned the two systems parted company. On the continent church-trained legal officials took over the function of both prosecuting and judging, while in England these were largely left to lay people, the Justice of the Peace and the jurymen who were illiterate and this meant that all the evidence had to be put to them orally. This historical accident dominates procedure even today, with all evidence being given in open court by word of mouth on the crucial day. On the other hand, in France for instance, all the evidence is written before the trial under supervision by an investigating judge. This exhaustive pretrial looks very undramatic; much of it is just a public checking of the written records already gathered. The Americans adopted the British system lock, stock and barrel and enshrined it in their constitution. But, while the basic features of our systems are common, there are now significant differences in the way serious cases are handled. First, because the U. S. A. has virtually no contempt of court laws to prevent pretrial publicity in the newspaper and on television, Americans lawyers are allowed to question jurors about knowledge and beliefs. In Britain this is virtually never allowed, and a random selection of jurors who are presumed not to be prejudiced are empanelled. Secondly, there is no separate profession of barrister in the United States, and both prosecution and defense lawyers who are to present cases in court prepare themselves. They go out and visit the scene, track down and interview witnesses, and familiarize themselves personally with the background. In Britain it is the solicitor who prepares the case, and the barrister who appears in court is not even allowed to meet witness beforehand, British barristers also alternate doing both prosecution and defense work. Being kept distant from the preparation and regularly appearing for both sides, barristers are said to avoid becoming too personally involved, and can approach cases more dispassionately. American lawyers, however, often know their cases better. Reformers rightly want to learn from other countries~ mistakes and successes. But what is clear is that justice systems, largely because they are the result of long historical growth, are peculiarly difficult to adapt piecemeal.
单选题 中国的红灯笼(red lanterns)有非常悠久的历史。红灯笼已成为中国非常著名的标志。灯笼有不同的形状、大小,也有各种各样的制作方法。最常见的灯笼是红色的。红色在传统意义上象征着好运和欢乐。最早的灯笼是为了实用性而制作的。今天,尽管灯笼已失去了实用需求,但依然很受中国人欢迎。唐人街(Chinatowns)也可以看到灯笼,人们为了招揽生意,经常在店铺外悬挂灯笼。
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单选题When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President of the United States in 1932, not only the United States but also the rest of the world was in the throes of an economic depression. Following the termination of World War I , Britain and the United States at first experienced a boom in industry. Called the roaring Twenties, the 1920s ushered in a number of things——prosperity, greater equality for women in the work world, rising consumption, and easy credit. The outlook for American business was rosy. October 1929 was a month that had catastrophic economic reverberations worldwide. The American stock market witnessed the "Great Crash," as it is called, and the temporary boom in the American economy came to a standstill. Stock prices sank, and panic spread. The ensuing unemployment figure soared to 12 million by 1932. Germany in the postwar years suffered from extreme deprivation because of burdensome compensation it was obliged to pay to the Allies. The country's industrial capacity had been greatly diminished by the war. Inflation, political instability, and high unemployment were factors helpful to the growth of the initial Nazi party. Germans had lost confidence in their old leaders and heralded the arrival of a messiah-like figure who would lead them out of their economic wilderness. Hitler promised jobs and, once elected, kept his promise by providing employment in the party, in the newly expanded army, and in munitions factories. Roosevelt was elected because he promised a "New Deal" to lift the United States out of the doldrums of the depression. Following the principles by Keynes, a British economist, Roosevelt collected the spending capacities of the federal government to provide welfare, work, and agricultural aid to the millions of down-and-out Americans. Elected President for four terms because of his innovative policies, Roosevelt succeeded in dragging the nation out of the depression before the outbreak of World War II.
单选题 What enables some people to get big creative breakthroughs while others only get small and non-creative breakdowns, blaming themselves and society? Are some people gifted? Are there other factors 21
单选题Brooding and hopelessness are the ______ of Indians in the prairie reservations most of the time.
单选题 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay commenting on the remark 'Keep good men company and you shall be of the number.' You can cite examples to illustrate the impact of social environment. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.
单选题The umbrella was used only by royalty or those in high office ______.
