单选题Reading the papers and looking at television these days, one can easily be persuaded that the human species is on its last legs, still tottering along but only barely making it. In this view, disease is the biggest menace of all. Even when we are not endangering our lives by eating the wrong sorts of food and taking the wrong kinds of exercise, we are placing ourselves in harm"s way by means of the toxins we keep inserting into the environment around us. As if this were not enough, we have fallen into the new habit of thinking our way into illness: ff we take up the wrong kind of personality, we nm the risk of contracting a new disease called stress, followed quickly by coronary occlusion. Or if we just sit tight and try to let the world slip by, here comes cancer, from something we ate, breathed or touched. No wonder we are a nervous lot. The word is out that if we were not surrounded and propped up by platoons of health professionals, we would drop in our tracks. The truth is something different, in my view. There has never been a time in history when human beings in general have been statistically as healthy as the people now living in the industrial societies of the Western world. Our average life expectancy has stretched from 45 years a century ago to today"s figure of around 75. More of us than ever before are living into our 80s and 90s. Dying from disease in childhood and adolescence is no longer the common occurrence that it was 100 years ago, when tuberculosis and other lethal microbial infections were the chief causes of premature death. Today, dying young is a rare and catastrophic occurrence, and when it does happen, it is usually caused by trauma. Medicine must get some of the credit for the remarkable improvement in human health, but not all. The profession of plumbing also had much to do with the change. When sanitary engineering assured the populace of uncontaminated water, the great epidemics of typhoid fever and cholera came to an end. Even before such advances, as early as the 17th century, improvements in agriculture and nutrition had increased people"s resistance to infection. In short we have come a long way--the longest part of that way with common sense, cleanliness and a better standard of living, but a substantial recent distance as well with medicine. We still have an agenda of lethal and incapacitating illnesses to cause us anxiety, but these shouldn"t worry us to death. The diseases that used to kill off most of us early in life have been brought under control. Meanwhile, biomedical research has moved us into the early stage of a totally new era in medicine. So much has recently been learned about fundamental processes at cellular and subcellular levels that there are no longer any disease mechanisms that have the look of impenetrable mysteries. There is a great deal still to be learned about the ailments of our middle years and old age—cancer, heart disease, stroke, dementia, arthritis and the rest. But they no longer seem unapproachable, as they did just ten years ago. Today"s powerful technologies for basic research have made it possible for scientists to investigate almost any question. This does not guarantee a quick answer, of course, or even a correct one; but the ability to make intelligent guesses and then to formulate sharp questions concerning medicine"s hardest problems is something new. It no longer stretches the imagination to see a time ahead when human beings, in industrialized society, can be relatively free of disease for a full run through life. This does not mean that we shall be any happier or be living much longer than we do now. We shall still die most often by wearing out, according to our individual genetic clocks; but we shall not be so humiliated by the chronic illnesses that now make old age itself seem a disease.

单选题 The interrelationship of science, technology, and industry is taken for granted today--summed up, not altogether accurately, as "research and development". Yet historically this widespread faith in the economic virtues of science is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating back in the United States about 150 years, and in the Western world as a whole not over 300 years at most. Even in this current era of large scale, intensive research and development, the interrelationships involved in this process are frequently misunderstood. Until the coming of the Industrial Revolution, science and technology evolved for the most part independently of each other. Then as industrialization became increasingly complicated, the craft techniques of preindustrial society gradually gave way to a technology based on the systematic application of scientific knowledge and scientific methods. This changeover started slowly and progressed unevenly. Until late in the nineteenth century, only a few industries could use scientific techniques or cared about using them. The list expanded noticeably after 1870, but even then much of what passed for the application of science was "engineering science" rather than basic science. Nevertheless, by the middle of the nineteenth century, the rapid expansion of scientific knowledge and of public awareness--if not understanding--of it had created a belief that the advance of science would in some unspecified manner automatically generate economic benefits. The widespread and usually uncritical acceptance of this thesis led in mm to the assumption that the application of science to industrial purposes was a linear process, starting with fundamental science, then proceeding to applied science or technology, and through them to industrial use. This is probably the most common pattern, but it is not invariable. New areas of science have been opened up and fundamental discoveries made as a result of attempts to solve a specific technical or economic problem. Conversely, scientists who mainly do basic research also serve as consultants on projects that apply research in practical ways. In sum, the science-technology-industry relationship may flow in several different ways, and the particular channel it will follow depends on the individual situation. It may at times even be multidirectional.

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单选题Questions 11～15 In the information technology industry, it is widely acknowledged that how well IT departments of the future can fulfil their business goals will depend not on the regular updating of technology, which is essential for them to do, but on how well they can hold on to the people skilled at manipulating the newest technology. This is becoming more difficult. Best estimates of the current shortfall in IT staff in the UK are between 30,000 and 50,000, and growing. And there is no end to the problem in sight. A severe industry-wide lack of investment in training means the long-term skills base is both ageing and shrinking. Employers are chasing experienced staff in ever-decreasing circles, and according to a recent government report, 250,000 new IT jobs will be created over the next decade. Most employers are confining themselves to dealing with the immediate problems. There is little evidence, for example, that they are stepping up their intake of raw recruits for in-house training, or re-training existing staff from other functions. This is the course of action recommended by the Computer Software Services Association, but research shows its members are adopting the short-term measure of bringing in more and more consultants on a contract basis. However, this approach is becoming less and less acceptable as the general shortage of skills, coupled with high demand, sends contractor rates soaring. An experienced contract programmer, for example, can now earn at least double the current permanent salary. With IT professionals increasingly attracted to the financial rewards and flexibility of consultancy work, average staff turnover rates are estimated to be around 15%. While many companies in the financial services sector are managing to contain their losses by offering skilled IT staff 'golden handcuffs'—deferred loyalty bonuses that tie them in until a certain date—other organisations, like local governments, are unable to match the competitive salaries and perks on offer in the private sector and contractor market, and are suffering turnover rates of up to 60% a year. Many industry experts advise employers to link bonuses to performance wherever possible. However, employers are realising that bonuses will only succeed if they are accompanied by other incentives such as attractive career prospects, training, and challenging work that meets the individual' s long-term ambition. This means managers need to allocate assignments more strategically and think about advancing their staff as well as their business. Some employers advocate giving key employees projects that would normally be handled by people with slightly more experience or capability. For many employers, however, the urgency of the problem demands a more immediate solution, such as recruiting skilled workers from overseas. But even this is not easy, with strict quotas on the number of work permits issued. In addition, opposition to the recruitment of IT people from other countries is growing, as many professionals believe it will lead to even less investment in training and thus a long-term weakening of the UK skills base.

单选题 Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following news.

单选题What can we know from the sentence "And Wall Street banks, whose lucrative stranglehold on IPOs is threatened, are also keen to prove that companies cannot list without the help of banks in finding buyers for them" in Paragraph 4?

单选题 {{B}}Questions 11 to 15 are based on the following interview.{{/B}}

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单选题Andrew Motion, the poet laureate, and Lord Smith, the former culture secretary, have launched a campaign to stem the flow of famous writers' archives being sold to universities in America. They are leading a 15-strong group of eminent literary figures demanding tax breaks, government funding and lottery cash to help British institutions match the bids of their rich American rivals. The campaign comes amid fears that the papers of Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of the Day, may go abroad. All three are understood to have been approached recently by agents acting for institutions in America. In recent years British authors whose papers have been sold abroad include the novelists Peter Ackroyd, Julian Barnes and Malcolm Bradbury and the playwrights David Hare and Tom Stoddard. The works of JM Barrie, the writer of Peter Pan, Graham Greene, DH Lawrence and Evelyn Waugh are already held abroad. In 1997, a year before his death, Ted Hughes, the late poet laureate, sold his archive for about ￡500,000 to Emory University in Atlanta. While taxpayers may be happy to fund purchases of famous paintings so that they remain in the country and be put on show, it is less clear what the immediate benefit would be in paying for authors' archives to be kept here. Adrian Sanders, a Liberal Democrat member of the Commons culture select committee, said public money should be spent on "more pressing" projects. "The fact that archives such as this go abroad is, I'm afraid, the reality of the world," he said. "We have many artifacts in the UK that belong to other cultures. " The campaign argues, however, that valuable research sources are being lost. Foreign institutions sometimes charge for access to the material and, as the authors retain copyright, the papers cannot be made available on the internet. "This is about our cultural heritage as well as the obvious research opportunities," said Motion, whose campaign group includes Michael Holroyd, the biographer and former president of the Royal Society of Literature, and Richard Ovenden, keeper of special collections at Oxford University. They are calling for the culture secretary to be given the authority to delay the export of items considered a significant part of the national heritage to enable British institutions to put together bids. The campaigners want an increase in direct grants and the removal of Vat from unbound papers, which increases the cost of purchases in this country. Smith, who was culture secretary from 1997-2001, said: "It won't cost the Treasury an arm and a leg—we're talking pennies, really." The campaigners say American universities are targeting young British writers and offering between ￡50,000 and ￡300,000 for their notebooks, manuscripts and letters. Joan Winterkorn, a broker who negotiated the sale of the papers of Laurence Olivier and the writers Kenneth Tynan and Peter Nichols to the British Library, said the cream of British archive material will continue to be "up for grabs" unless the tax laws are changed. "American universities are increasingly creating a working relationship with younger and younger writers, so this is not something that is going to go away," she said. It is understood that an academic from one American institution was flown to London this month with a specific brief to "nobble" Ishiguro at the Booker prize dinner in London. Ishiguro, 50, who was nominated for his novel Never Let Me Go and who won the Booker in 1989 for The Remains of the Day, has not yet made a decision, according to his spokeswoman. She said he had been approached by a number of US universities. Arnold Wesker, best known for his plays Roots and Chips with Everything, sold three tons of letters, manuscripts and papers to an American university in 2000. "I was offered a derisory ￡60,000 from the British Library and ￡100,000 from the University of Texas at Austin—there was no contest," said Wesker, 73. "I would much sooner have had my work here in London but the gap was too large... it is a shame." A source close to Rushdie, whose papers stretch back to the publication of his first novel, Grimus, in 1975, said he had received "scores" of approaches from America. The author, who now lives mainly in New York, said this weekend that he had "no immediate plans" to sell his archive. Were he to sell abroad, it is likely that there would be a public outcry given the amount of taxpayers, money spent on his protection following the Satanic Verses affair. Zadie Smith, the author of White Teeth, which won the Whitbread award in 2000, has also received "several approaches from buyers," according to a friend. The University of Texas at Austin spends an estimated ￡3m a year on its collections. It specializes in British and Irish writers and includes the papers of George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce and Edith Sitwell among its possessions.

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单选题In this report on the company Google, why does the author mention the magazine Playboy?

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单选题 {{B}}Questions 15—18{{/B}}

单选题Wholly aside from aesthetic and moral considerations, fashion is an economic absurdity, and there is little to be said in its favor. Nevertheless, we can appreciate the wisdom in Gina Lombroso"s belief that the enormous stress which women lay on everything pertaining to clothes and the art of personal adornment is connected with the tendency to crystallize sentiment into an object. Woman symbolizes every important event in her life by a special dress; and a jewel or a beautiful gown means to a woman what an official decoration means to a man. "The temptation of dress is the last step in the ceremony to which the novice has to submit before entering the cloister. The memory of the gown which she too might have worn was the strongest temptation that assailed St. Catherine before she took her solemn vows—a gown, embroidered with gold and stars, like those her sister had worn, which her grandchildren would have gazed at with eyes filled with wonder and admiration… If a woman"s clothes cost the family and society a little time, money, and activity, they allow woman, independent of lies and calumnies, to triumph and come to the fore outside of man"s world and competition. They allow woman to satisfy her desire to be the first in the most varied fields by giving her the illusion that she is first, and at the same time enabling her rival to have the same illusion. Clothes absorb some of woman"s activity which might otherwise be diverted to more or less worth-while ends; they give woman real satisfaction—a satisfaction complete in itself, and independent of others, and… they constitute a safety valve which saves society from much greater and more dangerous evils than those which they cause. " The aptness of these observations lies in the emphasis on clothes which are really beautiful and distinctive. But fashion is not primarily concerned with beauty; and fashion connotes conformity, not the individuality so cherished by our society and so artfully suggested by the copywriters. Many people who rigorously follow fashions believe they are following their own inclinations; they are unaware of the primitive, tribal impulsion; and this is true of fashions in manners, morals, and literature, as well as in clothes.

单选题 When the British artist Paul Day unveiled his nine-metre-high bronze statue of two lovers locked in an embrace at London's brand new St. Pancreas International Station last year it was lambasted as "kitsch", "overblown" and "truly horrific". Now, a brief glimpse of a new frieze to wrap around a plinth for The Meeting Place statue has been revealed, depicting "dream-like" scenes inspired by the railways. Passengers arriving from the continent will be greeted with a series of images including a Tube train driven by a skeleton as a bearded drunk sways precariously close to the passing train. Another shows the attempted suicide of a jilted lover under a train reflected in the sunglasses of a fellow passenger. Another section reveals a woman in short skirt with her legs wrapped round her lover while they wait for the next train. Other less controversial parts of the terracotta draft frieze depicts soldiers leaving on troop trains for the First World War and the evacuation of London's underground network after the terror attacks of 7 July, 2005. Until the unveiling of The Meeting Place last year, Day, who lives in France, was best known for the Battle of Britain memorial on Embankment. His new frieze looks set to be a return to the sort of crammed bronze montages that has made him so well known. Day said he wanted the new plinth to act as the yin to the larger statue's yang. "For me this sculpture has always been about how our dreams collide with the real world," he said. "The couple kissing represent an ideal, a perfect dream reality that ultimately we cannot obtain. The same is true of the railways. They were a dream come true, an incredible feat of engineering but they also brought with them mechanized warfare, Blitzkrieg and death." Day is still working on the final bronze frieze which will be wrapped around the bottom of the plinth in June next year but he says he wants the 50 million passengers that pass through St. Pancras every year to be able to get up close and personal with the final product. "The statue is like a signpost to be seen and understood from far away," he said. "Its size is measured in terms of the station itself. The frieze, on the other hand, is intended to capture the gaze of passers-by and lead them on a short journey of reflections about travel and change that echoes their presence in St. Pancras, adding a very different experience to The Meeting Place sculpture." Brushing aside some of the criticism leveled at his work that has compared it to cartoons or comic strips, Day said he believed his work would stand the test of time. "All the crap that was hurled at the sculpture was just that, crap," he said. "The reaction from the critics was so strangely hostile but I believe time will tell whether people, not the art press, will value the piece." "When people criticise my reliefs for looking like comic strips they have got the wrong end of the stick. Throughout the. ages, man has been telling stories through a series of pictures, whether it s stained glass windows, sculptures or photojournalism. My friezes are part of that tradition. " Stephen Jordan, from London and Continental Railways, which commissioned the piece, said. "The Meeting Place seeks to challenge and has been well received by visitors who love to photograph it. In addition, it performs an important role within the station, being visible from pretty much anywhere on the upper level of St. Pancras International and doing exactly what was planned, making the perfect meeting place for friends."

单选题I am afraid to sleep. I have been afraid to sleep for the last few weeks. I am so tired that, finally, I do sleep, but only for a few minutes. It is not a bad dream that wakes me; it is the reality I took with me into sleep. I try to think of something else. Immediately the woman in the marketplace comes into my mind. I was on my way to dinner last night when I saw her. She was selling skirts. She moved with the same ease and loveliness I often saw in the women of Laos. Her long black hair was as shiny as the black silk of the skirts she was selling. In her hair, she wore three silk ribbons, blue, green, and white. They reminded me of my childhood and how my girlfriends and I used to spend hours braiding ribbons into our hair. I don"t know the word for "ribbons", so I put my hand to my own hair and , with three fingers against my head , I looked at her ribbons and said "Beautiful. " She lowered her eyes and said nothing. I wasn"t sure if she understood me (I don"t speak Laotian very well). I looked back down at the skirts. They had designs on them: squares and triangles and circles of pink and green silk. They were very pretty. I decided to buy one of those skirts, and I began to bargain with her over the price. It is the custom to bargain in Asia. In Laos bargaining is done in soft voices and easy moves with the sort of quiet peacefulness. She smiled, more with her eyes than with her lips. She was pleased by the few words I was able to say in her language, although they were mostly numbers, and she saw that I understood something about the soft playfulness of bargaining. We shook our heads in disagreement over the price; then, immediately, we made another offer and then another shake of the head. She was so pleased that unexpectedly, she accepted the last offer I made. But it was too soon. The price was too low. She was being too generous and wouldn"t make enough money. I moved quickly and picked up two more skirts and paid for all three at the price set; that way I was able to pay her three times as much before she had a chance to lower the price for the larger purchase. She smiled openly then, and, for the first time in months, my spirit lifted. I almost felt happy. The feeling stayed with me while she wrapped the skirts in a newspaper and handed them to me. When I left, though, the feeling left, too. It was as though it stayed behind in marketplace. I left tears in my throat. I wanted to cry. I didn"t, of course. I have learned to defend myself against what is hard; without knowing it, I have also learned to defend myself against what is soft and what should be easy. I get up, light a candle and want to look at the skirts. They are still in the newspaper that the woman wrapped them in. I remove the paper, and raise the skirts up to look at them again before I pack them. Something falls to the floor. I reach down and feel something cool in my hand. I move close to the candlelight to see what I have. There are five long silk ribbons in my hand, all different colors. The woman in the marketplace! She has given these ribbons to me! There is no defense against a generous spirit, and this time I cry, and very hard, as if I could make up for all the months that I didn"t cry.

单选题Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following talk.

单选题Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following news.

单选题Questions 16-20 If the old maxim that the customer is always right still has meaning, then the airlines that ply the world"s busiest air route between London and Paris have a fight on their hands. The Eurostar train service linking the UK and French capitals via the Channel Tunnel is winning customers in increasing numbers. In late May, it carried its one millionth passengers, having run only a limited service between London, Paris and Brussels since November 1994, starting with two trains a day in each direction to Paris and Brussels. By 1997, the company believes that it will be carrying ten million passengers a year, and continue to grow from there. From July, Eurostar steps its service to nine trains each way between London and Paris, and five between London and Brussels. Each train carries almost 800 passengers, 210 of them in first class. The airlines estimate that they will initially lose around 15%- 20% of their London-Paris traffic to the railways once Eurostar starts a full service later this year (1995), with 15 trains a day each way. A similar service will start to Brussels. The damage will be limited, however, the airlines believe, with passenger numbers returning to previous levels within two to three years. In the short term, the damage caused by the 1 million people-levels traveling between London and Paris and Brussels on Eurostar trains means that some air services are already suffering. Some of the major carriers say that their passenger numbers are down by less than 5% and point to their rivals--Particularly Air France--as having suffered the problems. On the Brussels route, the railway company had less success, and the airlines report anything from around a 5% drop to no visible decline in traffic. The airlines" optimism on returning traffic levels is based on historical precedent. British Midland, for example, points to its experience on Heathrow Leeds Bradford service which saw passenger numbers decrease by 15% when British Rail electrified and modernized the railway line between London and Yorkshire. Two years later, travel had risen between the two destinations to the point where the airline was carrying record numbers of passengers.

单选题Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following talk.