单选题Pollution control is management of waste materials in order to minimize the effects of pollutants on people and the environment. The quality of human health and of the natural environment depends on adequate pollution control. In the United States much has been done to control the more noticeable pollutants since 1965: more subtle yet still hazardous pollutants, however, remain to be adequately controlled.
Four general approaches to pollution control are: the intermittent reduction of industrial activities during periods of high air-pollution conditions; wider dispersion of pollutants using such devices as taller smokestacks; reduction of pollutants in industrial emission; and change of an industrial process or activity in order to produce less pollution. Taller smokestacks may reduce the concentrations to which local people are exposed, but they are ineffective in reducing overall pollution.
Pollutants removed from waste flows to reduce emissions to air and water may be disposed of by burial or storage on land, practices that pose potential hazards. Recent legislation requiring extensive emissions reductions has resulted in large investments in pollution-treatment technologies.
The fourth approach — changing a manufacturing process or activity in order to produce less pollution — may involve either the production of fewer residuals, by means of an improved process, or the separation and reuse of materials from the waste stream. This method of pollution control is the most effective and, as the costs of pollution control and waste disposal increase, is considered one of the most efficient.
Pollution-treatment systems have been effective in reducing the massive quantities of water and air pollutants that have clogged and choked urban areas. Although the improvements have been significant, recent pollution-control legislation aims to go further in order to control the less visible but often hazardous chemical and gaseous pollutants that still contaminate many waterways and urban atmospheres.
The costs of pollution control — resulting from capital, maintenance, and labor costs, as well as from the cost of additional residuals disposal — generally go up rapidly as a greater percentage of residuals is removed from the waste stream. Damage from pollution, on the other hand, goes down as a greater amount of contaminant is removed. Theoretically, the level of treatment should correspond to a point at which total costs of treatment and of damage to the environment are minimized or the benefits of further treatment are proportionally much smaller than the increased cost. In reality, costs or damages resulting from pollution can rarely be assessed in terms of dollars.
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It is hard to escape the fact that in
developed societies, despite progress, innovation and prosperity, there is
something not quite right. In some cases, it is hard for people to put a finger
on it: a feeling of emptiness and not belonging, a lack of defined relationships
and solid social structures. In other respects, it is readily quantifiable:
rates of drug abuse, violent crime and depression and suicide are rocketing. Why
are we so unhappy? It seems that the Enlightenment brought forth unparalleled
liberty in economic, social and political life, but we are now undergoing a
midlife crisis. The politics of happiness is nothing new. Aristotle once said
that happiness is the goal of life. But for me, the person who brings the great
conundrum of personal happiness alive is Robert Kennedy. In a beautifully
crafted speech, he said what "makes life worthwhile" is "the health of our
children, the quality of their education, the joy of their play", "the strength
of our marriages.., our devotion to our country" and our "wit… wisdom and
courage". And he pointed out that none of these could be measured by gross
national product. Nor should we be surprised by the politics of
happiness. Ask people, how they are, and they will answer in terms of their
family life, community life and work life, rather than just what they are paid.
Despite this, it is a notoriously difficult subject for politicians to grasp.
One reason is that happiness and well-being are generally not well served by
statistical analysis. Politicians, obsessed with inputs and outputs, targets and
controls, are flummoxed by immeasurable concepts such as the value people place
on spending time with their families. Another reason is that electoral cycles
lend themselves to a culture of short-termism, with a need for immediate and
quantifiable measurements. One such measurement is GDP. In many
ways, increasing this has been the raison d’etre for many center-right political
parties since the 1980s. Back then, many developed economies were in a state of
economic malaise, with persistently high inflation and unemployment. We needed
something to reverse this stagnation and put us back onto the path of
prosperity. Thankfully, we got that. Today we need to be just as revolutionary
to put us back on track to social prosperity: to respond to that yearning for
happiness. That is why I have been arguing in Britain that we need to refocus
our energies on general well-being (GWB). It means recognizing the social,
cultural and moral factors that give true meaning to our lives. In
particular, it means focusing on a sustainable environment and building stronger
societies. And yes, it also means recognizing that there is more to life than
money: indeed, that quality of life means more than the quantity of
money. I think the center-right can be the champions of this
cause. The center-left never really get the well-being agenda because they treat
individuals as units of account. And they find it difficult to understand how it
cannot be delivered simply by the push of a legislator's pen. Instead, the
politics of well-being is a politics that needs to be founded on sharing
responsibility. Of course, government must take its own responsibilities. But
that needs to be part of a wider cultural change: a cultural change that will
occur as a consequence of legislation, leadership and social change. What's the
government's role? It is to show leadership and set the framework. Showing
leadership means leading the change in the many areas that impact on well-being.
For example, everyone would agree that spending more time with family is crucial
to happiness. Here governments should be pioneers of flexible working with
public-sector employees. Setting the right framework means
creating incentives and removing barriers to remodel the context within which
the whole of society makes choices. Take the environment. Everyone would
agree that a cleaner local environment would enhance our well-being. By setting
a framework that creates a price for carbon in our economy and encourages green
innovation, the government can help people make the better choice.
Ultimately, society's happiness requires us all to play our part. Indeed,
playing our part is part of being happy. That is why we need a revolution in
responsibility. Corporate responsibility means businesses taking a proactive
role, and taking account of their employees' lives. Civic responsibility means
giving power back to local government, community organizations and social
enterprises so they can formulate local solutions to local problems. And
personal responsibility means we all do out bit, be it in cleaning up our local
environment or participating in local politics. Professor Nell
Browne at Bowling Green State University recently wrote an article: "If Markets
Are So Wonderful, Why Can't I Find Friends at the Store?" It is not that markets
are bad or that we are doomed to a life of perpetual unhappiness. Rather, given
our advances in terms of political freedom, economic enterprise and cultural
ingenuity, life could, and should, be more satisfying. That is why focusing on
general well-being could be the big, defining political concept of the 21st
century. And by recognizing the responsibility every section of society has, we
also have the means to enhance it.
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单选题 A Black comedy by a first-time novelist with a past
as colorful as his book has defied the bookies to win the ￡50,000 Man Booker
prize, the most important honour in the British literary world. Vernon God
Little by DBC Pierre, the nom de plume of 42-year-old Mexican-Australian
Peter Finlay, was the unanimous choice of the Booker judges, chaired by John
Carey, who took less than an hour to decide. The novel tells the story of Vernon
Gregory, a Texan teenager who is put on trial accused of a massacre at his high
school. At the awards ceremony at the British Museum in London
last night, Professor Carey described it as a "coruscating black comedy
reflecting our alarm but also our fascination with modern America". Accepting
the prize, the novelist said: "My mum is in the audience. I want to say she and
the rest of my family planted the idea that I could do anything and I would just
like to apologise for taking it literally." It beat a shortlist including Brick
Lane, the first novel by Monica Ali which was the bookmakers' favourite and has
been the biggest seller in the shops, and Oryx and Crake by Margaret
Atwood, the only established author to make it to the final round of
judging. Martyn Goff, the director of the Man Booker prize,
said he was "absolutely amazed" at the swiftness of the decision which was made
after the second shortest debate in the prize's 35-year history. "Four of them
jumped as one, and the fifth [member of the jury] was not unhappy," he said. The
judges were particularly convinced by the way the author was able to create such
a strong sense of America. "There was a feeling that it could only have been
written by an American whereas we all know it wasn't," he said.
DBC Pierre—the initials stand for Dirty But Clean—is a reformed drug addict and
gambler who was born into a wealthy family but lost virtually everything when
the banks were nationalised in Mexico in 1982. Without his family money to fall
back on, Finlay has admitted selling his best friend's home and keeping the
proceeds as well as working up hundreds of thousands of dollars of debts in a
scheme to find gold in Mexico. Revealing how his life was often stranger than
fiction, he said in a recent interview. "For nine years I was in a drug haze, on
a rampage of cocaine, heroin, any shit I could get. I am not proud of what I
have done and I now want to put it right." A publishing deal
for the book was sealed just one hour before the first plane hit New York's
World Trade Centre on 11 September, 2001. "Ever since, I feel like there's some
dark destiny swirling around the book," he said. His financial problems are
likely to become a thing of the past. A filmmaker has bought an option to make a
movie of the book and as well as the ￡50,000 prize cheque, the writer, who
currently lives in Ireland, is guaranteed a significant increase in sales. Sales
of last year's winner, Yann Martel's Life of Pi, have exceeded 1
million copies. Martin Higgs, literary editor of Waterstone's, said.
"The storyline for this book is one that you would as much see played out today
on the six o'clock news as read in a novel and has for this reason struck a
chord with book lovers." Finlay was second favourite to win,
behind Monica Ali, 35, who created a flurry of interest even before her debut
novel was published when she was named one of Granta's best young British
novelists. The other shortlisted books were The Good Doctor, by Damon
Galgut, Astonishing Splashes of Colour by Clare Morrall, and Notes
on a Scandal by the former Independent on Sunday journalist Zoe
Heller, 38.
单选题Questions 27-30
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单选题Since the end of World War II, a broad consensus in support of global economic integration as a force for peace and prosperity has been a pillar of the international order. From global trade agreements to the European Union project; from the work of the Bretton Woods institutions to the removal of pervasive capital controls; from the vast expansion in foreign direct investment to major increases in the flow of people across borders, the overall direction has been clear. Driven by domestic economic progress, by technologies such as containerized shipping and the Internet that promote integration, and by legislative changes within countries and international agreements between countries, the world-has gotten smaller and more closely connected.
This broad program of global integration has been more successful than could have been hoped. We have not had a war between major powers. Global standards of living have risen faster than at any point in history. And material progress has coincided with even more rapid progress in combating hunger, empowering women, promoting literacy and extending life. A world that will have more smart phones than adults within a few years is a world in which more is possible for more people than ever before.
Yet a revolt against global integration is underway in the West. The four candidates for president of the United States all oppose the principal free-trade initiative of this period: the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trump"s proposals to wall off Mexico, abrogate trade agreements and persecute Muslims are far more popular than he is. The Brexit movement in Britain commands substantial support and could prevail. Whenever any aspect of the E.U. project is submitted to a popular referendum, it fails. Under pressure from a large influx of refugees, the European commitment to open borders appears to be crumbling. In large part because of political constraints, the growth of the international financial institutions has not kept pace with the growth of the global economy.
One substantial part of what is behind the resistance is a lack of knowledge. Everyone who loses a job because a factory moves abroad knows it; many who lose their jobs for local reasons blame globalization. But no one thanks international trade for the fact that their paycheck buys twice as much in clothes, toys and other goods as it otherwise would. Those who succeed as exporters tend to credit their own prowess, not international agreements. So there is certainly a case for our leaders and business communities to educate people about the benefits of global integration. But at this late date, with the trends moving the wrong way, it is hard to be optimistic about such efforts.
The core of the revolt against global integration, though, is not ignorance. It is a sense—unfortunately not wholly unwarranted—that it is a project being carried out by elites for elites. They see the globalization agenda as being set by large companies that successfully play one country against another. They read the Panama Papers and conclude that globalization offers a fortunate few opportunities to avoid taxes and regulations that are not available to everyone else. And they see the kind of disintegration that accompanies global integration as local communities suffer when major employers lose out to foreign competitors. What will happen going forward? What should happen?
Elites can continue on the current path of pursuing integration projects and defending existing integration, hoping to win enough support that their efforts are not thwarted. On the evidence of the U.S. presidential campaign and the Brexit debate, this strategy may have run its course. This will likely result in a hiatus from new global integration efforts and an effort to preserve what is already in place while relying on technology and growth in the developing world to drive any further integration. The historical precedents of two world wars are hardly encouraging about unmanaged globalization succeeding with neither a strong underwriter of the system nor strong global institutions.
Much more promising is this idea. The promotion of global integration can become a bottom-up rather than a top-down project. The emphasis can shift from promoting integration to managing its consequences. This would mean a shift from international trade agreements to international harmonization agreements, whereby issues such as labor rights and environmental protection would be central. It would also mean devoting as much political capital to the trillions of dollars that escape taxation or evade regulation through cross-border capital flows as we now devote to trade agreements. And it would mean an emphasis on the challenges of middle-class parents everywhere who doubt, but still hope desperately, that their kids can have better lives than they did.
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单选题Question 16-20
The founders of the Republic viewed their revolution primarily in political rather than economic or social terms. And they talked about education as essential to the public good--a goal that took precedence over knowledge as occupational training or as a means to self-fulfillment or self- improvement. Over and over again the Revolutionary generation, both liberal and conservative in outlook, asserted its conviction that the welfare of the Republic rested upon an educated citizenry and that schools, especially free public schools, would be the best means of educating the citizenry in civic values and the obligations required of everyone in a democratic republican society. All agreed that the principal ingredients of a civic education were literacy and the inculcation of patriotic and moral virtues, some others adding the study of history and the study of principles of the republican government itself.
The founders, as was the case of almost all their successors, were long on exhortation and rhetoric regarding the value of civic education, but they left it to the textbook writers to distill the essence of those values for school children. Texts in American history and government appeared as early as in the 1790s. The textbook writers turned out to be very largely of conservative persuasion, more likely Federalist in outlook than Jeffersonian, and almost universally agreed that political virtue must rest upon moral and religious precepts. Since most textbook writers were New Englander, this meant that the texts were infused with Protestant and, above all, Puritan outlooks.
In the first half of the Republic, civic education in the schools emphasized the inculcation of civic values and made little attempt to develop participatory political skills. That was a task left to incipient political parties, town meetings, churches and the coffee or ale houses where men gathered for conversation. Additionally as a reading of certain Federalist papers of the period would demonstrate, the press probably did more to disseminate realistic as well as partisan knowledge of government than the schools. The goal of education, however, was to achieve a higher form of unum (one out of many used on the Great Seal of the U. S. and on several U. S. coins) for the new Republic. In the middle half of the nineteenth century, the political values taught in the public and private schools did not change substantially from those celebrated in the first fifty years of the Republic. In the textbooks of the day their rosy hues if anything became golden. To the resplendent values of liberty, equality, and a benevolent Christian morality were now added the middle-class virtues--especially of New England--of hard work, honesty and integrity, the rewards of individual effort, and obedience to parents and legitimate authority. But of all the political values taught in school, patriotism was preeminent; and whenever teachers explained to school children why they should love their country above all else, the idea of liberty assumed pride of place.
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单选题Much new knowledge is admittedly remote from the immediate interests of the ordinary man in the street. He is not intrigued or impressed by the fact that a noble gas like xenon can form compounds—something that until recently most chemists swore was impossible. While even this knowledge may have an impact on him when it is embodied in new technology, until then, he can afford to ignore it. A good bit of new knowledge, on the other hand, is directly related to his immediate concerns, his job, his politics, his family life, even his sexual behavior. A poignant is the dilemma that parents find themselves in today as a consequence of successive radical changes in the image of the child in society and in our theories of childrearing. At the turn of the century in the United States, for example, the dominant theory reflected the prevailing scientific belief in the importance of heredity in determining behavior. Mothers who had never heard of Darwin or Spencer raised their babies in ways consistent with the world views of these thinkers. Vulgarized and simplified, passed from person to person, these world views were reflected in the conviction of millions of ordinary people that "bad children are a result of bad stock", that "crime is hereditary", etc. In the early decades of the century, these attitudes fell back before the advance of environmentalism. The belief that environment shapes personality, and that the early years are the most important, created a new image of the child. The work of Watson and Pavlov began to creep into the public ken. Mothers reflected the new behaviorism, refusing to feed infants on demand, refusing to pick them up when they cried, weaning early to avoid prolonged dependency. A study by Martha Wolfenstein has compared the advice offered parents in seven successive editions of INFANT CARE, a handbook issued by the United Stats Children's Bureau between 1914 and 1951. She found distinct shifts in the preferred methods for dealing with weaning and thumb-sucking. It is clear from this study that by the late thirties still another image of the child had gained ascendancy. Freudian concepts swept in like a wave and revolutionized childrearing practices. Suddenly, mothers began to hear about "the rights of infants" and the need for "oral gratification". Permissiveness became the order of the day.
单选题Biological clocks are physiological systems that enable organisms to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature, such as the cycles of day and night and of the seasons. Such biological "timers" exist for almost every kind of periodicity throughout the plant and animal world, but most of what is known about them comes from the study of circadian, or daily, rhythms. Circadian rhythms cue typical daily behavior patterns even in the absence of external cues such as sunrise, demonstrating that such patterns depend on internal timers for their periodicity.
No clock is perfect, however. When organisms are deprived of the hints the world normally provides, they display a characteristic "free-running" period of not quite 24 hours. As a result, free-running animals drift slowly out of phase with the natural world. In experiments in which people are isolated for long periods of time, they continue to eat and sleep on regular, but increasingly out-of-phase. Such drift does not take place under normal circumstances, because external hints reset the clocks each day.
Light, particularly bright fight, is believed to be the most powerful synchronizer of circadian rhythms. Recent studies on humans have shown that the amount of artificial indoor fight to which people are exposed per day can resynchronize the body"s cycle of sleep and wakefulness. People can inadvertently reset their body clocks to an undesired cycle by such activities as shielding morning fight with shades and heavy curtains or by reading in bed at night by bright lamp fight. Many organisms also make use of rhythmic variations in temperature or other sensory inputs to readjust their internal timers. When a clock"s error becomes large, complete resetting sometimes requires days. This phenomenon is well known to long-distance air travelers as jet lag.
Apparently, biological clocks can exist in every cell and even in different parts of a cell. Hence, an isolated piece of tissue removed from an organism—for example, the eye of a sea slug—will maintain its own daily rhythm but will quickly adopt that of the whole organism when restored to it.
In the brains of most animals, a master clock appears to exist that communicates its timing signals chemically to the rest of the organism. For example, a brain removed from a moth pupa and exposed to an artificial sunrise of one time zone, then implanted into the abdomen of a headless pupa on a different time zone schedule, will cause the second pupa to emerge at the time of day appropriate to the disconnected brain floating in its abdomen. The clock in the brain triggers the release of a hormone that switches on all the complex behavior involved in pupa emergence. In hamsters, experiments have shown a master biological clock to be located in the hypothalamus.
Scientists believe that the biological clock in humans is located in the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that regulates such basic drives as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire. The biological clock itself is believed to be a cluster of nerve cells called the suprachiasmatic nucleus.
单选题What is the function of the last paragraph?
单选题Questions 11-15
As regards social conventions, we must say a word about the well-known English class system. This is an embarrassing subject for English people, and one they tend to be ashamed of, though during the present century class-consciousness has grown less and less, and the class system less rigid. But it still exists below the surface. Broadly speaking, it means there are two classes, the "middle class" and the "working class". (We shall ignore for a moment the old "upper class", including the hereditary aristocracy, since it is extremely small in numbers; but some of its members have the right to sit in the House of Lords, and some newspapers take surprising interest in their private life. The middle class consists chiefly of well-to-do businessmen and professional people of all kinds. The working class consists chiefly of manual and unskilled workers. )
The most obvious difference between them is in their accent. Middle-class people use slightly varying kinds of "received pronunciation" which is the kind of English spoken by BBC announcers and taught to overseas pupils. Typical working-class people speak in many different local accent which are generally felt to be rather ugly and uneducated. One of the biggest barriers of social equality in England is the two-class education system. To have been to a so-called "public school" immediately marks you out as one of the middle class. The middle classes tend to live a more formal life than working-class people, and are usually more cultured. Their midday meal is "lunch" and they have a rather formal evening meal called "dinner", whereas the working man"s dinner, if his working hours permit, is at midday, and his smaller, late-evening meal is called supper.
As we have said, however, the class system is much less rigid than it was, and for a long time it has been government policy to reduce class distinctions. Working-class students very commonly receive a university education and enter the professions, and working-class incomes have grown so much recently that the distinctions between the two classes are becoming less and less clear.
However, regardless of one"s social status, certain standards of politeness are expected of everybody, and a well-bred person is polite to everyone he meets, and treats a laborer with the same respect he gives an important businessman. Servility inspires both embarrassment and dislike. Even the word "sir", except in school and in certain occupations (e. g. commerce, the army, etc. ) sounds too servile to be commonly used.
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单选题In Para. 2, "conceit" most nearly means ______.