单选题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.

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Questions 6～10 Campaigning on the Indian frontier is an experience by itself. Neither the landscape nor the people find their counterparts in any other portion of the globe. Valley walls rise steeply five or six thousand feet on every side. The columns crawl through a maze of giant corridors down which fierce snow-fed torrents foam under skies of brass. Amid these scenes of savage brilliancy there dwells a race whose qualities seem to harmonize with their environment. Except at harvest-time, when self- preservation requires a temporary truce, the Pathan tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a warrior, a politician and a theologian. Every large house is a real feudal fortress made, it is true, only of sun-baked clay, but with battlements, turrets, loopholes, drawbridges, etc. complete. Every village has its defense. Every family cultivates its vendetta; every clan, its feud. The numerous tribes and combinations of tribes all have their accounts to settle with one another. Nothing is ever forgotten, and very few debts are left unpaid. For the purposes of social life, in addition to the convention about harvest-time, a most elaborate code of honor has been established and is on the whole faithfully observed. A man who knew it and observed it faultlessly might pass unarmed from one end of the frontier to another. The slightest technical slip would, however, be fatal. The life of the Pathans is thus full of interest; and his valleys, nourished alike by endless sunshine and abundant water, are fertile enough to yield with little labor the modest material requirements of a sparse population. Into this happy world the nineteenth century brought two new facts: the rifle and the British government. The first was an enormous luxury and blessing; the second, an unmitigated nuisance. The convenience of the rifle was nowhere more appreciated than in the Indian highlands. A weapon which would kill with accuracy at fifteen hundred yards opened a whole new vista of delights to every family or clan which could acquire it. One could actually remain in one's own house and fire at one's neighbor nearly a mile away. One could lie in wait on some high crag, and at hitherto unheard-of ranges hit a horseman far below. Even villages could fire at each other without the trouble of going far from home. Fabulous prices were therefore offered for these glorious products of science. Rifle- thieves scoured all India to reinforce the efforts of the honest smuggler. A steady flow of the coveted weapons spread its genial influence throughout the frontier, and the respect which the Pathan tribesmen entertained for Christian civilization was vastly enhanced. government on the other hand was entirely unsatisfactory. The great organizing, advancing, absorbing power to the southward seemed to be little better than a monstrous spoil-sport. If the Pathans made forays into the plains, not only were they driven back (which after all was no more than fair), but a whole series of subsequent interferences took place, followed at intervals by expeditions which toiled laboriously through the valleys, scolding the tribesmen and exacting fines for any damage which they had done. No one would have minded these expeditions if they had simply come, had a fight and then gone away again. In many cases this was their practice under what was called the "butcher and bolt policy" to which the government of India long adhered. But towards the end of the nineteenth century these intruders began to make roads through many of the valleys, and in particular the great road to Chitral. They sought to ensure the safety of these roads by threats, by forts and by subsidies. There was no objection to the last method so far as it went. But the whole of this tendency to road-making was regarded by the Pathans with profound distaste. All along the road people were expected to keep quiet, not to shoot one another, and above all not to shoot at travelers along the road. It was too much to ask, and a whole series of quarrels took their origin from this source.

单选题 Questions 21-25 We can begin our discussion of "population as global issue" with what most persons mean when they discuss "the population problem": too many people on earth and a too rapid increase in the number added each year. The facts are not in dispute, it was quite right to employ the analogy that likened demographic growth to "a long, thin powder fuse that burns steadily and haltingly until it finally reaches the charge and explodes. " To understand the current situation, which is characterized by rapid increases in population, it is necessary to understand the history of population trends. Rapid growth is a comparatively recent phenomenon. Looking back at the 8,000 years of demographic history, we find that populations have been virtually stable or growing very slightly for most of human history. For most Of our ancestors, life was hard, often nasty, and very short. There was high fertility in most places, but this was usually balanced by high mortality. For most of human history, it was seldom the case that one in ten persons would live past forty, while infancy and childhood were especially risky periods. Often, societies were in clear danger of extinction because death rates could exceed their birthrates. Thus, the population problem throughout most of history was how to prevent extinction of the human race. This pattern is important to notice. Not only does it put the current problems of demographic growth into a historical perspective, but it suggests that the cause of rapid increase in population in recent years is not a sudden enthusiasm for more children, but an improvement in the conditions that traditionally have caused high mortality. Demographic history can be divided into two major periods, a time of long, slow growth which extended from about 8,000 B. C. till approximately A. D. 1650. In the first period of some 9,600 years, the population increased from some 8 million to 500 million in 1650. Between 1650 and the present, the population has increased from 500 million to more than 4 billion. And it is estimated that by the year 2000 there will be 6.2 billion people throughout the world. One way to appreciate this dramatic difference in such abstract numbers is to reduce the time frame to something that is more manageable. Between 8,000 ]3. C and 1650, an average of only 50,000 persons was being added annually to the world's population each year. At present, this number is added every six hours. The increase is about 80,000,000 persons annually.

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单选题Humans have always been fascinated by dreams. The vivid dreams people remember and talk about are REM dream—the type that occur almost continuously during periods of rapid eye movement (REM) during sleep. But people also have NREM dreams—dreams that occur during periods without rapid eye movement called NREM sleep—although they are typically less frequent and less memorable than REM dreams. REM dreams have a story like or dream like quality and are more visual, vivid, and emotional than NREM dreams. Interestingly, blind people who lose their sight before age five usually do not have visual dreams, but they have vivid dreams involving the other senses. A popular belief about dreams is that an entire dream takes place in an instant, but in fact, it is not true. Sleep researchers have discovered that it takes about as long to dream a dream as it would to experience the same thing in real life. Although some people insist that they do not dream at all, researchers say that all people dream unless they consume alcohol or take drugs that suppress REM sleep. Are dreaming and REM sleep essentially one and the same? Some researchers have questioned an assumption long held by some sleep experts that dreaming is simply the brain"s effort to make sense of the random firing of neurons that occurs during REM sleep. Are the brain mechanisms responsible for REM sleep the same ones that create the rich dream world we experience? The answer may be no. It is known that dreams do occur outside of REM sleep. Moreover, the REM state can exist without dreams. These two facts suggest that different but complementary brain mechanisms are responsible for REM sleep and the dreaming that normally occurs within it. There is mounting evidence, says British researcher Mark Solms, that dreaming and REM sleep, while normally occurring together, are not one and the same. Rather, the REM state is controlled by neural mechanisms in the brain stem, while areas farther up in the forebrain provide the common pathway that gives us the complex and often vivid mental experiences we call dreams. Other researchers suggest that REM sleep aids in information processing, helping people sift through daily experience to organize and store in memory information that is relevant to them. Animal studies provide strong evidence for a relationship between REM sleep and learning. Some studies have revealed that animals increase their REM sleep following learning sessions. Other studies have indicated that when animals are deprived of REM sleep after new learning, their performance of the learned task is impaired the following day. But depriving subjects of NREM sleep had no such effect in the studies. Research has shown that REM sleep serves an information-processing function in humans and is involved in the consolidation of memories after human learning. Researchers found that research participants learning a new perceptual skill showed an improvement in performance, with no additional practice, eight to ten hours later if they had a normal night"s sleep or if the researchers disturbed only their NREM sleep. Performance did not improve, however, in those who were deprived of REM sleep. There is no doubt that REM sleep serves an important function, even if psychologists do not know precisely what that function is. The fact that newborns have such a high percentage of REM sleep has led to the conclusion that REM sleep is necessary for maturation of the brain in infants. Furthermore, when people are deprived of REM sleep as a result of general sleep loss or illness, they will make up for the loss by getting an increased amount of REM sleep after the deprivation. This increase in the percentage of REM sleep to make up for REM deprivation is called a "REM rebound." Because the intensity of REM sleep is increased during a REM rebound, nightmares often occur.

单选题Questions 11～15 For one brief moment in April, Larry Ellison came within a few dollars of being the richest man in the world. The computer tycoon was holding a global conference call on a Wednesday morning, when the value of his company surged. It was the moment he almost overtook Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, as the wealthiest on the planet. For a few seconds, as share of traders marked Microsoft down and Oracle up, Ellison came within US $ 200,000 of Gates. The self-proclaimed "bad boy" of Silicon Valley found himself worth more than US $ 52 billion, up from a mere US $10 billion this time last year. Then Microsoft"s share price, which had plunged in recent weeks, recovered and the moment passed. Once, Ellison, founder of the software company Oracle, would have danced around his desk cursing like a pirate at failing to bring down Gates, a rival he had constantly made fun of in public. But Silicon Valley insiders said he remained calm, and muttered: "One day, one day very, very soon." He knew his moment was close. Unlike Gates, he is not big on charity, preferring to spend his money his way. He has his own private air force, a military-style crew based at San Jose airport near Redwood City, to help him fly his Gulfstream V jet (with two marbled bathrooms), a Marchetti fighter plane imported from Italy, and a handful of other aircraft, including a trainer for his son. He also plans to import a Russian Mig-29 fighter (capable of 1,500 mph). Why does he want one? So that, he joked, he can blast Gates" home near Seattle. Cars are cheap and cheerful by comparison. He has a relatively modest Porsche Boxster, two specially altered Mercedes and a US $ 900,000 silver McLaren. In San Francisco he owns a magnificent house in Pacific Heights, one of Western America"s most expensive stretches of real estate. The house is a technical marvel. When he inserts his key, the opaque glass door turns transparent, revealing a Japanese garden in the middle of the house. For reasons he knows best, Ellison is obsessed with Japanese culture. Though he says he once briefly dated the actress Sharon Stone, Ellison is better known for the number than the fame of his wives. It is said he introduced himself with: "Can I buy you a car?" In one year he gave at least four US $ 50,000 cars to young ladies. While Gates comes from a strong family, Ellison still does not know who his father was. He was born to an unmarried mother and adopted by his Russian uncle and aunt. A brilliant but unpredictable self-promoter, he dropped out of college, drove to California in a battered Thunderbird car and ended up working with computer technicians at a bank. "He always had a champagne lifestyle on beer money," his first wife said. He set up Oracle in 1977 as a super-salesman with 3 programmers, creating software for businesses. It almost collapsed when it promised more than it could deliver, but since then its fortunes have soared. Now it employs 43,000 people and has designed data-processing systems used by Britain"s M15 spy service as well as big western companies. Oracle"s software is more Internet- friendly than Gates" Windows, one factor behind the company"s recent share price rise. Since his company got big, Ellison has promised shareholders that he will spend more time in the office. But can he escape being the thrill-seeker he is at heart? As summer approaches, he may find it hard to resist the lure of his yachts, Sakura, one of the longest in the world, and Sayonara (Japanese for "see you later"), which he races furiously. It is dangerous sport, even for guests. Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch once nearly lost a finger when he grabbed a rope during a race onboard the Sayonara. Ellison joked at least he could "still wrote checks". Regardless of distractions, Ellison will not give up in his battle against Gates. He hates to lose. Ellison declares that any such dominance by one man, like Microsoft in computer industry, is unhealthy. He has obviously forgotten his own plan for a global empire, which he wanted to call the Universal Titanic Octopus Corporation.

单选题Which of the following is closest in meaning to the word "fiasco" in Paragraph 4?

单选题The first person I came across who'd got the measure of e-mall was an American friend who was high up in a big corporation. Some years ago, when this method of communication first seeped into business life from academia, his company in New York and its satellites across the globe were among the first to get it. In the world's great seats of learning, e-mail had for some years allowed researchers to share vital new jokes. And if there was cutting-edge wit to be had, there was no way my friend's corporation would be without it. One evening in New York, he was late for a drink we'd arranged. "Sorry," he said, "I've been away and had to deal with 998 e-mails in my queue." "Wow," I said, "I'm really surprised you made it before midnight." "It doesn't really take that tong," be explained, "if you simply delete them all." True to form, he had developed a strategy before most of us had even heard of e-mail. If any information he was sent was sufficiently vital, his lack of response would ensure the sender rang him up. If the sender wasn't important enough to have his private number, the communication couldn't be sufficiently important. My friend is now even more senior in the same company, so the strategy must work, although these days, I don't tend to send him many e-mails. Almost every week now, there seems to be another report suggesting that we are all being driven crazy by the torment of e-mall. But if this is the case, it's only because we haven't developed the same discrimination in dealing with e-mail as we do with post. Have you ever mistaken an important letter for a piece of unsolicited advertising and thrown it out? Of course you haven't. This is because of the obliging stupidity of 99 per cent of advertisers, who just can't help making their mailshots look like the junk mail that they are. Junk e-mail looks equally unnecessary to read. Why anyone would feel the slightest compulsion to open the sort of thing entitled "SPECIALOFFER@junk.com" I cannot begin to understand. Even viruses, those sneaky messages that contain a bug which can corrupt your whole computer system, come helpfully labelled with packaging that shrieks "danger, do not open". Handling e-mail is an art. Firstly, you junk anything with an exclamation mark or a string of capital letters, or from any address you don't recognise or feel confident about. Secondly, while I can't quite support my American friend’s radical policy, e-mails don't all have to be answered. Because e-mailing is so easy, there's a tendency for correspondence to carry on for ever, but it is permissible to end a strand of discussion by simply not discussing it any longer— or to accept a point of information sent by a colleague without acknowledging it. Thirdly, a reply e-mail doesn't have to be the same length as the original. We all have e-mail buddies who send long, chatty e-mails, which are nice to receive, but who then expect an equally long reply. Tough. The charm of e-mail can lie in the simple, suspended sentence, with total disregard for the formalities of the letter sent by post. You are perfectly within the bounds of politeness in responding to a marathon e-mail with a terse one-liner, like: "How distressing. I'm sure it will clear up./

单选题Right now, Prince Charles is probably wishing he had hit the slopes after all. Britain's Prince of Wales decided last year to begin reducing his carbon footprint--the amount of carbon dioxide created by his activities--by cutting down on his flights abroad, including an annual skiing vacation in Switzerland. Though we should all be in the position to make such sacrifices, Charles didn't win plaudits for his holiday martyrdom. Instead British green groups, seconded by Environment Secretary David Miliband, spanked the Prince for deciding to fly to the U. S. on Jan. 27 to pick up a prestigious environmental award, arguing that the carbon emissions created by his travel canceled out his green cred. It's too easy to mock His Royal Highness; in England it's practically the national sport. But his critics may be onto something. Jets are uniquely polluting, and the carbon they emit at high altitudes appears to have a greater warming effect than the same amount of carbon released on the ground by cars or factories. On an individual level, a single long-haul flight can emit more carbon per passenger than months of SUV driving. Though air travel is responsible for only 1.6% of total greenhouse gas emissions, in many countries it's the fastest-growing single source--and with annual airline passengers worldwide predicted to double to 9 billion by 2025, that growth is unlikely to abate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) put it bluntly last year: "The growth in aviation and the need to address climate change cannot be reconciled. " One of the biggest problems, as the IPCC points out, is that the carbon emitted by air travel currently has "no tech no fix. " As messy a source of pollution as electricity generation and ground transportation are, technologies do exist that could drastically cut carbon from power plants and cars. Not so for planes, the same aircraft models will almost certainly be flying on the same kerosene fuel for decades. Admittedly, the airline industry has improved efficiency over the past 40 years, with technological upgrades more than doubling efficiency. There are tweaks in aircraft operations that could nip carbon emissions even further. Virgin Atlantic airlines tycoon Richard Branson, who pledged $ 3 billion in the fight against climate change, advocates having planes towed on the ground rather than taxiing, which he has said could cut a yet unspecified portion of fuel on long flights. Emissions trading for the air industry could help as well, with airlines given carbon caps and then being required to purchase credits from other industries if they exceed their limits. But there's nothing on the horizon for aircraft with the carbon- cutting potential of hydrogen engines or solar energy. "It's not like having leaky home windows you can fix with double glazing," says Leo Murray, a spokesman for the green group Plane Stupid, which led the criticism of Prince Charles. Nor is there any replacement for long-haul air travel itself. I can take a train from Boston to Washington, but until we can figure out how to travel via fireplace, Harry Potter-style, the only way I'm getting from Tokyo to New York City is in aircraft that may emit more than 5,200 Ibs. (about 2,400 kg) of carbon per passenger, round-trip, according to one estimate. On an individual level, you can try to make your flight carbon neutral by donating to, say, a forestry project that will soak up the greenhouse gases you have created. An increasing number of airlines and travel agents do offer such options. The London-based CarbonNeutral Company reports that requests for carbon offsetting from individual travelers have jumped over the past six months. But the still tiny number of neutralized flights can hardly compensate for the rapid increases in global air travel. So is grounding ourselves the only answer? That seems to be the conclusion of environmentalists in Britain, who also went after Prime Minister Tony Blair for a recent holiday trip to Miami. Though Blair belatedly promised to begin offsetting his leisure travel, he insisted that telling people to fly less was simply impractical--and he's probably right. Some environmentalists suggest that we could learn to live more locally, but good luck keeping them in Brighton after they've seen Beijing--and vice versa. Our best bet for now may be to limit any business and leisure flights that we can and offset the rest. So when you're pondering that luxury Swiss vacation, ask yourself: What would Prince Charles do?

单选题Single mums are better at raising their kids than two parents—at least in the bird world. Mother zebra finches have to work harder and raise fewer chicks on their own, but they also produce more attractive sons who are more likely to get a mate. The finding shows that family conflict is as important an evolutionary driving force as ecological factors such as hunting and food supply. With two parents around, there"s always a conflict of interests, which can have a detrimental effect on the quality of the offspring. In evolutionary terms, the best strategy for any parent in the animal world is to find someone else to care for their offspring, so they can concentrate on breeding again. So it"s normal for parents to try to pass the buck to each other. But Ian Hartley from the University of Lancaster and his team wondered how families solve this conflict, and how the conflict itself affects the offspring. To find out, they measured how much effort zebra finch parents put into raising their babies. They compared single females with pairs, by monitoring the amount of food each parent collected, and removing or adding chicks so that each pair of birds was raising four chicks, and each single mum had two--supposedly the same amount of work. But single mums, they found, put in about 25 percent more effort than females rearing with their mate. To avoid being exploited, mothers with a partner hold back from working too hard if the father is being lazy, and it"s the chicks that pay the price. "The offspring suffer some of the cost of this conflict," says Hartley. The cost does not show in any obvious decrease in size or weight, but in how attractive they are to the opposite sex. When the chicks were mature, the researchers tested the "fitness" of the male offspring by offering females their choice of partner. Those males reared by single mums were chosen more often than those from two-parent families. Sexual conflict has long been thought to affect the quality of care given to offspring, says zoologist Rebecca Kilner at Cambridge University, who works on conflict of parents in birds. "But the experimental evidence is not great. The breakthrough here is showing it empirically." More surprising, says Kilner, is Hartley"s statement that conflict may be a strong influence on the evolution of behaviour, clutch size and even appearance. "People have not really made that link," says Hartley. A female"s reproductive strategy is usually thought to be affected by hunting and food supply. Kilner says conflict of parents should now be taken into account as well.

单选题Questions 1-5 To understand the marketing concept, it is only necessary to understand the difference between marketing and selling. Not too many years ago, most industries concentrated primarily on the efficient production of goods, and then relied on "persuasive salesmanship" to move as much of these goods as possible. Such production and selling focuses on the needs of the seller to produce goods and then convert them into money. Marketing, on the other hand, focuses on the wants of consumers. It begins with first analyzing the preferences and demands of consumers and then producing goods that will satisfy them. This eye- on-the-consumer approach is known as the marketing concept, which simply means that instead of trying to sell whatever is easiest to produce or buy for resale, the makers and dealers first endeavor to find out what the consumer wants to buy and then go about making it available for purchase. This concept does not imply that business is benevolent or that consumer satisfaction is given priority over profit in a company. There are always two sides to every business transaction--the firm and the customer—and each must be satisfied before trade occurs. Successful merchants and producers, however, recognize that the surest route to profit is through understanding and catering to customers. A striking example of the importance of catering to the consumer presented itself in mid-1985, when Coca Cola changed the flavor of its drink. The non-acceptance of the new flavor by a significant portion of the public brought about a prompt restoration of the Classic Coke, which was then marketed alongside the new. King Customer ruled!

单选题WhatisSallydoing?[A]Readingaletter.[B]Washingclothes.[C]Makingaphonecall.

单选题 Question 26-30 Bust a myth, get a benefit Few subjects harbor more myths and misconceptions than nutrition. Some of the most common: "Low-fat" means "healthy". Low-fat foods can be healthy, but not always. The problem? Many processed foods that are low in fat are high in sugar, which gives you extra calories and may cause wide swings in your blood sugar levels. This makes you gain weight and lose energy, and may raise your risk of several diseases. Some people believe "low-fat" means "Eat all you want. " I remember a dieting patient who was puzzled because he was gaining weight. He mentioned he was eating a low-fat cake. When I asked him bow much, he replied, "Oh, one or two. " "One or two pieces? No, one or two cakes!" An ideal diet is low in fat and low in sugar. Most people can enjoy high-sugar, high-fat treats on occasion, but if you indulge one day, be sure to eat healthier the next. Canned fruits and vegetables aren't nutritious. They can be. A recent review of studies found that nutrients are generally similar in comparable fresh, frozen and canned fruits and vegetables. Many parents have told me that, knowing this, they might be more likely to cook at home rather than eat less nutritious meals at restaurants. Red wine, not white, prevents heart disease. Yes, drinking red wine may significantly decrease the risk of heart disease, but white wine may be just as protective, at least in rats. Resveratrol is a healthy substance found in the skin of red grapes. It's higher in concentration in red wine than white because red wine is fermented with the skins, allowing it to absorb the resveratrol. American and Italian researchers recently found that grape pulp extract (white wine) was equally effective in protecting rats from a heart attack as grape skin extract (red wine). Also, most of the antioxidant benefits of wine come from the grape itself, not the fact that it's fermented. Studies show that spending time with friends and family may reduce the risk of many illnesses. People who imbibe moderately often do so in the company of others, and these psychosocial factors may be as powerful as the drink itself. I neither prescribe nor proscribe alcohol, but if you're going to drink, have no more than one or two four-ounce glasses of wine, one or two beers, or one or two ounces of liquor. More than that and the toxicities of alcohol begin to outweigh any of its potential benefits. Juice is less healthy than whole fruits. Not always. "The view that pure fruit and vegetable juices are nutritionally inferior to fruits and vegetables, in relation to chronic-disease risk reduction, is unjustified," concluded a recent review of studies. The impact of antioxidants on disease risk may be more important than the amount of fiber. Whole fruits and vegetables do have more fiber than most juices, and fiber has many benefits. It fills you up before you get too many calories, and it helps regulate blood sugar. Some juice companies are preserving the pulp (which adds to the fiber) or are even putting it back in. Summer Diet Traps. It's the season for travel, day trips and meals on the run, and it's easier than ever to eat healthy on the road. At airports, look for fresh fruit and packaged salads. Dip your fork in the dressing instead of pouring it on. Amusement parks are providing healthier choices. Disney will eliminate added trans fats from its parks by the end of this year, and kids'meals will include sides like applesauce and carrots—not fries. Some fast-food places offer better choices, too, so you can eat well just about anywhere.

单选题Bust a myth, get a benefit Few subjects harbor more myths and misconceptions than nutrition. Some of the most common: "Low-fat" means "healthy". Low-fat foods can be healthy, but not always. The problem? Many processed foods that are low in fat are high in sugar, which gives you extra calories and may cause wide swings in your blood sugar levels. This makes you gain weight and lose energy, and may raise your risk of several diseases. Some people believe "low-fat" means "Eat all you want. " I remember a dieting patient who was puzzled because he was gaining weight. He mentioned he was eating a low-fat cake. When I asked him bow much, he replied, "Oh, one or two. " "One or two pieces? No, one or two cakes!" An ideal diet is low in fat and low in sugar. Most people can enjoy high-sugar, high-fat treats on occasion, but if you indulge one day, be sure to eat healthier the next. Canned fruits and vegetables aren"t nutritious. They can be. A recent review of studies found that nutrients are generally similar in comparable fresh, frozen and canned fruits and vegetables. Many parents have told me that, knowing this, they might be more likely to cook at home rather than eat less nutritious meals at restaurants. Red wine, not white, prevents heart disease. Yes, drinking red wine may significantly decrease the risk of heart disease, but white wine may be just as protective, at least in rats. Resveratrol is a healthy substance found in the skin of red grapes. It"s higher in concentration in red wine than white because red wine is fermented with the skins, allowing it to absorb the resveratrol. American and Italian researchers recently found that grape pulp extract (white wine) was equally effective in protecting rats from a heart attack as grape skin extract (red wine). Also, most of the antioxidant benefits of wine come from the grape itself, not the fact that it"s fermented. Studies show that spending time with friends and family may reduce the risk of many illnesses. People who imbibe moderately often do so in the company of others, and these psychosocial factors may be as powerful as the drink itself. I neither prescribe nor proscribe alcohol, but if you"re going to drink, have no more than one or two four-ounce glasses of wine, one or two beers, or one or two ounces of liquor. More than that and the toxicities of alcohol begin to outweigh any of its potential benefits. Juice is less healthy than whole fruits. Not always. "The view that pure fruit and vegetable juices are nutritionally inferior to fruits and vegetables, in relation to chronic-disease risk reduction, is unjustified," concluded a recent review of studies. The impact of antioxidants on disease risk may be more important than the amount of fiber. Whole fruits and vegetables do have more fiber than most juices, and fiber has many benefits. It fills you up before you get too many calories, and it helps regulate blood sugar. Some juice companies are preserving the pulp (which adds to the fiber) or are even putting it back in. Summer Diet Traps. It"s the season for travel, day trips and meals on the run, and it"s easier than ever to eat healthy on the road. At airports, look for fresh fruit and packaged salads. Dip your fork in the dressing instead of pouring it on. Amusement parks are providing healthier choices. Disney will eliminate added trans fats from its parks by the end of this year, and kids"meals will include sides like applesauce and carrots—not fries. Some fast-food places offer better choices, too, so you can eat well just about anywhere.

单选题A major study of the grocery-buying habits of millions of Americans released late last year found that people using food stamps generally make the same unhealthy food choices as everyone else in America. Too many sweets, salty snacks and prepared desserts. Junk food, in other words. But when it came to soda and its sugary ilk, the results were more surprising, and not in a good way. According to the USDA-funded study, shoppers using food stamps spent a larger share of their budget—9.25% to be exact—on sugar-sweetened beverages than other shoppers. Even more startling: Food-stamp shoppers bought more soda than any other single grocery item. The new data revived an old debate about banning soda from the $71 billion food-stamp program. In February, the House Agriculture Committee held a hearing to gather testimony about the pros and cons of such a restriction. It does seem counterproductive to spend billions of taxpayer dollars in an effort to improve the nutrition of low-income Americans on a product with little or no nutritional value. It is called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, after all. And soda had been identified as one of the prime culprits in soaring U.S. obesity and Type 2 diabetes rates. The study and committee debate raised some of the same uncomfortable issues that have caused the proposal to languish in the past. On the conservative side, folks have worried that this type of nannystate regulation will lead to other heavy-handed health-related restrictions. Liberals, meanwhile, have been concerned that it is patronizing and punitive to tell people how to spend their government benefits. Add in the opposition from beverage industry lobby and it"s no surprise this idea hasn"t gotten very far when it"s been proposed. In recent years, a handful of states and cities have tried to impose such a requirement, but were blocked by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The difference now is that the attitude toward soda has rapidly soured as more evidence has poured in that beverages with added sugars are making people fat and sick. The USDA has issued dietary guidelines warning people to limit their consumption of food with added sugars, the largest sources of which are sweetened beverages. This belief helped San Francisco, Philadelphia and handful of other cities push through new taxes on soda. A handful more are considering their own soda levies. We know that there are detrimental health effects of drinking lots of soda, but we don"t know if barring SNAP recipients from spending their benefits on soda will really improve their health. It"s worth finding out by undertaking a limited pilot program, regardless of the qualms we may have about imposing restraints on the poor that better-off Americans don"t face. The assumption is that those billions of dollars not going to buy Coke will be spent on healthier food. But that may not be the case. What if consumption of other sugary items increases? Or if SNAP recipients simply transferred their sweet drink habit ounce-for-ounce to more expensive and still sugar-laden fruit juice? Or if they spent their non-SNAP money on soda? Before making a permanent change, we need to know if it would improve nutrition or be pointlessly punitive. But it is a good step to take to gather data. And the argument that it would be too hard on grocers to carve out sugary drinks doesn"t hold water. As the study shows, modern grocery check stand technology is sophisticated enough to easily separate out purchases by UPC code. Indeed, SNAP already comes with restrictions on alcohol, tobacco and hot foods. Grocers don"t have a problem sorting them out. The Women, Infant and Children food-assistance program is even more prescriptive, permitting only specific items to be purchased: milk, cheese, cereal and formula, for example, but absolutely nothing with added sugar or artificial sweetener. Ideally, a pilot program would also find ways to improve access to safe drinking water. Denying poor people the ability to use food aid to buy a Coke on a hot day may raise some unsettling questions. Yet the findings in the USDA"s study about excessive soda consumption shouldn"t be ignored.

单选题 In the atmosphere, carbon dioxide acts rather like a one-way mirror—the glass in the roof of a greenhouse which allows the sun's rays to enter but prevents the heat from escaping. According to a weather expert's prediction, the atmosphere will be 3 ℃ warmer in the year 2050 than it is today, if man continues to burn fuels at the present rate. If this warming up took place, the ice caps in the poles would begin to melt, thus raising sea level several meters and severely flooding coastal cities. Also. the increase in atmospheric temperature would lead to great changes in the climate of the northern hemisphere, possibly resulting in an alteration of earth's chief food-growing zones. In the past, concern about a man-made warming of the earth has concentrated on the Arctic because the Antarctic is much colder and has a much thicker ice sheet. But the weather experts are now paying more attention to West Antarctic, which may be affected by only a few degrees of warming, in other words, by a warming on the scale that will possibly take place in the next fifty years from the burning of fuels. Satellite pictures show that large areas of Antarctic ice are already disappearing. The evidence available suggests that a warming has taken place. This fits the theory that carbon dioxide warms the earth. However, most of the fuel is burnt in the northern hemisphere, where temperatures seem to be falling. Scientists conclude, therefore, that up to now natural influences on the weather have exceeded those caused by man. The question is: Which natural cause has most effect on the weather? One possibility is the variable behavior of the sun. Astronomers at one research station have studied the hot spots and "cold" spots (that is, the relatively less hot spots) on the sun. As the sun rotates, every 27.5 days, it presents hotter or "colder" faces to the earth, and different aspects to different parts of the earth. This seems to have a considerable effect on the distribution of the earth's atmospheric pressure, and consequently on wind circulation. The sun is also variable over a long term: its heat output goes up and down in cycles, the latest trend being downward. Scientists are-now finding mutual relations between models of solar-weather interactions and the actual climate over many thousands of years, including the last Ice Age. The problem is that the models are predicting that the world should be entering a new Ice Age and it is not. One way of solving this theoretical difficulty is to assume a delay of thousands of years while the solar effects overcome the inertia of the earth's climate. If this is tight, the warming effect of carbon dioxide might thus be serving as a useful counter-balance to the sun's diminishing heat.

单选题When I recently mentioned to a pregnant acquaintance that I was writing a book about egg freezing (and had frozen my own eggs in hopes of preserving my ability to have children well into my 40s), she replied, "You"re so lucky. I wish I had known to freeze my eggs. " She was 40 years old and wanted two children, so she and her husband were planning to start trying to conceive a second child shortly after the birth of their first. "Now everything is a rush," she said. Married at 38, she didn"t think to talk to her obstetrician-gynecologist about fertility before then. If her doctor had brought up the subject, she said, she might have put away some eggs when she was younger. In our fertility-obsessed society, women can"t escape the message that it"s harder to get pregnant after 35. And yet, it"s not a conversation patients are having with the doctors they talk to about their most intimate issues—their OB-GYNs—unless they bring up the topic first. OB-GYNs routinely ask patients during their annual exams about their sexual histories and need for contraception, but often missing from the list is, "Do you plan to have a family?" OB-GYNs are divided on whether it"s their responsibility to broach the topic with patients. Those who take an "ask me first" approach understandably don"t want to offend women who don"t want children, or frighten those who do. It doesn"t take much for an informational briefing to spiral into a teary heart-to-heart about dating woes. Do you reassure a distraught 38-year-old that she"s still got time; encourage her to seriously consider having a baby on her own; or freak her out so she settles for a lackluster relationship? And considering that fertility figures are averages (while one woman may need fertility treatment at age 36, another can get pregnant naturally at 42), when is the right age to sound the alarm? But the biggest impediment to bringing the issue up was that doctors didn"t have many good recommendations for a single woman. she could either use an anonymous donor"s sperm to have a baby today, or she could fertilize her eggs with it and freeze the resulting embryos for future use. Now, a better option is gaining credibility. Egg freezing (a technique that allows women to store their unfertilized eggs to use with a future partner when they are older) has been available in the United States since the early 2000s, but success rates at first were low and doctors have been hesitant to push it. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine said the technique shouldn"t be "offered or marketed as a means to defer reproductive aging", and deemed it "experimental". Last week, the doctors" society announced that it was removing the experimental label (though it stopped short of endorsing widespread use of egg freezing to put off having children). After reviewing four randomized controlled trials, it found little difference in the effectiveness of using fresh or frozen eggs in in-vitro fertilization, and said that babies conceived from frozen eggs faced no increased risk of birth defects or developmental problems. The procedure isn"t a panacea. It"s terribly expensive—often $15,000—and is not usually covered by insurance. In addition, there"s a worrisome lack of data regarding the success rates of eggs frozen by the women at the end of their baby-making days. The majority of the women in the four studies were under 35, and it warned against giving women who want to delay childbearing "false hope" that their frozen eggs will work when they are ready to get pregnant years later. Although estimates of the number of American women who have frozen their eggs for nonmedical reasons are in the thousands, very few have yet returned to thaw them—there are only a couple of thousand babies born from frozen eggs in the world. Women should be allowed to come to their own conclusions and take their own risks—there"s a fine line between doctors" "mentioning" and "suggesting" the procedure—but this is an option they should be hearing about from their OB-GYNs. To standardize the message, professional groups like the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists should create pamphlets that doctors can give to patients. OB-GYN residents also can learn suggested scripts that present the information in a nonbiased, non alarmist way. I first learned about egg freezing from a friend who had talked to her OB-GYN about whether she should freeze, given her family"s history of premature menopause. When I asked my doctor about the procedure, she said she had heard that the success rates had recently improved and gave me the name of a respected fertility doctor. As a result, I stashed away several batches of eggs between the ages of 36 and 38—just before the cutoff at which many doctors no longer consider eggs worthwhile to save. I was fortunate, because I knew to ask. We must go one step further and expect OB-GYNs to bring up family planning at every annual visit, so that women have the information they need to choose to take charge of their fertility. Perhaps more women will think about freezing in their early to mid-30s, when their chances of success are greater. Or maybe, after being asked about their plans from their very first visit, more will decide to start families when their eggs are at their prime, and won"t even need to freeze.

单选题Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following conversation.

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