单选题Business

单选题Questions 26-30 The case for college has been accepted without question for more than a generation. All high school graduates ought to go, says conventional wisdom and statistical evidence, because college will help them earn more money, become "better" people, and learn to be more responsible citizens than those who don't go. But college has never been able to work its magic for everyone. And now that close to half our high school graduates are attending, those who don't fit the pattern are becoming more numerous, and more obvious. College graduates are selling shoes and driving taxis; college students interfere with each other's experiments and write false letters of recommendation in the intense competition for admission to graduate school. Others find no stimulation in their studies, and drop out often encouraged by college administrators. Some observers say the fault is with the young people themselves--they are spoiled and they are expecting too much. But that is a condemnation of the students as a whole, and doesn't explain all campus unhappiness. Others blame the state of the world, and they are partly right. We have been told that young people have to go to college because our economy can't absorb an army of untrained eighteen-year-olds. But disappointed graduates are learning that it can no longer absorb an army of trained twenty-two-year-olds, either. Some adventuresome educators and watchers have openly begun to suggest that college may not be the best, the proper, the only place for every young person after the completion of high school. We may have been looking at all those surveys and statistics upside down, it seems, and through the rosy glow of our own remembered college experiences. Perhaps college doesn't make people intelligent, ambitious, happy, liberal, or quick to learn things--may be it is just the other way around, and intelligent, ambitious, happy, liberal, quick-learning people are merely the ones who have been attracted to college in the first place. And perhaps all those successful college graduates would have been successful whether they had gone to college or not. This is heresy to those of us who have been brought up to believe that if a little schooling is good, more has to be much better. But contrary evidence is beginning to mount up.

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

单选题 Congress can pass laws, regulators can beef up enforcement, and shareholders can demand more accountability. But when it comes right down to it, making sure a company is operating well is really an inside job. That's where internal auditing comes in. It doesn't sound glamorous, but it's an expanding field beckoning to people with a lot of pent up we-can-do-better energy. Internal auditors keep an eye on a company's "controls"—not just financial systems, but all sorts of functions designed to make the business run smoothly and protect the interests of shareholders. The recent string of corporate scandals provided a rude awakening to the importance of these internal checks. In the case of WorldCom, it was internal auditor Cynthia Cooper who blew the whistle on the company for inflating profits by $3.8 billion. She didn't intend to be a hero, she said to Time magazine when it named her one of its Persons of the Year. She was just doing her job. A lot more of those jobs are opening up as companies turn to internal auditors for help in complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Top executives of publicly held companies now have to sign off on their financial statements and vouch for the effectiveness of internal controls. "Up until now, CEOs and CFOs have been going to bed and sleeping well at night, knowing that they've got good controls or financial reporting because they've got good people ... But what's missing is the documentation that really supports that gut feel," says Trent Gazzaway, the national director of corporate governance advisory services for Grant Thornton, an accounting and business consultancy firm. "I cannot think of a time in history when there's been a greater opportunity to enter the internal-audit field," he adds. Job postings on the website of the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) in Altamonte Springs, Fla., have more than doubled in the past year, says IIA president William Bishop III. And in the organization's survey for 2002, half the internal-audit directors said they planned to make one or more new hires that year. People who can assess computerized systems are especially in demand. Privately held companies are voluntarily adding more scrutiny, as well. In a recent survey that drew responses from 1,400 CFOs in such businesses, 58 percent said they are responding to new corporate-governance standards. Of those, 36 percent are creating or expanding internal auditing, according to Robert Half Management Resources. An American company with $3 billion to $4 billion in revenue typically has about 16 internal auditors. The job is often a training ground for future management positions, but those who stay in the field and become directors earn an average of just under $100,000. The IIA offers certification for internal auditors, but many firms do not require it. Assessing "the tone at the top"—the culture and the ethical environment of a company—is one of the key charges for internal auditors, Mr. Bishop says. But their effectiveness depends on the resources and independence senior managers give them. As auditors have a perspective that encompasses every aspect of the company, executives sometimes want to hear their recommendations for improving systems. But their main goal is to make sure the systems already in place are working properly. The balancing act can be tricky. "If I make a recommendation ... and then I come and evaluate it, I'm not going to be criticizing it," says Parveen Gupta, who teaches corporate governance and accounting at Lehigh University. Ideally, the internal auditor should be an extra set of eyes, a consultant who knows the company well but has enough independence to give honest feedback. Regulations "are pushing internal auditors to become a bit more policeman-oriented," he says, "but if employees perceive it as someone second-guessing them, that is very dangerous." One tool designed to avoid that adversarial feeling is "control self-assessment". The auditor sets up discussions among employees to find out, for instance, if a written ethics policy is being implemented, or if workers are feeling such intense pressures that they might be prompted to push ethical boundaries. The power of the new laws can go only so far. "This entire issue of corporate governance—trying to run the company as if you were managing your own money—is a matter of heart and soul," Dr. Gupta says. And guts. Anyone considering a career in internal auditing, he says, "should have the guts to speak out, to tell the truth."

单选题 Questions 21-25 A naked mole rat colony, like a beehive, wasp's nest, or termite mound, is ruled by its queen, or reproducing female. Other adult female mole rats neither ovulate nor breed. The queen is the largest member of the colony, and she maintains her breeding status through a mixture of behavioral and, presumably, chemical control. Queens have been long-lived in captivity, and when they die or are removed from a colony one sees violent fighting for breeding status among the larger remaining females, leading to a takeover by a new queen. Eusocial insect societies have rigid caste systems, each insect's role being defined by its behavior, body shape, and physiology. In naked mole rat societies, on the other hand, differences in behavior are related primarily to reproductive status (reproduction being limited to the queen and a few males), body size, and perhaps age. Smaller non-breeding members, both male and female, seem to participate primarily in gathering food, transporting nest material, and tunneling, larger non-breeders are active in defending the colony and perhaps in removing dirt from the tunnels. One work has suggested that differences in growth rates may influence the length of time that an individual performs a task, regardless of its age. Cooperative breeding has evolved many times in vertebrates, but unlike naked mole rats, most cooperatively breeding vertebrates (except the wild dog, Lycaon pictus) are dominated by a pair of breeders rather than by a single breeding female. The division of labor within social groups is less pronounced among other vertebrates than among naked mole rats, colony size is much smaller, and mating by subordinate females may not be totally suppressed, whereas in naked mole rat colonies subordinate females are not sexually active, and many never breed.

单选题A.YouneedtogotoBraziltodoatranslationcourse.B.YourPortugueseisnotgoodenoughfortranslatingthiscontract.C.OurnewsecretarycantypethecontractinPortugueseforyou.D.Thesecretarymightbeabletohelpyouwiththetranslation.

单选题The gap between what companies might be expected to pay in tax and what they actually pay amounts to billions of pounds--on that much, everyone can agree. The surprising truth is that no- one can agree how many billions are missing, or even how to define "tax gap". Estimates range from anything between ￡3bn to nearly ￡14bn, depending on who is doing the calculations. Even the people in charge of colleting the taxes--Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC)--admit they have only the vaguest idea of how many further billions of pounds they could be getting.., and it took a freedom of information request before they would admit the extent of their lack of knowledge. Any media organization or MP attempting to pursue the subject will find themselves hampered by the same difficulties faced by the tax collectors--secrecy and complexity. The Guardian 's investigation, which we publish over the coming two weeks, is no different. The difficulty starts with an inability of anyone to agree a definition of "tax avoidance". It continues through the limited amount of information in the public domain. And it is further hampered by the extraordinary complexity of modern global corporations. International companies based in the UK may have hundreds of subsidiary companies, which many use to take advantage of differing tax regimes as they move goods, services and intellectual property around the world. It is estimated that more than half of world trade consists of such movements (known as transfer-pricing) within corporations. Companies are legally required publicly to declare these subsidiaries. But they generally tell shareholders of only the main subsidiaries. The Guardian's investigation found five major UK-based corporations which had ignored the requirements of the Companies Act by failing to identify offshore subsidiaries. This is just one example of the atmosphere of secrecy and non-disclosure in Britain which has allowed tax avoidance to flourish. The result is that few outside of the lucrative industries of banking, accountancy and tax law have understood the scale of the capital flight that is now taking place. British tax inspectors privately describe as formidable the mountain outsiders have to climb in order to comb through the accounts of international companies based in London. "The companies hold all the cards," said one senior former tax inspector. "It's very difficult because you don't always know what you are looking for... You are confronted with delay, obstruction and a lot of whingeing from companies who complain about "unreasonable requests. Sometimes you are just piecing together a jigsaw. " Another former senior tax inspector said. "One of the problems the Revenue has is that the company doesn't have to disclose the amount of tax actually paid in any year and the accounts won' t reveal the liability. Each company has its own method of accounting for tax: there's no uniform way of declaring it all. " For journalists trying to probe these murky waters, the problems are so substantial that few media organizations attempt it. A trawl through the published accounts of even a single major group of companies can involve hunting around in the registers of several different countries. It takes a lot of time and a lot of money. Companies--with some far-sighted British exceptions--simply refuse to disclose any more than what appears in the published figures. The legal fiction that a public company is a "legal person", entitled to total tax secrecy and even to "human rights", makes it normally impossible for a journalist to penetrate the tax strategies of big business. HMRC refuse, far example, to identify the 12 major companies who used tax avoidance schemes to avoid paying any corporation tax whatever. It is difficult to access experts to guide the media or MPs through this semantic jungle. The "Big Four" accountants and tax QCs who make a living out of tax avoidance, have no interest in helping outsiders understand their world. Few others have the necessary knowledge, and those that do, do not come cheap or may be conflicted. "Secrecy is the of shore world's great protector," writes William Brittan-Caitlin, London-based former Kroll investigator in his book, Offshore. "Government and states are generally at a loss to diagnose in detail what is really going on inside corporate internal markets. Corporations are extremely secretive about the special tax advantages these structures give them. /

单选题Questions 6-10 Most of us are taught to pay attention to what is said—the words. Words do provide us with some information, but meanings are derived from so many other sources that it would hinder our effectiveness as a partner to a relationship to rely too heavily on words alone. Words are used to describe only a small part of the many ideas we associate with any given message. Sometimes we can gain insight into some of those associations if we listen for more than words. We don't always say what we mean or mean what we say. Sometimes our words don't mean anything except " I'm letting off some steam. I don't really want you to pay close attention to what I'm saying. Just pay attention to what I'm feeling. " Mostly we mean several things at once. A person wanting to purchase a house says to the current owner, "This step has to be fixed before I'll buy. " The owner says, " It's been like that for years." Actually, the step hasn't been like that for years, but the unspoken message is.. " I don't want to fix it. We put up with it. Why can't you?" The search for a more expansive view of meaning can be developed of examining a message in terms of who said it, when it occurred, the related conditions or situations, and how it was said. When a message occurs can also reveal associated meaning. Let us assume two couples do exactly the same amount of kissing and arguing. But one couple always kisses after an argument and the other couple always argues after a kiss. The ordering of the behaviors may mean a great deal more than the frequency of the behavior. A friend's unusually docile behavior may only be understood by noting that it was preceded by situations that required an abnormal amount of assertiveness. Some responses may be directly linked to a developing pattern of responses and defy logic. For example, a person who says "No!" to a series of charges like "You're dumb," "You're lazy," and "You're dishonest," may also say "No!" and try to justify his or her response if the next statement is "And you're good looking. " We would do well to listen for how messages are presented. The words, "It sure has been nice to have you over," can be said with emphasis and excitement or ritualistically. The phrase can be said once or repeated several times. And the meanings we associate with the phrase will change accordingly. Sometimes if we say something infrequently it assumes more importance; sometimes the more we say something, the less importance it assumes.

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单选题Quick quiz: Who has a more vitriolic relationship with the US? The French or the British. If you guessed the French, consider this: Paris newspaper polls show that 72 percent of the French hold a favorable impression of the United States. Yet UK polls over the past decade show a lower percentage of the British have a favorable impression of the United States. Britain's highbrow newspaper, The Guardian, sets the UK's intellectual tone. On any given day you can easily read a handful of stories sniping at the US and things American. The BBC's Radio 4, which is a domestic news and talk radio station, regularly laments Britain's social wart sand follows them up with something that has become the national mantra, "Well, at least we're not as bad as the Americans. " This isn't a new trend: British abhorrence of America antedates George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq. On 9/11 as the second plane was slamming into the World Trade Center towers my wife was on the phone with an English friend of many years. In the background she heard her friend's teenage son shout in front of the TV, "Yeah! The Americans are finally getting theirs. "The animosity may be unfathomable to those raised to think of Britain as "the mother country" for whom we fought two world wars and with whom we won the cold war. So what's it all about? I often asked that during the years I lived in London. One of the best answers came from an Englishwoman with whom I shared a table for coffee. She said, "It's because we used to be big and important and we aren't any more. Now it's America that's big and important and we can never forgive you for that. " A detestation of things American has become as dependable as the tides on the Thames rising and falling four times a day. It feeds a flagging British sense of national self-importance. A new book documenting the virulence of more than 30 years of corrosive British animosity reveals how deeply rooted it has become in the UK's national psyche. "[T]here is no reasoning with people who have come to believe America is now a 'police state' and the USA is a 'disgrace across most of the world,'" writes Carol Gould, an American expatriate novelist and journalist, in her book "Don't Tread on Me. " A brief experience shortly after George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq illustrates that. An American I know was speaking on the street in Lndon one morning. Upon hearing his accent, a British man yelled, "Take your tanks and bombers and go back to America. " Then the British thug punched him repeatedly. No wonder other American friends of mine took to telling locals they were from Canada. The local police recommended prosecution. But upon learning the victim was an American, crown prosecutors dropped the case even though the perpetrator had a history of assaulting foreigners. The examples of this bitterness continue: I recall my wife and I having coffee with a member of our church. The woman, who worked at Buckingham Palace, launched a conversation with, "Have you heard the latest dumb America nioke?" which incidentally turned out to be a racial slur against blacks. It's common to hear Britsroutinely dismiss Americans as racists (even with an African-American president), religious nuts, global polluters, warmongers, cultural philistines, and as intellectual Untermenscher. The United Kingdom's counterintelligence and security agency has identified some 5,000Muslim extremists in the UK hut not even they are denounced with the venom directed at Americans. A British office manager at CNN once informed me that any English high school diploma was equal to an American university degree. This predilection for seeing evil in all things American defies intellect and reason By themselves, these instances might be able to be brushed off, but combined they amount to British bigotry. Oscar Wilde once wrote, "The English mind is always in a rage. " But the energy required to maintain that British rage might be better channeled into paring back what the Economist (a British news magazine) calls "an overreaching, and inefficient state with unaffordable aspirations around the world. " The biggest problem is that, as with all hatred, it tends to be self-destructive. The danger is that as such, it perverts future generations. The UK public's animosity doesn't hurt the United States if Americans don't react in kind. This bigotry does hurt the United Kingdom, however, because there is something sad about a society that must denigrate and malign others to feed its own self-esteem. What Britain needs to understand is that this ill will has poisoned the enormous reservoir of good will Britain used to enjoy in America. And unless the British tweak their attitude, they stand to become increasingly irrelevant to the American people.

单选题 Recent years have brought minority-owned businesses in the United States unprecedented opportunities as well as new and significant risks. Civil rights activists have long argued that one of the principal reasons why Blacks, Hispanics, and other minority groups have difficulty establishing themselves in business is that they lack access to the sizable orders and subcontracts that are generated by large companies. Now Congress, in apparent agreement, has required by law that businesses awarded federal contracts of more than $ 500, 000 do their best to find minority subcontractors and record their efforts to do so on forms filed with the government. Indeed, (some federal and local agencies) have gone so far as to set specific percentage goals for apportioning part of public works contracts to minority enterprises. Corporate response appears to have been substantial. (According to figures collected in 1977, the total of corporate contracts with minority businesses rose from $ 77 million in 1972 to $1.1 billion in 1977. ) The projected total of corporate contracts with minority businesses for the early 1980s is estimated to be over $ 3 billion per year with no letup anticipated in the next decade. Promising as it is for minority businesses, this increased patronage poses dangers for them, too. First, minority firms risk expanding too fast and overextending themselves financially, since most are small concerns and, unlike large businesses, they often need to make substantial investments in new plants, staff, equipment, and the like in order to perform work subcontracted to them. If, thereafter, their subcontracts are for some reason reduced, such firms can face potentially crippling fixed expenses. The world of corporate purchasing can be frustrating for small entrepreneurs who get requests for elaborate formal estimates and bids. Both consume valuable time and resources, and a small company's efforts must soon result in orders, or both the morale and the financial health of the business will suffer. A second risk is that White-owned companies may seek to cash in on the increasing apportionments through formation of joint ventures with minority-owned concerns. Of course, in many instances there are legitimate reasons for joint ventures; clearly, White and minority enterprises can team up to acquire business that neither could acquire alone. But civil rights groups and minority business owners have complained to Congress about minorities being set up as "fronts" with White backing, rather than being accepted as full partners in legitimate joint ventures. Third, a minority enterprise that secures the business of one large corporate customer often run the danger of becoming and remaining dependent. Even in the best of circumstances, fierce competition from larger, more established companies makes it difficult for small concerns to broaden their customer bases: when such firms have nearly guaranteed orders from a single corporate benefactor, they may truly have to struggle against complacency arising from their current success.

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 assumptionlong 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.

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单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} In this section, you will read several passages. Each passage is followed by several questions based on its content. You are to choose {{B}}ONE {{/B}}best answer to each question. Answer all the questions following each passage on the basis of what is stated or implied in that passage and write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your {{B}}ANSWER BOOKLET.{{/B}} The journalism bug bit me at a young age and I chased my dream in high school and college. Guess it was the Mary Tyler Moore and Lou Grant shows that inspired me. Unfortunately, that was TV; this was reality. I worked in TV and at newspapers. Movies and television often make these out to be glamorous jobs, but let me assure you nothing could be further from the truth. For the rookie, it's often very long hours (50—70 per week not uncommon) and the pay is just a crime. Many in management don't believe in paying overtime, even when it's due. I had to file complaints against one employer (the owner of a small newspaper chain) and my last employer at the Labor Department. They were burning people out like there was no tomorrow. We should've installed revolving doors. Working in the press (TV or newsprint) can often be VERY stressful. There is ALWAYS a push on to get the information out (in its complete form) first and to get it out completely accurately. TV stations succeed greatly at the former, but quite often blow it on the latter. And you rarely hear a TV reporter or anchor man apologize or admit a mistake. Newspapers do it every day, and some feel that blows their credibility, but it should do the opposite. With about 20 years in the field and four years at my last job as editor in chief, I was released for political reasons. My publishers were high-ranking members of a political party. They were drinking buddies with the governor and many US senators. Despite their efforts to "draft" me, I refused to sign the dotted line on application forms (for the party) and was fired. The day after election day, I was told I was being released because I did not live in the community. Only two people of the 25—30 working there lived in the community. My greatest sense of accomplishment in this business has come from enlightening the public, making them aware of politicians and government officials breaking laws or just outright lying. You would not believe all the mess I have seen. Some of my stories and editorials have earned me awards and a number of them have sparked investigations by the state police and FBI. All in a day's work. Yes, it's an ego thing at first, but that quickly wears off. It's a VERY cut-throat business. I began to see that in college and grade school. Working in a news room you have to get over the personalities, the egos and try to work around management's pet peeves. We've had to spike (kill, censor) stories in TV and at papers because some stupid advertiser would be upset. Usually a friend of a friend, or a friend of an advertiser. It's SUCH a joke. I now wish I had not changed my major from computer science to journalism. Ouch! I would be making more money and living an easier life. My dream is to own a newspaper—probably a niche publication or a trade journal, somewhere in North Carolina or Colorado. Wish me luck.

单选题Questions 27-30

单选题Questions 16～20 Marjorie McMillan, head of radiology at a veterinary hospital, found out by reading a letter to the editor in her local newspaper. Pamela Goodwin, a labor-relations expert at General Motors, happened to see a computer printout. Stephanie Odle, an assistant manager at a Sam"s Club store, was slipped a co-worker"s tax form Purely by accident, these women learned they were making less than their male or, in Goodwin"s case, white colleagues at work. Each sued for pay discrimination under federal law, lucky enough to discover what typically stays a secret. "People don"t just stand around the watercooler to talk about how much they make," says McMillan. This, as they say, is the real world, one in which people would rather discuss their sex lives than salaries. And about a third of private employers actually prohibit employees from sharing pay information. It is also a world that the U. S. Supreme Court seems unfamiliar with. The Justices recently decided 5 to 4 that workers are out of luck if they file a complaint under Title Ⅶ—the main federal antidiscrimination law—more than 180 days after their salary is set. That"s six measly months to find out what your co-workers are making so that you can tell whether you"re getting chiseled because of your sex, race, religion or national origin. How many of the roughly 2,800 such complaints pending before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will fizzle because of this new rule is hard to say. Less of a mystery, though just as troubling, is how the court reached its decision. Lilly Ledbetter filed the case against Goodyear Tire ＆ Rubber Co. because at the end of a 19-year career, she was making far less than any of 15 men at her level She argued that Goodyear violated Title Ⅶ every time it gave her a smaller paycheck. Her complaint was timely, she said, because she filed it within 180 days of her last check. But the court majority read the statute to mean that only an actual decision to pay Ledbetter less could be illegal, and that happened well outside the 180-day period. A statute"s ambiguous wording is fair game, but why read it to frustrate Title Ⅶ"s purpose: to ease pay discrimination in a nation where women make only 77￠ on average for every $1 that men earn? And while employers might like this decision, they could end up choking on the torrent of lawsuits that might now come their way. "The real message is that if you have any inkling that you are being paid differently, you need to file now, before the 180 days are up," says Michael Foreman of the Lawyers" Committee for Civil Rights. All this sounds familiar. In June 1989, the Supreme Court issued three decisions that sharply limited the right to sue over employment discrimination. A day after the most prominent ruling, in Wards Cove v. Atonio, Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D., Ohio) declared that he would introduce a bill to overturn the decisions. It took civil rights advocates and their congressional allies eight months to introduce legislation. President George H. W. Bush vetoed the first version, arguing that it would encourage hiring quotas. Finally, in late 1991, the Democratic Congress and the Republican President reached a compromise fashioned by Senators John Danforth (R., Mo.) and Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.). It became the Civil Rights Act of 1991 and overturned parts of eight high-court decisions. Now, Foreman and others are working on a bill to overturn the Ledbetter case, and Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, among others, have expressed interest. A Democratic Congress may well cooperate, though with a Republican again in the White House, final legislation before next year"s elections isn"t guaranteed. In any event, we probably won"t see the kind of groundswell that shifted the law toward workers in 1991 because civil rights advocates aren"t sure these Justices are a threat to workers" rights. Last June, for example, they made it harder for employers to retaliate against employees who complain of discrimination. That left the Ledbetter ruling looking particularly clueless. "I heard the decision and thought, what is wrong with this court?" says McMillan. "It just doesn"t live in the real world. "

单选题Psychological testing is a measurement of some aspect of human behavior by procedures consisting of carefully prescribed content, methods of administration, and interpretation. Test content may be addressed to almost any aspect of intellectual or emotional functioning, including personality traits, attitudes, intelligence, or emotional concerns. Tests usually are administered by a qualified clinical, school, or industrial psychologist, according to professional and ethical principles. Interpretation is based on a comparison of the individual"s responses with those previously obtained to establish appropriate standards for test scores. The usefulness of psychological tests depends on their accuracy in predicting behavior. By providing information about the probability of a person"s responses or performance, tests aid in making a variety of decisions. The primary impetus for the development of the major tests used today was the need for practical guidelines for solving social problems. The first useful intelligence test was prepared in 1905 by the French psychologists Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon (1873-1961). The two developed a 30-item scale to ensure that no child could be denied instruction in the Paris school system without formal examination. In 1916 the American psychologist Lewis Terman produced the first Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon scale to provide comparison standards for Americans from age three to adulthood. The test was further revised in 1937 and 1960, and today the Stanford-Binet remains one of the most widely used intelligence tests. The need to classify soldiers during World War I resulted in the development of two group intelligence tests—Army Alpha and Army Beta. To help detect soldiers who might break down in combat, the American psychologist Robert Woodworth (1869—1962) designed the Personal Data Sheet, a forerunner of the modern personality inventory. During the 1930s controversies over the nature of intelligence led to the development of the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale, which not only provided an index of general mental ability but also revealed patterns of intellectual strengths and weaknesses. The Wechsler tests now extend from the preschool through the adult age range and are at least as prominent as the Stanford-Binet. As interest in the newly emerging field of psychoanalysis grew in the 1930s, two important projective techniques introduced systematic ways to study unconscious motivation: the Rorschach test—developed by the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach (1884—1922)— using a series of inkblots on cards, and a story-telling procedure called the Thematic Apperception Test—developed by the American psychologists Henry A. Murray (1893— 1988) and C. D. Morgan. Both of these tests are frequently included in contemporary personality assessment. During World War II the need for improved methods of personnel selection led to the expansion of large-scale programs involving multiple methods of personality assessment. Following the war, training programs in clinical psychology were systematically supported by U.S. government funding, to ensure availability of mental-health services to returning war veterans. As part of these services, psychological testing flourished, reaching an estimated several million Americans each year. Since the late 1960s increased awareness and criticism from both the public and professional sectors have led to greater efforts to establish legal controls and more explicit safeguards against misuse of testing materials.

单选题A.Ispentanhoureachonpsychologyandliterature.B.ThenumberonetaskIfinishedlastnightwasliterature.C.Ishouldhavestudiesliteraturefirstlastnight.D.Ifinishedhalfofmyworkinmathematicslastnight.