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单选题 {{B}}Questions 19—22{{/B}}

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单选题Every so often we read of a star trader who lost so much money that he gave back all the profits he made over several years and shook his bank to its foundations. How does this happen? Were the bank"s risk managers mistaken about this trader"s skill? Maybe. But recent research suggests an alternative explanation—that the winning streak changed the trader. Human biology can help explain what drives traders to acts of folly. When we take on risk, including financial risk, we don"t just think about it; we also prepare for it physically. Body and brain fuse as a single functioning unit. Consider what happens on the trading floor when news flashes across the wire. Traders" senses are placed on high alert. Breathing accelerates; a thumping heart gears up for action. Muscles tense, stomachs knot, and sweating begins, a sign of anticipatory cooling. We do not regard information as computers do, dispassionately. We register it physically. My colleagues at the University of Cambridge and I have conducted a series of experiments on London trading floors and found that during a winning streak, our biology can overreact and our risk taking can become pathological. When males enter competition, their testosterone levels surge, increasing their hemoglobin and hence their blood"s capacity to carry oxygen, and in the brain increasing their confidence and appetite for risk. The winner emerges with even higher levels of testosterone, and this heightens his chances of winning yet again, leading to a positive feedback loop known in animal behavior as the winner effect. For athletes preparing to compete, traders buying risky assets or even politicians gearing up for an election, this is a moment of transformation, what the French in the Middle Ages called "the hour between dog and wolf". At some point in this upward spiral of testosterone and victory, however, judgment becomes impaired. Effective risk taking morphs into overconfidence, and traders on a winning streak may take on positions of ever increasing size with ever worsening risk-reward trade-offs. What happens to traders" biology if these positions blow up? Their stress response goes into overdrive. The uncertainty people feel during a crisis can raise stress hormones and promote feelings of anxiety, a selective recall of disturbing memories and a tendency to find danger where none exists. The stress response may foster irrational risk aversion, impairing a person"s ability to manage positions taken on in more optimistic times. In short, traders" biology may cause them to take too much risk when on a winning streak and then too little when the market needs it most during a crisis. Risk managers at banks need to understand this biology. The statistical tools they rely on cannot catch the subterranean shifts taking place in their traders" risk appetite. Risk managers could, however, learn from sports scientists how to spot and manage exuberance, fatigue and stress. They may have to manage their traders much as coaches manage their athletes. And that means occasionally pulling them off the field until their biology resets.

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单选题The University in transformation, edited by Australian futurists Sohail Inayatullah and Jennifer Gidley, presents some 20 highly varied outlooks on tomorrow"s universities by writers representing both Western and non-Western perspectives. Their essays raise a broad range of issues, questioning nearly every key assumption we have about higher education today. The most widely discussed alternative to the traditional campus is the Internet University— a voluntary community to scholars/teachers physically scattered throughout a country or around the world but all linked in cyberspace. A computerized university could have many advantages, such as easy scheduling, efficient delivery of lectures to thousands or even millions of students at once, and ready access for students everywhere to the resources of all the world"s great libraries. Yet the Internet University poses dangers, too. For example, a line of franchised courseware, produced by a few superstar teachers, marketed under the brand name of a famous institution, and heavily advertised, might eventually come to dominate the global education market, warns sociology professor Peter Manicas of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Besides enforcing a rigidly standardized curriculum, such a "college education in a box" could undersell the offerings of many traditional brick and mortar institutions, effectively driving them out of business and throwing thousands of career academics out of work, note Australian communications professors David Rooney and Greg Hearn. On the other hand, while global connectivity seems highly likely to play some significant role in future higher education, that does not mean greater uniformity in course content—or other dangers—will necessarily follow. Counter-movements are also at work. Many in academia, including scholars contributing to this volume, are questioning the fundamental mission of university education. What if, for instance, instead of receiving primarily technical training and building theft individual careers, university students and professors could focus their learning and research efforts on existing problems in their local communities and the world? Feminist scholar Ivana Milojevic dares to dream what a university might become "if we believed that child-care workers and teachers in early childhood education should be one of the highest (rather than lowest) paid professionals?" Co-editor Jennifer Gidley shows how tomorrow"s university faculty, instead of giving lectures and conducting independent research, may take on three new roles. Some would act as brokers, assembling customized degree-credit programmes for individual students by mixing and matching the best course offerings available from institutions all around the world. A second group, mentors, would function much like today"s faculty advisers, but are likely to be working with many more students outside their own academic specialty. This would require them to constantly be learning from their students as well as instructing them. A third new role for faculty, and in Gidley"s view the most challenging and rewarding of all, would be as meaning-makers: charismatic sages and practitioners leading groups of students/colleagues in collaborative efforts to find spiritual as well as rational and technological solutions to specific real-world problems. Moreover, there seems little reason to suppose that any one form of university must necessarily drive out all other options. Students may be "enrolled" in courses offered at virtual campuses on the Internet, between—or even during—sessions at a real-world problem-focused institution. As co-editor Sohail Inayatullah points out in his introduction, no future is inevitable, and the very act of imagining and thinking through alternative possibilities can directly affect how thoughtfully, creatively and urgently even a dominant technology is adapted and applied. Even in academia, the future belongs to those who care enough to work their visions into practical, sustainable realities.

单选题Questions 21-25 What we know of prenatal development makes all this attempt made by a mother to mold the character of her unborn child by studying poetry, art, or mathematics during pregnancy seem utterly impossible. How could such extremely complex influences pass from the mother to the child? There is no connection between their nervous systems. Even the blood vessels of mother and child do not join directly. An emotional shock to the mother will affect her child, because it changes the activity of her glands and so the chemistry in her blood. Any chemical change in the mother's blood will affect the child for better or worse. But we cannot see how a liking for mathematics or poetic genius can be dissolved in blood and produce a similar liking or genius in the child. In our discussion of instincts we saw that there was reason to believe that whatever we inherit must be of some very simple sort rather than any complicated or very definite kind of behavior. It is certain that no one inherits a knowledge of mathematics. It may be, however, that children inherit more or less of a rather general ability that we may call intelligence. If very intelligent children become deeply interested in mathematics, they will probably make a success of that study. As for musical ability, it may be that what is inherited is an especially sensitive ear, a peculiar structure of the hands or the vocal organs connections between nerves and muscles that make it comparatively easy to learn the movements a musician must execute, and particularly vigorous emotions. If these factors are all organized around music, the child may become a musician. The same factors, in other circumstances might be organized about some other center of interest. The rich emotional equipment might find expression in poetry. The capable fingers might develop skill in surgery. It is not the knowledge of music that is inherited then, nor even the love of it, but a certain bodily structure that makes it comparatively easy to acquire musical knowledge and skill. Whether that ability shall be directed toward music or some other undertaking may be decided entirely by forces in the environment in which a child grows up.

单选题Questions 11～14

单选题Whyhaven'ttheyseeneachotherlately?[A]ThemanhasbeentotheStates.[B]Themanhasbeenbusy.[C]Themanhasbeenill.

单选题What is the role of human resources as the world goes through turmoil, and what is its future as soI many industries face extreme change? Effendi Ibnoe, Bali, Indonesia Talk about timing. Your question arrived in our in-box the same day that we received a note from an acquaintance who had just been let go from his job in publishing, certainly one of the industries that is facing, as you put it, "extreme change. " He described his layoff as a practically Orwellian experience in which he was ushered into a conference room to meet with an outplacement consultant who, after dispensing with logistics, informed him that she would call him at home that evening to make sure everything was all right. "I assured her I had friends and loved ones and a dog," he wrote, "and since my relationship with her could be measured in terms of seconds, they could take care of that end of things. " "Memo to HR. Instead of saddling dismissed employees with solicitous outplacement reps," he noted wryly, "put them in a room with some crockery for a few therapeutic minutes of smashing things against a wall. " While we enjoy our friend's sense of humor, we'd suggest a different memo to HR. "Layoffs are your moment of truth," it would say, "when your company must show departing employees the same kind of attentiveness and dignity that was showered upon them when they entered. Layoffs are when HR proves its mettle and its worth, demonstrating whether a company really cares about its people. " Look, we've written before about HR and the game-changing role we believe it can--and should--play as the engine of an organization's hiring, appraisal, and development processes. We' ve asserted that too many companies relegate HR to the mundane busy-work of newsletters, picnics, and benefits, and we've made the case that every CEO should elevate his head of HR to the same stature as the CFO. But if there was ever a time to underscore the importance of HR, it has arrived. And, sadly, if there was ever a time to see how few companies get HR right, it has arrived, too, as our acquaintance's experience shows. So, to your question: What is HR's correct role now--especially in terms of layoffs? First, HR has to make sure people are let go by their managers, not strangers. Being fired is dehumanizing in any event, but to get the news from a "hired gun" only makes matters worse. That's why HR must ensure that managers accept their duty, which is to be in on the one conversation at work that must be personal. Pink slips should be delivered face-to-face, eyeball-to- eyeball. Second, HR's role is to serve as the company's arbiter of equity. Nothing raises hackles more during a layoff than the sense that some people--namely the loudmouths and the litigious--are getting better deals than others. HR can mitigate that dynamic by making sure across units and divisions that severance arrangements, if they exist, are appropriate and evenhanded. You simply don't want people to leave feeling as if they got you-know-what. They need to walk out saying. "At least I know I was treated fairly. " Finally, HR's role is to absorb pain In the hours and days after being let go, people need to vent, and it is HR's job to be completely available to console. At some point, an outplacement consultant can come into the mix to assist with a transition, but HR can never let "the departed" feel as if they' ve been sent to a leper colony. Someone connected to each let-go employe--either a colleague or HR staffer--should check in regularly. And not just to ask, "Is everything O. K. ?" but to listen to the answer with an open heart, and when appropriate, offer to serve as a reference to prospective employers. Three years ago, we wrote a column called, "So Many CEOs Get This Wrong," and while many letters supported our stance that too many companies undervalue HR, a significant minority pooh-poohed HR as irrelevant to the "real work" of business. Given the state of things, we wonder how those same HR-minimalists feel now. If their company is in crisis--or their own caree-- perhaps at last they've seen the light. HR matters enormously in good times. It defines you in the bad.

单选题{{B}} Directions:{{/B}}{{I}} In this part of the test there will be some short talks and conversations. After each one, you will be asked some questions. The talks, conversations and questions will be spoken ONLY ONCE. Now listen carefully and choose the right answer to each question you have heard and write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.{{/I}} {{B}}Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following conversation.{{/B}}

单选题{{B}} Directions: {{/B}}{{I}}In this section you will read several passages. Each one is followed by several questions about it. You are to choose ONE best answer, (A), (B), (C) or (D), 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 ANSWER BOOKLET.{{/I}} Everyday, science seems to chip away at our autonomy. When researchers aren't uncovering physical differences in the way men and women use their brains, they're asserting genetic influences on intelligence, sexual orientation, obesity or alcoholism. Or they're suggesting that the level of some brain chemical affects one's chances of committing violent crimes. Each new finding leaves the impression that nature is winning out over nurture—that biology is destiny and free will an illusion. But the nature-nurture dichotomy is itself an illusion. As many scholars are now realizing, everything we associate with "nurture" is at some level a product of our biology—and every aspect of our biology, from brain development to food preference, has been shaped by an environment. Asking whether nature or nurture is more important is like asking whether length or width is a better gauge of size. Darwin recognized more than 100 years ago that Homo sapiens evolved by the same process as every other species on earth. And philosophers such as William James were eager to apply Darwin's insights to human psychology. But during the first part of this century, the rise of "social Darwinism" (a non-Darwinian, sink-or-swim political philosophy) and late Nazi eugenics spawned a deep suspicion of biologically inspired social science. By 1954, anthropologist Ashley Montagu was declaring that mankind has "no instincts because everything he is and has becomes what she has learned, acquired, from his culture." The distinction between innate and acquired seems razor sharp, until you try slicing life with it. Consider the development of the brain. While gestating in the womb, a child develops some 50 trillion neurons. But those cells become functional only as they respond to outside stimuli. During the first year of life, the most frequently stimulated neurons form elaborate networks for processing information, while the others wither and die. You could say that our brains determine the structure of our brains. Social behavior follows the same principle. From the old nature-versus-nurture perspective, a tendency that isn't uniformly expressed in every part of the world must be "cultural" rather than "natural". But there is no reason to assume that a universal impulse would always find the same expression. As the evolutionists John Tooby and Leda Cosmildes have observed, biology can't dictate what language a child will speak, what games she'll feel guilty or jealous about. But it virtually guarantees that she'll do all of those things, whether she grows up in New Jersey or New Guinea. Biology, in short, doesn't determine exactly what we' Il do in life. It determines how different environments will affect us. And our biology is itself a record of the environments our ancestors encountered. Consider the sexes' different perceptual styles. Men tend to excel at spatial reasoning, women at spotting stationary objects and remembering their locations. Such discrepancies may have a biological basis, but researchers have traced the biology back to specific environmental pressures. Archeological findings suggest that men hunted, and women foraged, throughout vast stretches of revolutionary time. And psychologists Irwin Silverman and Marion Eals have noted that "tracking and killing animals entail different kinds of spatial problems than does foraging for edible plants."

单选题Which of the following best explains the sentence "That's not a black problem or a white problem: it's a British problem." in the last paragraph?

单选题 Question 27-30

单选题Questions 11～15 President Clinton"s decision on Apr. 8 to send Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji packing without an agreement on China"s entry into the World Trade Organization seemed to be a massive miscalculation. The President took a drubbing from much of the press, which had breathlessly reported that a deal was in the bag. The Cabinet and White House still appeared divided, and business leaders were characterized as furious over the lost opportunity. Zhu charged that Clinton lacked "the courage" to reach an accord. And when Clinton later telephoned the angry Zhu to pledge a renewed effort at negotiations, the gesture was widely portrayed as a flip-flop. In fact, Clinton made the right decision in holding out for a better WTO deal. A lot more horse trading is needed before a final agreement can be reached. And without the Administration"s goal of a " bullet-proof agreement" that business lobbyists can enthusiastically sell to a Republican Congress, the whole process will end up in partisan acrimony that could harm relations with China for years. THE HARD PART. Many business lobbyists, while disappointed that the deal was not closed, agree that better terms can still be had. And Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, National Economic Council Director Gene B. Sperling, Commerce Secretary William M. Daley, and top trade negotiator Charlene Barshefsky all advised Clinton that while the Chinese had made a remarkable number of concessions, "we"re not there yet," according to senior officials. Negotiating with Zhu over the remaining issues may be the easy part. Although Clinton can signal U. S. approval for China"s entry into the WTO himself, he needs Congress to grant Beijing permanent most-favored-nation status as part of a broad trade accord. And the temptation for meddling on Capital Hill may prove over-whelming. Zhu had barely landed before Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss) declared himself skeptical that China deserved entry into the WTO. And Senators Jesse A.Helms (R-N.C.) and Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) promised to introduce a bill requiring congressional approval of any deal. The hidden message from these three textile-state Southerners. Get more protection for the U.S. clothing industry. Hoping to smooth the way, the Administration tried, but failed, to budge Zhu on textiles. Also left in the lurch. Wall Street, Hollywood, and Detroit. Zhu refused to open up much of the lucrative Chinese securities market and insisted on "cultural" restrictions on American movies and music. He also blocked efforts to allow U. S. auto makers to provide fleet financing. BIG JOB. Already, business lobbyists are blanketing Capitol Hill to presale any eventual agreement, but what they"ve heard so far isn"t encouraging. Republicans, including Lott, say that "the time just isn"t right" for the deal. Translation: We"re determined to make it look as if Clinton has capitulated to the Chinese and is ignoring human, religious, and labor rights violations; the theft of nuclear-weapons technology; and the sale of missile parts to America"s enemies. Beijing"s fierce critics within the Democratic Party, such as Senator PaulD.Wellstone of Minnesota and House Minority leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, won"t help, either. Just how tough the lobbying job on Capitol Hill will be become clear on Apr. 20, when Rubin lectured 19 chief executives on the need to discipline their Republican allies. With business and the White House still trading charges over who is responsible for the defeat of fast-track trade negotiating legislation in 1997, working together won"t be easy. And Republicans—with a wink— say that they"ll eventually embrace China"s entry into the WTO as a favor to Corporate America, though not long before they torture Clinton. But Zhu is out on a limb, and if Congress overdoes the criticism, he may be forced by domestic critics to renege. Business must make this much dear to both its GOP allies and the White House. This historic deal is too important to risk losing to any more partisan squabbling.

单选题Questions 11～15 "Museum" is a slippery word. It first meant in Greek anything consecrated to the Muses: a hill, a shrine, a garden, a festival or even a textbook. Both Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum had a mouseion, a muses' shrine. Although the Greeks already collected detached works of art, many temples—notably that of Hera at Olympia (before which the Olympic flame is still lit)—had collections of objects, some of which were works of art by well-known masters, while paintings and sculptures in the Alexandrian Museum were incidental to its main purpose. The Romans also collected and exhibited art from disbanded temples, as well as mineral specimens, exotic plants, animals; and they plundered sculptures and paintings (mostly Greek) for exhibition. Meanwhile, the Greek word had slipped into Latin by transliteration (though not to signify picture galleries, which were called pinacothecae) and museum still more or less meant "Muses' shrine". The inspirational collections of precious and semi-precious objects were kept in larger churches and monasteries—which focused on the gold-enshrined, bejeweled relics of saints and martyrs. Princes, and later merchants, had similar collections, which became the deposits of natural curiosities: large lumps of amber or coral, irregular pearls, unicorn horns, ostrich eggs, fossil bones and so on. They also included coins and gems—often antique engraved ones—as well as, increasingly, paintings and sculptures. As they multiplied and expanded, to supplement them, the skill of the fakers grew increasingly refined. At the same time, visitors could admire the very grandest paintings and sculptures in the churches, palaces and castles; they were not "collected" either, but "site-specific", and were considered an integral part both of the fabric of the buildings and of the way of life which went on inside them—and most of the buildings were public ones. However, during the revival of antiquity in the fifteenth century, fragments of antique sculpture were given higher status than the work of any contemporary, so that displays of antiquities would inspire artists to imitation, or even better, to emulation; and so could be considered Muses' shrines in the former sense. The Medici garden near San Marco in Florence, the Belvedere and the Capitol in Rome were the most famous of such early "inspirational" collections. Soon they multiplied, and, gradually, exemplary "modern" works were also added to such galleries. In the seventeenth century, scientific and prestige collecting became so widespread that three or four collectors independently published directories to museums all over the known world. But it was the age of revolutions and industry which produced the next sharp shift in the way the institution was perceived: the fury against royal and church monuments prompted antiquarians to shelter them in asylum-galleries, of which the Musée des Monuments Francais was the most famous. Then, in the first half of the nineteenth century, museum funding took off, allied to the rise of new wealth. London acquired the National Gallery and the British Museum, the Louvre was organized, the Museum-Insel was begun in Berlin, and the Munich galleries were built. In Vienna, the huge Kunsthistorisches and Naturhistorisches Museum took over much of the imperial treasure. Meanwhile, the decline of craftsmanship (and of public taste with it) inspired the creation of "improving" collections. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London was the most famous, as well as perhaps the largest of them.

单选题Questions 11-14

单选题In even the bleakest climate change scenarios for the end of this century, science has offered hope that global warming would eventually slow down. But a new study published Monday snuffs out such hope, projecting temperatures that rise with carbon emissions until the last drops of oil and lumps of coal are used up. Global temperatures will increase on average by 8℃ (14.4℉) over pre-industrial levels by 2300 if aI1 of Earth"s fossil fuel resources are burned, adding five trillion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere, according to the research by Canadian scientists published in Nature Climate Change. In the Arctic, average temperatures would rise by 17℃ (30.6℉). Those conclusions are several degrees warmer than previous studies have projected. If these temperatures do become reality, greenhouse gases would transform Earth into a place where food is scarce, parts of the world are uninhabitable for humans, and many species of animals and plants are wiped out, experts say. "It would be as unrecognizable to us as a fully glaciated world," says Myles Allen, head of a climate dynamics group at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Allen was not involved in the new study, but his research has focused on carbon"s cumulative impacts on climate. Noting that it took less warming, 6℃ (10.8℉), to lift the world out of the Ice Age, Allen said, "That"s the profundity of the change we"re talking about." The 8-degree rise in global temperatures would blast past the 2℃ (3.8℉) limit that nations agreed upon last year in the Paris talks. It also would heat the world to a level approaching that of the early Eocene Period, 52 million to 56 million years ago, when palm trees grew as far north as Alaska? and crocodiles swam in the Arctic. Mammals survived Eocene temperatures; this is when early primates appeared. Some horses, however, shrank to the size of house cats, adjusting through evolution to a diet altered either by heat or carbon. Today"s organisms and ecosystems may not be able to adapt to warming over the next 200 to 300 years—an instant on the geological time scale, says Scott Wing, the Smithsonian Institution"s curator of fossil plants. Also, Wing notes that when the Eocene heat began, the Earth"s poles weren"t covered with ice as they are today. "In the future, warming will melt ice caps, which will expose bare ground, increase heat absorption at high latitudes, and cause more warming," Wing says. The study predicts that precipitation would quadruple in the tropical Pacific, while it would be reduced by up to third in the Americas and a factor of two over parts of Australia, the Mediterranean, southern Africa, and the Amazon. Allen says not only could tropical rain forest systems collapse, but drought in southern Europe and the United States would be "completely catastrophic for agriculture." Wealthy nations might maintain food supply, but not places like southern Africa. "A lot of people would have to leave, or a lot of people would die," Allen says.

单选题Directions: Directions: In this part of the test, you will hear several short statements. These statements will be spoken ONLY ONCE, and you will not find them written on the paper ; so you must listen carefully. When you hear a statement, read the answer choices and decide which one is closest in meaning to the statement you have heard. Then write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.