单选题However attractive the figures may look on paper, in the long run the success or failure of a merger depends on the human factor. When the agreement has been signed and the accountants have departed, the real problems may only just be beginning. If there is a culture clash between the two companies in the way their people work, then all the efforts of the financiers and lawyers to strike a deal may have been in vain. According to Chris Bolton of KS Management Consultants, 70% of mergers fail to live up to their promise of shareholder value, not through any failure in economic terms but because the integration of people is unsuccessful. Corporates, he explains, concentrate their efforts before a merger on legal, technical and financial matters. They employ a range of experts to obtain the most favourable contract possible. But even at these early stages, people issues must be taken into consideration. The strengths and weaknesses of both organisations should be assessed and, if it is a merger of equals, then careful thought should be given to which personnel, from which side, should take on the key roles. This was the issue in 2001 when the proposed merger between two pharmaceutical companies promised to create one of the largest players in the industry. For both companies the merger was intended to reverse falling market share and shareholder value. However, although the companies" skill bases were compatible, the chief executives of the two companies could not agree which of them was to head up the new organisation. This illustrates the need to compromise if a merger is to take place. But even in mergers that do go ahead, there can be culture clashes. One way to avoid this is to work with focus groups to see how employees view the existing culture of their organisation. In one example, where two global organisations in the food sector were planning to merge, focus groups discovered that the companies displayed very different profiles. One was sales-focused, knew exactly what it wanted to achieve and pushed initiatives through. The other got involved in lengthy discussions, trying out options methodically and making contingency plans. The first responded quickly to changes in the marketplace; the second took longer, but the option it eventually chose was usually the correct one. Neither company"s approach would have worked for the other. The answer is not to adopt one company"s approach, or even to try to incorporate every aspect of both organisations, but to create a totally new culture. This means taking the best from both sides and making a new organisation that everyone can accept. Or almost everyone. Inevitably there will be those who cannot adapt to a different culture. Research into the impact of mergers has found that companies with differing management styles are the ones that need to work hardest at creating a new culture. Another tool that can help to get the right cultural mix is intercultural analysis. This involves carrying out research that looks at the culture of a company and the business culture of the country in which it is based. It identifies how people, money and time are managed in a company, and investigates the business customs of the country and how its politics, economics and history impact on the way business is done.

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单选题Directions: In this part of the test, you will hear several short talks and conversations. After each of these, you will hear a few questions. Listen carefully because you will hear the talk or conversation and questions ONLY ONCE. When you hear a question read the four answer choices and choose the best answer to that question. Then write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET. Questions 11-14

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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 {{B}}Questions 19-22{{/B}}

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单选题A new golden age of cartography has suddenly dawned, everywhere. We can all be mapmakers now, navigating across a landscape of ideas that the cartographers of the past could never have imagined. Maps were once the preserve of an elite, an expression of power, control and, latterly, of minute scientific measurement. Today map-making has been democratised by the internet, where digital technology is spawning an astonishing array of maps, reflecting an infinite variety of interests and concerns, some beautiful, some political and some extremely odd. If the Budget has made you feel gloomy, you can log on to a map that will tell you just how depressed you and the rest of the world are feeling. For more than two years, the makers of wefeelfine, org have harvested feelings from a wide variety of personal blogs and then projected these on to the globe. How happy are they in Happy Valley? How grim is Grimsby? You can find out. Where maps once described mountains, forests and rivers, now they depict the contours of human existence from quite different perspectives: maps showing the incidence of UFOs, speed cameras or the density of doctors in any part of the world. A remarkable new map reflects global telephone usage as it happens, starkly illustrating the technological gap between, say, New York and Nairobi. Almost any measurable human activity can be projected, using a computer "mash-up". A new online map called whoissick, org allows American hypochondriacs to track who is ill with what and where at any given moment. A hilarious disclaimer adds. "whoissick is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice. " The new generation of amateur map-makers are doing for the traditional atlas what Wikipedia has already done to the encyclopaedia, adding layers of new information, some fascinating and useful, much that is pointless and misleading, and almost all from personal perspectives. The new digital geography marks a return to an earlier form of cartography, when maps were designed to reveal the world through a particular prism. The earliest maps each told a story framed by politics, culture and belief. Ancient Greeks painted maps depicting unknown lands and strange creatures beyond the known world. Early Christian maps placed Jerusalem at the middle of the world. British imperial maps showed the great advance of pink colonialism spreading outwards from our tiny islands at the centre. Maps were used to settle scores and score points, just as they are today. When Jesuit map-makers drew up a chart of the Moon's surface in 1651, craters named after heretical scientists such as Copernicus and Galileo were dumped in the Sea of Storms, while more acceptable thinkers were allowed to float in the Sea of Tranquility. The 19th century heralded a more scientific approach to map-making; much of the artistry and symbolism was stripped away to create a two-dimensional representation of three-dimensional reality. Maps became much more accurate, but less imaginative and culturally revealing. The boom in amateur mapping, by contrast, marks a return to the earlier way of imagining the world when maps were used to tell stories and impose ideas, to interpret the world and not simply to describe its physical character. New maps showing how to avoid surveillance cameras, or the routes taken by CIA planes carrying terrorist suspects on "extraordinary rendition", are political statements rather then geographical descriptions. The earliest maps were also philosophical guides. They showed what was important and what was peripheral and what might be imagined beyond the edges of the known. A stunning tapestry map of the Midlands made around the time of Shakespeare and recently rediscovered, depicts forests, churches and the houses of the most powerful families, yet not a single road. It does not purport to show a physical landscape, but a mental one. Maps have always tried to show where we are, literally or philosophically. The explosion of online mapping, however, offers something even broader, a set of maps that combine to express individual personality. Oscar Wilde wrote that "a map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. " If Utopia means knowing where you fit in your own world—knowing how many UFOs hover above you, how much graffiti has appeared overnight, how happy your next-door neighbour is and whether he is likely to have picked up anything contagious—then humanity may finally have a map showing how to get there.

单选题 Questions 6～10 Despite Denmark's manifest virtues, Danes never talk about how proud they are to be Danes. This would sound weird in Danish. When Danes talk to foreigners about Denmark, they always begin by commenting on its tininess, its unimportance, the difficulty of its language, the general small-mindedness and self-indulgence of their countrymen and the high taxes. No Dane would look you in the eye and say "Denmark is a great country". You are supposed to figure this out for yourself. It is the land of the silk safety net, where almost half the national budget goes toward smoothing out life's inequalities, and there is plenty of money for schools, day care, retraining programs, job seminars—Danes love seminar, three days at a study center hearing about waste management is almost as good as a ski trip. It is a culture bombarded by English, in advertising, pop music, the Internet, and despite all the English that Danish absorbs—there is no Danish Academy to defend against it—old dialects persist in Jutland that can barely be understood by Copenhageners. It is the land where, as the saying goes, "Few have too much and fewer have too little", and a foreigner is struck by the sweet egalitarianism that prevails, where the lowliest clerk gives you a level gaze, where Sir and Madame have disappeared from common usage, even Mr. and Mrs. It's a nation of recyclers—bout 55% of Danish garbage gets made into something new—and no nuclear power plants. It's a nation of tireless planners. Trains run on time. Things operate well in general. Such a nation of overachievers—a brochure from the Ministry of Business and Industry says, "Denmark is one of the world's cleanest and most organized countries, with virtually no pollution, crime, or poverty. Denmark is the most corruption-free society in the Northern Hemisphere." So, of course, one's heart lifts at any sighting of Danish sleaze, skinhead graffiti on buildings ("Foreigners out of Denmark!"), broken beer bottles in the gutters, drunken teenagers slumped in the park. Nonetheless, it is an orderly land. You drive through a Danish town, it comes to an end at a stone wall, and on the other side is a field of barley, a nice clean line. town here, country there. It is not a nation of jaywalkers. People stand on the curb and wait for the red light to change, even if it's 2 a.m. and there's not a car in sight. However, Danes don't think of themselves as a waiting-at-2-a, m. -for-the-green-light people-that is how they see Swedes and Germans. Danes see themselves as jazzy people, improvisers, more free spirited than Swedes, but the truth is (though one should not say it) that Danes are very much like Germans and Swedes. Orderliness is a main selling point. Denmark has few natural resources, limited manufacturing capability; its future in Europe will be as a broker, banker, and distributor of goods. You send your goods by container ship to Copenhagen, and these bright, young, English-speaking, utterly honest, highly disciplined people will get your goods around to Scandinavia, the Baltic States, and Russia. Airports, seaport, highways, and rail lines are ultramodern and well-maintained. The orderliness of the society doesn't mean that Danish lives are less messy or lonely than yours or mine, and no Dane would tell you so. You can hear plenty about bitter family feuds and the sorrows of alcoholism and about perfectly sensible people who went off one day and killed themselves. An orderly society can not exempt its members from the hazards of life. But there is a sense of entitlement and security that Danes grow up with. Certain things are yours by virtue of citizenship, and you shouldn't feel bad for taking what you have entitled to, you are as good as anyone else. The rules of the welfare system are clear to everyone, the benefits you get if you lose your job, the steps you take to get a new one; and the orderliness of the system makes it possible for the country to weather high unemployment and social unrest without a sense of crisis.

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单选题Questions 11 to 15 are based on the following interview.

单选题A.Apieceofjewellerythatyouwearonyourfinger.B.Anobjectintheshapeofacircle.C.Thesoundmadebyabellortheactofmakingthissound.D.Asmallsquareareasurroundedbyropes,wherepeopleboxorwrestle.

单选题All living cells on earth require moisture for their metabolism. Cereal grains when brought in from the field, although they may appear to be dry, may contain 20 per cent of moisture or more. If they are stored in a bin, there is sufficient moisture in them to support several varieties of insects. These insects will, therefore, live and breed and, as they grow and eat the grain, it provides them with biological energy for their life processes. This energy will, just as in man, become manifest as heat. Since the bulk of the grain acts as an insulator, the temperature surrounding the colony of insects will rise so that, not only is part of the grain spoiled by the direct attack of the insects but more may be damaged by the heat. Sometimes, the temperature may even rise to the point where the stored grain catches fire. For safe storage, grain must be dried until its moisture content is 13 per cent or less. The direct drying of other foods has also been used. Fish has been dried in many parts of the world besides Africa. Slices of dried meat are prepared by numerous races. Biltong, a form of dried meat, was a customary food for travelers. The drying of meat or fish, either in the sun or over a fire, quite apart from the degree to which it exposes the food to infection by bacteria and infestation by insects, tends also to harm its quality. Proteins are complex molecular structures which are readily disrupted. This is the reason why dried meat becomes tough and can, with some scientific justification, be likened to leather. The technical process of drying foods indirectly by pickling them in the strong salt solutions commonly called "brine" does less harm to the protein than straightforward drying, particularly if this is carried out at high temperatures. It is for this reason that many of the typical drying processes are not taken to completion. That is to say, the outer parts may be dried leaving a moist inner section. Under these circumstances, preservation is only partial. The dried food keeps longer than it would have undried but it cannot be kept indefinitely. For this reason, traditional processes are to be found in many parts of the world in which a combination of partial drying and pickling in brine is used. Quite often the drying involves exposure to smoke. Foods treated in this way are, besides fish of various sorts, bacon, hams and numerous types of sausages.

单选题A.Thechairmansignaledhisassistanttocrossthestreetatthetrafficlights.B.TheassistantdevelopedthenewkindofDVDhomecinemasystemwithacompany.C.Thechairmansuddenlygotanideaofdevelopingnewhomecinemasystem.D.Theassistantgotthepermissiontogoaheadwiththecooperationwiththatcompany.

单选题Questions 23-26

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

单选题A good marriage is good for the heart, according to new research supported by the Heart and Stroke Foundation. "There's little question that a harmonious state of matrimony gives a healthy edge when it comes to medical matters of the heart," says Dr. Brian Baker, Heart and Stroke Foundation researcher. But he doesn't prescribe wedding bells for his patients because, as he points out, not all marriages are happy. The study is being presented today at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress 2001, hosted by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society. The three-year study included 118 men and women with mild high blood pressure (hypertension). One third of the participants were women, two thirds were men. All were married, although there were no spousal couples in the study. At the beginning and the end of the three-year study, participants completed a questionnaire designed to measure how happy or unhappy—they were in their marriages. They also had their blood pressure measured, and underwent echocardiography to measure their hearts. "People with thicker heart walls tend to have higher blood pressure. Thinner heart walls indicate lower blood pressure," explains Dr. Baker, a psychiatrist specializing in cardiovascular medicine. For one 24-hour period the participants wore a device that monitored the daily fluctuations of their blood pressure while they went about their normal working lives. In the group whose marriages were under strain, heart wall thickness increased by an average of 8%. In the group who defined themselves as happily married, heart wall thickness actually decreased 5%. Also the unhappily married group showed higher mean blood pressures both over the 24-hour monitoring and over the entire three year period. "In a marriage that is not under strain, commitment and satisfaction are higher," says Dr. Baker. "But, in order to get the cardio protective effect, you have to have lots of contact. We found that when you have both satisfaction and are able to spend time together, then the blood pressure goes down. In a good marriage you spend more time together. Those people who felt they had strong marital support spent nearly twice as much time with their partners." "When the marriage is in trouble, you tend to avoid your partner." Such a marriage appears to encourage high blood pressure and unhealthy lifestyles, risk factors for heart disease and stroke. Dr. Anthony Graham, spokesperson for the Heart and Stroke Foundation says, "This study adds to the growing body of evidence indicating that there is a physiological dimension to unhappiness and stress. Living well should mean more than just physical fitness, important though that is. Feeling good about yourself and your relationships may also be good medicine./

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

单选题Somewhere in astronomer heaven, Percival Lowell must be smiling. A century after Lowell trained his telescope on Mars and claimed he saw canals built by intelligent beings, scientists are once again in the grip of the Red Planet"s most seductive mystery—the possibility that life has existed there. Did a microscopic race of Martians leave their traces inside a potato-size rock that fell on Antarctica 13,000 years ago? Even as a new wave of Mars exploration begins this month— NASA"s Mars Pathfinder lander arrives on July 4—researchers on Earth have begun a massive effort to answer that question, which has become one of the most controversial in science. No doubt Lowell, whose name has come to be synonymous with scientific wishful thinking, would want to know how it all turns out. So will the hundreds of researchers who gathered in March at NASA"s Johnson Space Center near Houston to attend the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Presentations at the meeting usually concern such topics as ancient lunar volcanism, or the icy satellites of Jupiter, or the surface composition of a distant asteroid. The subject of extraterrestrial life is rarely mentioned. This year, however, the star of the conference was the meteorite officially designated ALH84001: No less than 37 papers were devoted to it, and to the claims by a research team led by the space center"s Dave McKay that the rock contains signs of ancient martian microbes. The first reports of those claims last August jolted the small community of meteorite researchers. Some feared they were about to witness a scientific fiasco that would capsize not just the McKay team"s careers, but their own. "We"re all very dependent upon NASA," explains Alan Treiman of Houston"s Lunar and Planetary Institute. "I was really worried that if this turned out to be (similar to the controversy over) cold fusion, that NASA was going to go down in disgrace. And that we were going to go with it." But it soon became clear that the debate about ALH84001 bears no resemblance to the one that sank cold fusion. Indeed, the McKay team"s report in the journal Science won high praise from such respected scientists as Edward Anders, a University of Chicago professor who is considered the dean of meteorite science. He wrote that the work "sets a new standard for the study for the extraterrestrial materials." At the same time, Anders and others have been critical to the way the McKay team interprets the three things it saw: first, molecules called PAHs (short for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), which McKay and his colleagues believe were formed from the decay of simple organic matter; second, tiny crystals of iron oxide and iron sulfide, which the team says are identical to grains secreted by certain types of terrestrial bacteria; and finally oblong structures that the team tentatively calls fossil "nanobacteria." The strongly worded conclusion of the McKay team"s report—that although each individual finding can be explained nonbiologically, taken together they represent compelling evidence for fossil life—strikes many scientists as wildly overreaching. UCLA"s William Schopf, who pioneered the study of fossil bacteria on Earth, an effort fraught with false alarms, has summed up the attitude of many skeptics with a quote from Carl Sagan: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Gathering evidence from ALH84001 has required a technological assault that Percival Lowell could never have imagined. Using electron microscopes and other state-of-the-art instruments, scientists have analyzed chips the size of rice grains, examining features measured in billionths of a meter (nanometers). At that scale, says McKay team member Chris Romanek of the University of Georgia, touring ALH84001 is "like walking in a jungle." Says the University of Tennesee"s Harry McSween: "This is a complex rock. After all, it"s 4.5 billion years old, and it"s resided on more than one planet." Furthermore, the mixture of geological and biological questions has required the expertise of researchers in a host of specialties, within and outside planetary science, who have devoted much of the past year to the effort. That is to say that everything in the life-on-Mars debate has gone according to scientific discipline. Emotions have run high in this controversy, a fact that doesn"t surprise science historian Steven Dick of the U. S. Naval Observatory. The notion of extraterrestrial life is more than just a theory, Dick says; it is the cornerstone of a new cosmology, every bit as much as Copernicus" declaration that Earth goes around the sun. "It has to do with our place in the universe," Dick explains, "and that"s why it"s so passionate."