单选题The article can be classified as one of

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单选题What is money? That is not so simple a question as might appear. In fact, money can only be defined in terms of the functions it performs—that is, by the need it fulfills. As Sir Ralph Hawtrey once noted, "Money is one of those concepts which, like a teaspoon or an umbrella, but unlike an earthquake or a buttercup, are definable primarily by the use or purpose which they serve." Money is anything, regardless of its physical or legal characteristics, that customarily and principally performs certain functions. Three such functions are usually specified, corresponding to the three basic needs served by money—the need for a medium of exchange, the need for a unit of account, and the need for a store of value. Most familiar is the first, the function of a medium of exchange, whereby goods and services are paid for and contractual obligations discharged. In performing this role the key attribute of money is general acceptability in the settlement of debt. The second function of money, that of a unit of account, is to provide a medium of information—a common denominator or numeraire in which goods and services may be valued and debts expressed. In performing this role money is said to be a "standard of value" or "measure of value" in valuing goods and services and a "standard of deferred payment" in expressing debts. The third function of money, that of a store of value, is to provide a means of holding wealth. The development of money was one of the most important steps in the evolution of human society, comparable in the words of one writer "with the domestication of animals, the cultivation of the land, and the harnessing of power". Before money there was only barter, the archetypical economic transaction, which required an inverse double coincidence of wants in order for exchange to occur. The two parties to any transaction each had to desire what the other was prepared to offer. This was an obviously inefficient system of exchange since large amounts of time had to be devoted to the necessary process of search and bargaining. Under even the most elemental circumstances barter was unlikely to exhaust all opportunities for advantageous trade. Bartering is costly in ways too numerous to discuss. Among others, bartering requires an expenditure of time and the use of specialized skills necessary for judging the commodities that are being exchanged. The more advanced the specialization in production and the more complex the economy, the costlier it will be to undertake all the transactions necessary to make any given good reach its ultimate user by using barter. The introduction of generalized exchange intermediaries cut the Gordian knot of barter by decomposing the single transaction of sale and purchase, thereby obviating the need for a double coincidence of wants. This served to facilitate multilateral exchange; the costs of transactions reduced, exchange ratios could be more efficiently equated with the demand and supply of goods and services. Consequently, specialization in production was promoted and the advantages of economic division of labor became attainable all because of the development of money. The usefulness of money is inversely proportional to the number of currencies in circulation. The greater the number of currencies, the less is any single money able to perform efficiently as a lubricant to improve resource allocation and reduce transaction costs. Diseconomies remain because of the need for multiple price quotations (diminishing the information savings derived from money"s role as unit of account) and for frequent currency conversions (diminishing the stability and predictability of purchasing power derived from money"s roles as medium of exchange and store of value). In all national societies there has been a clear historical tendency to limit the number of currencies, and eventually to standardize the domestic money on just a single currency issued and managed by the national authorities. The result has been a minimization of total transaction costs within nation-states. Between nation-states, however, costs or transactions remain relatively high because the number of currencies remains high. Does this suggest that global efficiency would be maximized if the number of currencies in the world were minimized? Is this the optimal organizational principle for international monetary relations? Not necessarily. It is true that total transaction costs, other things being equal, could be minimized by standardizing on just a single global money. "On the basis of the criterion of maximizing the usefulness of money, we should have a single world currency." But there are other criteria of judgment as well. Economic efficiency, as I have indicated, is a multi-variate concept. And we shall soon see that the costs of a single world currency or its equivalent, taking full account of both the single microeconomic benefit of lower transaction costs.

单选题Questions 1 to 4 are based on the following talk.

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单选题It will be quite a long time ______ she is back again, so don't be too cross with her. A. that B. since C. before D. until

单选题 Questions 16～20 The Welsh language has always been the ultimate marker of Welsh identity, but a generation ago it looked as if Welsh would go the way of Manx, once widely spoken on the Isle of Man but now extinct. Government's financing and central planning, however, have helped reverse the decline of Welsh. Road signs and official public documents are written in both Welsh and English, and schoolchildren are required to learn both languages. Welsh is now one of the most successful of Europe's regional languages, spoken by more than a hail-million of the country's three million people. The revival of the language, particularly among young people, is part of a resurgence of national identity sweeping through this small, proud nation. Last month Wales marked the second anniversary of the opening of the National Assembly, the first parliament to be convened here since 1404. The idea behind devolution was to restore the balance within the union of nations making up the United Kingdom. With most of the people and wealth, England has always had bragging rights. The partial transfer of legislative powers from Westminster, implemented by Tony Blair, was designed to give the other members of the club—Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales—a bigger say and to counter centrifugal forces that seemed to threaten the very idea of the union. The Welsh showed little enthusiasm for devolution. Whereas the Scots voted overwhelmingly for a parliament, the vote for a Welsh assembly scraped through by less than one percent on a turnout of less than 25 percent. Its powers were proportionately limited. The Assembly can decide how money from Westminster or the European Union is spent. It cannot, unlike its counterpart in Edinburgh, enact laws. But now that it is here, the Welsh are growing to like their Assembly. Many people would like it to have more powers. Its importance as figurehead will grow with the opening in 2003, of a new debating chamber, one of many new buildings that are transforming Cardiff from a decaying seaport into a Baltimore-style waterfront city. Meanwhile a grant of nearly two million dollars from the European Union will tackle poverty. Wales is one of the poorest regions in Western Europe—only Spain, Portugal, and Greece have a lower standard of living. Newspapers and magazines are filled with stories about great Welsh men and women, boosting self-esteem. To familiar faces such as Dylan Thomas and Richard Burton have been added new icons such as Catherine Zeta-Jones, the movie star, and Bryn Terfel, the opera singer. Indigenous foods like salt marsh lamb are in vogue. And Wales now boasts a national airline. Awyr Cymru. Cymru, which means "land of compatriots," is the Welsh name for Wales. The red dragon, the nation's symbol since the time of King Arthur, is everywhere-on T-shirts, rugby jerseys and even cell phone covers. "Until very recent times most Welsh people had this feeling of being second-class citizens," said Dyfan Jones, an 18-year-old student. It was a warm summer night, and I was sitting on the grass with a group of young people in Llanelli, an industrial town in the south, outside the rock music venue of the National Eisteddfod, Wales's annual cultural festival. The disused factory in front of us echoed to the sounds of new Welsh bands. "There was almost a genetic tendency for lack of confidence," Dyfan continued. Equally comfortable in his Welshness as in his membership in the English-speaking, global youth culture and the new federal Europe, Dyfan, like the rest of his generation, is growing up with a sense of possibility unimaginable ten years ago. "We used to think. We can't do anything, we're only Welsh. Now I think that's changing. "

单选题Life expectancy in the richest countries of the world now exceeds the poorest by more than 30 years, figures show. The gap is widening across the world, with Western countries and the growing economies of Latin America and the Far East advancing more rapidly than Africa and the countries of the former Soviet Union. Average life expectancy in Britain and similar countries of the OECD was 78.8 in 2000-2005, an increase of more than seven years since 1970-1975 and almost 30 years over the past century. In sub-Saharan Africa, life expectancy has increased by just four months since 1970, to 46.1 years. Narrowing this "health gap" will involve going beyond the immediate causes of disease-poverty, poor sanitation and infection—to tackle the "causes of the causes" —the social hierarchies in which people live, says the report published by the Global Commission on the Social Determinants of Health established by the WHO in 2005. Professor Sir Michael Marmot, chairman of the commission, who first coined the term "status syndrome", said social status was the key to tackling health inequalities worldwide. In the 1980s, in a series of ground-breaking studies among Whitehall civil servants, Professor Marmot showed that the risk of death among those on the lower rungs of the career ladder was four times higher than those at the top, and that the difference was linked with the degree of control the individuals had over their lives. He said yesterday that the same rule applied in poorer countries. If people increased their status and gained more control over their lives they improved their health because they were less vulnerable to the economic and environmental threats. "When people think about those in poor countries they tend to think about poverty, lack of housing, sanitation and exposure to infectious disease. But there is another issue, the social gradient in health which I called status syndrome. It is not just those at the bottom of the hierarchy who have worse health; it is all the way along the scale. Those second from the bottom have worse health than those above them but better health than those below." The interim report of the commission, in the online edition of The Lancet, says the effects of status syndrome extend from the bottom to the top of the hierarchy, with Swedish adults holding a PhD having a lower death rate than those with a master's degree. The study says.. "The gradient is a worldwide occurrence, seen in low-income, middle-income and high- income countries. It means we are all implicated. " The result is that even within rich countries such as Britain there are striking inequalities in life expectancy. The poorest men in Glasgow have a life expectancy of 54, lower than the average in India. The answer, the report says, is empowerment, of individuals, communities and whole countries. "Technical and medical solutions such as medical care are without doubt necessary. But they are insufficient." Professor Marmot said: "We talk about three kinds of empowerment. If people don't have the material necessities, they cannot be empowered. The second kind is psycho-social empowerment: more control over their lives. The third is political empowerment, having a voice." The commission's final report, to be published soon, will identify the ill effects of low status and make recommendations for how they can be tackled. In Britain a century ago, infant mortality among the rich was about 100 per 1,000 live births compared with 250 per 1, 000 among the poor. Infant mortality is still twice as high among the poor in Britain, but the rates have come down dramatically to 7 per 1,000 among the poor and 3.5 among the rich. Professor Marmot said: "We have made dramatic progress, but this is not about abolishing the rankings, but by identifying the ill effects of hierarchies we can make huge improvement./

单选题Questions 27～30

单选题 {{B}}Questions 15—18{{/B}}

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

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

单选题In Para. 1, Frank J. Scott's observation implies that nature ______.

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单选题Questions 1-5 Proxemics is the study of what governs how closely one person stands to another. People who feel close will be close, though the actual distances will vary between cultures. For Americans we can discern four main categories of distance: intimate, personal, social and public. Intimate ranges from direct contact to about 45 centimeters. This is for the closest relationships such as those between husband and wife. Beyond this comes personal distance. This stands at between 45 and 80 centimeters. It is the most usual distance maintained for conversations between friends and relatives. Social distance covers people who work together or are meeting at social gatherings. Distances here tend to be kept between 1.30 to 2 meters. Beyond this comes public distance, such as that between a lecturer and his audience. All cultures draw lines between what is an appropriate and what is an inappropriate social distance for different types of relationship. They differ, however, in where they draw these lines. Look at an international reception with representatives from the US and Arabic countries conversing and you will see the Americans pirouetting backwards around the hall pursued by their Arab partners. The Americans will be trying to keep the distance between themselves and their partners which they have grown used to regarding as "normal". They probably will not even notice themselves trying to adjust the distance between themselves and their partners, though they may have vague feeling that their Arab neighbors are being a bit "pushy". The Arab, on the other hand, coming from a culture where much closer distance is the norm, may be feeling that the Americans are being "stand-offish". Finding themselves happier standing close to and even touching those they are in conversation with they will persistently pursue the Americans round the room trying to close the distance between them. The appropriateness of physcal contact varies between different cultures too. One study of the number of times people conversing in coffee shops over a one hour period showed the following interesting variations: London, 0; Florida, 2; Paris, 10; and Puerto Rico 180. Not only does it vary between societies, however, it also varies between different subcultures within one society. Young people in Britain, for example, are more likely to touch and hug friends than are the older generation. This may be partly a matter of growing older, but it also reflects the fact that the older generation grew up at a time when touching was less common for all age groups. Forty years ago, for example, footballers would never hug and kiss one another on the field after a goal as they do today.

单选题Paragraph 4 discusses: ______.

单选题In a culture in which organ transplants, life-extension machinery, microsurgery, and artificial organs have entered everyday medicine, we seem to be on the verge of realization of the seventeenth century European view of the body as a machine. But if we seem to have realized that conception, it can also be argued that we have in a sense turned it inside out. In the seventeenth century machine imagery reinforced the notion of the human body as a totally determined mechanism whose basic functionings the human being is helpless to alter. The then—dominant metaphors for this body—locks, watches, collections of springs—imagined a system that is set, wound up, whether by nature or God the watchmaker, ticking away in a predictable, orderly manner, regulated by laws over which the human being has no control. Understanding the system, we can help it perform efficiently and intervene when it malfunctions, but we cannot radically alter the configuration of things. Western science and technology have now arrived, paradoxically but predictably (for it was a submerged, illicit element in the mechanistic conception all along), at a new, postmodern conception of human freedom from bodily determination. Gradually and surely, a technology that was first aimed at the replacement of malfunctioning parts has generated an industry and a value system fueled by fantasies of rearranging, transforming, and correcting, an ideology of limitless improvement and change, defying the historicity, the mortality, and indeed the very materiality of the body. In place of that materiality, we now have what I call "cultural plastic." In place of God the watchmaker, we now have ourselves, the master sculptors of that plastic. "Create a masterpiece: sculpt your body into a work of art," urges Fit magazine. "You visualize what you want to look like, and then you create that form." The precision technology of body sculpting, once the secret of the Arnold Schwarzeneggers and Rachel McLishes of the professional bodybuilding world, has now become available to anyone who can afford the price of membership in a health club. On the medical front, plastic surgery, whose repeated and purely cosmetic employment has been legitimated by popular music and film personalities, has become a fabulously expanding industry, extending its domain from nose jobs, face lifts, and tummy tucks to collagen-plumped lips and liposuction-shaped ankles and calves. In 1989, 681,00O procedures were done, up by 80 percent since 1981; over half of these were performed on patients between the ages of 18 and 35. The trendy Details magazine described such procedures as just "another fabulous (fashion) accessory" and used to invite readers to share their cosmetic surgery experiences in the monthly column "Knifestyles of the Rich and Famous." Popular culture does not apply any brakes to these fantasies of rearrangement and transformation. "The proper diet, file right amount of exercise, and you can have, pretty much, any body you desire," claims an ad for a bottled mineral water. Of course, the rhetoric of choice and self-determination and the breezy analogies comparing cosmetic surgery to fashion accessorizing are deeply misleading. They efface not only the inequalities of privilege, money, and time that prohibit most people from indulging in these practices, but also the desperation that characterizes the lives of those who do. "I will do anything, anything to make myself look and feel better," says a contributor to the "Knifestyles" column. Medical science has now designated a new category of "polysurgical addicts" (or, as more casually referred to, "scalpel slaves") who return for operation after operation, in perpetual quest of that elusive yet ruthlessly normalizing goal, the "perfect" body. The dark underside of the practices of body transformation and rearrangement— reveals botched and sometimes—fatal operations, exercise addictions, and eating disorders. We are surrounded by homogenizing and normalizing images whose content is far from arbitrary but is instead suffused with dominant gender, class, racial, and other cultural archetypes. The very advertisements whose copy speaks of choice and self-determination visually legislate the effacement of individual and cultural differences and thereby circumscribe our choices. Despite the claims of the mineral water ad, one cannot have any body that one wants—for not every body will do. Yet most contemporary understandings of the behaviors I have been describing do not recognize that cultural imagery functions in this way, and seek to preempt precisely such a critique as my own. Moreover, they represent, on the level of discourse and interpretation, the same principles that body sculptors act on: a construction of life as plastic possibility and weightless choice, undetermined by history, social location, or even individual biography.

单选题It is the latest innovation from Silicon Valley: the employee perk is moving from the office to the home. Facebook gives new parents $4,000 in spending money. Stanford School of Medicine is piloting a project to provide doctors with housecleaning and in-home dinner delivery. Genentech offers take-home dinners and helps employees find last-minute baby sitters when a child is too sick to go to school. These kinds of benefits are a departure from the upscale cafeteria meals, massages and other services intended to keep employees happy and productive while at work. And the goal is not just to reduce stress for employees, but for their families, too. If the companies succeed, they will minimize distractions and sources of tension that can inhibit focus and creativity. Now that technology has allowed work to bleed into home life, it seems that companies are trying to address the impact of home life on work. There is, of course, the possibility that relieving people of chores at home will simply free them up to work more. But David Lewin, a compensation expert and management professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said he viewed the perks as part of a growing effort by American business to reward people with time and peace of mind instead of more traditional financial tools, like stock options and bonuses. "They"re trying to get at people"s larger lives and sanity," Mr. Lewin said. "You might call it the bang for the nonbuck." At Deloitte, the consulting firm, employees can get a backup care worker if an aging parent or grandparent needs help. The company subsidizes personal trainers and nutritionists, and offers round-the-clock counseling service for help with issues like marital strife and infertility. Deloitte executives, and other experts, said they believe that such benefits were likely to spread. "The workplace was built on the assumption that there was somebody at home dealing with the home front," said Anne Weisberg, a longtime human resources executive who helped write a book about new kinds of workplace policies. Not only is that no longer the case, she said, but the work-life pressures seem to be building. "There"s a greater awareness that we"re pushing things to the limit and something"s got to give," she said. Some compensation experts argue these types of perks ultimately do little to attract employees and might obscure more fundamental problems at companies that have trouble retaining talent. That is a challenge Stanford owns up to, given the brain drain suffered by academic hospitals, where relentless demands include treating patients, writing grants, doing research and traveling to conferences. So 18 months ago, Stanford hired a consulting firm called Jump Associates to better understand why so many academic doctors feel burned out. The company videotaped them from the time they woke up, through the workday and until they and their families went to sleep. In one video, a kidney specialist told a story that shocked the researchers: while she was on maternity leave, she bought a minivan to ferry the children of friends and neighbors to school and sports practices. That way, the doctor explained, she would be able to ask for favors when she returned to work—and that, in theory, would enable her to juggle the dual demands of work and family. Dr. Valantine, a cardiologist, professor and associate dean at the Stanford School of Medicine, said the findings had led her to scrap the idea that people should strive for "work-life balance" and instead think in terms of "work-life integration". That shifting mind-set—the idea that life and work must be blended rather than separated—is increasingly common, according to other doctors, scholars who study work habits and the generally well-compensated workers of Silicon Valley like Andrew Sinkov, 31, whose employer is paying to clean his apartment. The value of the perk is greater than the money saved, he said. His boss, Mr. Libin, also gives employees $1,000 to spend on vacation, but it has to be "a real vacation". Mr. Libin added that he did not see these perks just as ways to keep his work force—and their families—engaged. He said he also tended to be frugal as a chief executive, preferring these types of peace-of-mind benefits to, say, business-class travel, which the company does not pay for. "Happy workers make better products," he said. "The output we care about has everything to do with your state of mind." At Google, the company has expanded its benefits beyond free meals, dry cleaning and other services on campus to offering $500 to new parents. The company has also arranged for fresh fish to be delivered to the office for employees to take home. "What you"ve seen is benefits moving away from free food into thinking more holistically about individuals and their health," said Jordan Newman, a Google spokesman. "And a lot of that happens outside of the office."

单选题Bernard Jackson is a free man today, but he has many bitter memories. Jackson spent five years in prison after a jury wrongly convicted him of raping two women. At Jackson"s trial, although two witnesses testified that Jackson was with them in another location at the times of the crimes, he was convicted anyway. Why? The jury believed the testimony of the two victims, who positively identified Jackson as the man who has attacked them. The court eventually freed Jackson after the police found the man who had really committed the crimes. Jackson was similar in appearance to the guilty man. The two women has made a mistake in identity. As a result, Jackson has lost five years of his life. The two women in this case were eyewitnesses. They clearly saw the man who attacked them, yet they mistakenly identified an innocent person. Similar incidents have occurred before. Eyewitnesses to other crimes have identified the wrong person in a police lineup or in photographs. Many factors influence the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. For instance, witnesses sometimes see photographs of several suspects before they try to identify the person they saw in a lineup of people. They can become confused by seeing many photographs or similar faces. The number of people in the lineup, and whether it is a live lineup or a photograph, may also affect a witnesses decision. People sometimes have difficulty in identifying people of other races. The questions the police ask witnesses also have an effect on them. Are some witnesses more reliable than others? Many people believe that police officers are more reliable than ordinary people. Psychologists decided to test this idea, and they discovered that it is not true. Two psychologists showed a film of crimes to both police officers and civilians. The psychologists found no difference between the police and the civilians in correctly remembering the details of the crimes. Despite all the possibilities for inaccuracy, courts cannot exclude eyewitness testimony from a trial. American courts depend almost completely on eyewitness testimony to resolve court cases. Sometimes it is the only evidence to a crime, such as rape. Furthermore, eyewitness testimony is often correct. Although people do sometimes make mistakes, many times they really do identify individuals correctly. American courts depend on the ability of the 12 jurors, and not the judges, to determine the accuracy of the witnesses testimony. It is their responsibility to decide if a certain witness could actually see, hear, and remember what occurred. In a few cases, the testimony of eyewitnesses has convicted innocent people. More importantly, it has rightly convicted a larger number of guilty people; consequently, it continues to be of great value in the American judicial system.

单选题{{B}}Statements{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} In this part of the test, you will hear several short statements. These statements will be spoken {{B}}ONLY ONCE,{{/B}} 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 {{B}}ANSWER BOOKLET{{/B}}