单选题 According to a study conducted last April, female seniors studying at Boston College left the university with lower self-confidence than when they entered as freshmen. The study, administered by the Office of Institutional Research, Planning and Assessment at Boston College, examined two surveys: the first of which was taken by students during their freshman year, and the second of which was taken by students exiting their senior year. Despite reports of high academic achievement, most female students gave themselves weaker self-evaluations in the second survey. Abbey Clark, a senior and founder of the Boston College chapter(分会) of I AM THAT GIRL, a female-empowerment(赋权) community, says the finding is 'startling' . Clark hopes to change the trend by creating an open community that will ignite (点燃) confidence and empowerment in young women. I AM THAT GIRL, a global community which aims to help girls turn their self-doubt into self-love, is all about celebrating women's unique selves, Clark says. 'I AM THAT GIRL helps girls turn their stories of struggle and adversity(逆境) into stories of connectedness and empowerment arid feeling good about themselves,' Clark says. 'I think that all high school girls at one time or another can relate to the feeling of not being good enough.' To help young girls overcome these feelings, Clark says I AM THAT GIRL at Boston College, which boasts 100 members in its first registered year on campus, holds weekly meetings offering a 'safe space' for college students in which they can discuss topics like body image, relationships, family dynamics and finding one's passions. Maria Pascucci, the founder of Campus Calm, a national organization that aims to help college women lead healthy, happy lives, says females feel the pressure to be perfect on a regular basis. She added that the media sends mixed messages to young girls, advising them to be the best they can be while simultaneously persuading them to buy more and strive for more. 'In our society, being a perfectionist is a glorified and socially acceptable form of self-abuse,' Pascucci says. Pascucci, who was teased as a young girl and suffered self-esteem issues, says her main message to young girls is to let them know their sense of worth comes from within. 'When we begin to compare ourselves to others, especially when we're vulnerable, that can do a lot of damage to our self-esteem,' she says. Clark echoes Pascucci's point, saying it's important to let young girls know that their physical appearance is only 'one slice of the pie'. “Girls have a lot to bring to the table,' Clark says, 'and that's looking past physical beauty and just celebrating something unique within yourself that isn't so apparent.'

单选题 Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century A. There's a dark little joke exchanged by educators with an opposing trace: Rip Van Winkle awakens in the 21st century after a hundred-year sleep and is, of course, utterly bewildered by what he sees. Men and women dash about, talking to small metal devices attached to their ears. Young people sit at home on sofas, moving miniature Athletes around on electronic screens. Older folk defy death and disability with devices in their chests and with hips made of metal and plastic. Airports, hospitals, shopping wails—every place Rip goes just baffles him. But when he finally walks into a schoolroom, the old man knows exactly where he is. 'This is a school,' he declares. 'We used to have these back in 1906. Only now the blackboards are green.' B. American schools aren't exactly frozen in time, but considering the pace of change in other areas of life, our public schools tend to feel like throwbacks (复旧). Kids spend much of the day as their grandparents once did: sitting in rows, listening to teachers' lecture, scribbling (潦草地写) notes by hand, and reading from textbooks that are out of date by the time they are printed. A yawning gap separates the world inside the schoolhouse from the world outside. C. For the past five years, the national conversation on education has focused on reading scores, maths tests and closing the 'achievement gap' between social classes. This is not a story about that conversation. This is a story about the big public conversation the nation is not having about education, the one that will ultimately determine not merely whether some fraction of our children get 'left behind' but also whether an entire generation of kids will fail to make the grade in the global economy because they can't think their way through abstract problems, work in teams, distinguish good information from bad or speak a language other than English. D. Right now we're aiming too low. Competence in reading and maths is just the minimum. Scientific and technical skills are, likewise, utterly necessary but insufficient. Today's economy demands not only a high-level competence in the traditional academic disciplines but also what might be called 21st century skills. E. Here's what they are: knowing more about the world; thinking outside the box; becoming smarter about new sources of information; developing good people skills; real knowledge in the Google Era. F. Learn the names of all the rivers in South America. That was the assignment given to Deborah Stipek's daughter Meredith in school, and her mum who's dean of the Stanford University School of Education, was not impressed. 'That's silly,' Stipek told her daughter. 'Tell your teacher that if you need to know anything besides the Amazon, you can look it up on Google.' Any number of old-school assignments—memorising the battles of the Civil War or the periodic table of the elements—now seem faintly absurd. That kind of information, which is poorly retained unless you routinely use it, is available at a keystroke (按键). G. Still, few would argue that an American child shouldn't learn the causes of the Civil War or understand how the periodic table reflects the atomic structure and properties of the elements. As school critic E. D. Hirsch Jr. points out in his book, The Knowledge Deficit, kids need a substantial fund of information just to make sense of reading materials beyond the grade-school level. Without mastering the fundamental building blocks of maths, science or history, complex concepts are impossible. H. Many analysts believe that to achieve the right balance between such core knowledge and what educators call 'portable skills'—critical thinking, making connections between ideas and knowing how to keep on learning—the US curriculum needs to become more like that of Singapore, Belgium and Sweden, whose students outperform (胜过) American students on maths and science tests. Classes in these countries dwell on key concepts that are taught in depth and in careful sequence, as opposed to a succession of forgettable details so often served in US classrooms. Textbooks and tests support this approach. 'Countries from Germany to Singapore have extremely small textbooks that focus on the most powerful and generative ideas,' says Roy Pea, co-director of the Stanford Centre for Innovations in Learning. These might be the key rules in maths, the laws in science or the relationship between supply and demand in economics. America's thick textbooks, by contrast, tend to go through a mind-numbing stream of topics and subtopics in an attempt to address a vast range of educational standards. I. Depth over breadth and the ability to leap across disciplines are exactly what teachers aim for at the Henry Ford Academy, a public charter school in Dearborn, Michigan. Last fall, 10th-graders in Charles Dershimer's science class began a project that combines concepts from earth science, chemistry, business and design. After reading about Nike's effort to develop a more environment-friendly sneakers, students had to choose a consumer product, analyse and explain its environmental impact and then develop a plan for reengineering it to reduce pollution costs without sacrificing its commercial appeal. Says Dershimer: 'It's a challenge for them and for me.' J. The juniors in Bill Stroud's class are attracted by a documentary called Loose Change playing on a small TV screen at the Baccalaureate School for Global Education, in urban Astoria, NY. The film uses 9/11 films and interviews with building engineers and Twin Towers survivors to make an oddly compelling case that interior explosions unrelated to the impact of the airplanes brought down the World Trade Centre on that fateful (重大的) day. Afterward, the student—an ethnic mix of New Yorkers with their own 9/11 memories—dive into a discussion about the nature of truth. K. Throughout the year, the class will examine news reports, websites, history books, blogs, and even pop songs. The goal is to teach kids to be sharp consumers of information and to research, formulate and defend their own views, says Stroud, who is the founder and principal of the four-year-old public school. Classes like these, which teach key aspects of information literacy, remain rare in public education, but more and more universities and employers say they are needed as the world grows ever more flooded with information of variable quality. Last year, in response to demand from colleges, the Educational Testing Service unveiled a new, computer-based exam designed to measure information-and-communication-technology literacy. L. A study of the test with 6,200 high school seniors and college freshmen found that only half could correctly judge the objectivity of a website. 'Kids tend to go to Google and cut and paste a research report together,' says Terry Egan, who led the team that developed the new test. 'We kind of assumed this generation was so comfortable with technology that they know how to use it for research and deeper thinking,' says Egan. 'But if they're not taught these skills, they don't necessarily pick them up.' M. Teachers need not fear that they will be made outdated. They will, however, feel increasing pressure to bring their methods—along with the curriculum—in line with the way the modern world works. That means putting a greater emphasis on teaching kids to collaborate (合作) and solve problems in small groups and apply what they've learned in the real world. Besides, research shows that kids learn better in that way than with the old chalk-and-talk approach. N. At suburban Farmington High School in Michigan, the engineering-technology department functions like an engineering firm, with teachers as project managers, a Ford Motor Co. engineer as a consultant and students working in teams. The principles of physics, chemistry and engineering are taught through activities that fill the hallways with the noise of nailing, sawing and chattering (机器的颤动). The result: the kids learn to apply academic principles to the real world, think strategically and solve problems. O. Such lessons also teach students to show respect for others as well as to be punctual, responsible and work well in teams. Those skills were badly missing in recently hired high school graduates, according to a survey of over 400 human-resource professionals conducted by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. 'Kids don't know how to shake your hand at graduation,' says Rudolph Crew, superintendent of the Miami-Dade school system. Deportment (举止风度), he notes, used to be on the report card. Some of the nation's more forward-thinking schools are bringing it back. It's one part of 21st century education that sleepy old Rip would recognise.

单选题 Companies Are Working with Consumers to Reduce Waste A. As consumers, we are very wasteful. Annually, the world generates 1.3 billion tons of solid waste. This is expected to go up to 2.2 billion by 2025. The developed countries are responsible for 44% of waste, and in the U.S. alone, the average person throws away their body weight in rubbish every month. B. Conventional wisdom would seem to suggest that companies have no incentive to lengthen the life cycle of their products and reduce the revenue they would get from selling new goods. Yet, more and more businesses are thinking about how to reduce consumer waste. This is partly driven by the rising price of raw materials and metals. It is also partly due to both consumers and companies becoming more aware of the need to protect our environment. C. When choosing what products to buy and which brands to buy from, more and more consumers are looking into sustainability. This is opposed to just price and performance they were concerned about in the past. In a survey of 54 of the world's leading brands, almost all of them reported that consumers are showing increasing care about sustainable lifestyles. At the same time, surveys on consumers in the U.S. and the U.K. show that they also care about minimizing energy use and reducing waste. D. For the most part, consumers control what happens to a product. But some companies are realizing that placing the burden of recycling entirely on the consumer is not an effective strategy, especially when tossing something away seems like the easiest and most convenient option. E. Some retailers and manufacturers in the clothing, footwear, and electronics industries have launched environmental programs. They want to make their customers interested in preserving their products and preventing things that still have value from going to the garbage dump. By offering services to help expand the longevity of their products, they're promising quality and durability to consumers, and receiving the reputational gains for being environmentally friendly. F. For example, the Swedish jeans company Nudie Jeans offers free repair at twenty of their shops. Instead of discarding their old worn-out jeans, customers bring them in to be renewed. The company even provides mail-order repair kits and online videos, so that customers can learn how to fix a pair of jeans at home. Their philosophy is that extending the life of a pair of jeans is not only great for the environment, but allows the consumer to get more value out of their product. When customers do want to toss their pair, they can give them back to the store, which will repurpose and resell them. Another clothing company, Patagonia, a high-end outdoor clothing store, follows the same principle. It has partnered with DIY website iFixit to teach consumers how to repair their clothing, such as waterproof outerwear, at home. The company also offers a repair program for their customers for a modest fee. Currently, Patagonia repairs about 40,000 garments a year in their Reno, Nevada, service center. According to the company's CEO, Rose Marcario, this is about building a company that cares about the environment. At the same time, offering repair supports the perceived quality of its products. G. In Brazil, the multinational corporation Adidas has been running a shoe-recycling program called 'Sustainable Footprint' since 2012. Customers can bring shoes of any brand into an Adidas store to be shredded and turned into alternative fuels for energy creation instead of being burned as trash. They are used to fuel cement ovens. To motivate visitors to bring in more old shoes, Adidas Brazil promotes the program in stores by showing videos to educate customers, and it even offers a discount each time a customer brings in an old pair of shoes. This boosts the reputation and image of Adidas by making people more aware of the company's values. H. Enormous opportunities also lie with e-waste. It is estimated that in 2014 the world produced some 42 million metric tons of e-waste (discarded electrical and electronic equipment and its parts) with North America and Europe accounting for 8 and 12 million metric tons respectively. The materials from e-waste include iron, copper, gold, silver, and aluminum—materials that could be reused, resold, salvaged, or recycled. Together, the value of these metals is estimated to be about $52 billion. Electronics giants like Best Buy and Samsung have provided e-waste take-back programs over the past few years, which aim to refurbish (翻新) old electronic components and parts into new products. I. For other companies interested in reducing waste, helping the environment, and providing the sustainable lifestyles that consumers seek, here are some first steps for building a relationship with customers that focuses on recycling and restoring value to products: J. Find partners. If you are a manufacturer who relies on outside distributors, then retailers are the ideal partner for collecting old products. Power tool maker DeWalt partners with companies, such as Lowes and Napa Auto Parts, to collect old tools at their stores for recycling. The partnership benefits both sides by allowing unconventional partners (for example, two companies from two different industries) to work together on a specific aspect of the value chain, like, in this example, an engine firm with an accessory one. K. Create incentives. Environmental conscientiousness isn't always enough to make customers recycle old goods. For instance, DeWalt discovered that many contractors were holding on to their old tools, even if they no longer worked, because they were expensive purchases and it was hard to justify bringing them in to recycle. By offering instant discounts worth as much as $100, DeWalt launched a trade-in program to encourage people to bring back tools. As a result, DeWalt now reuses those materials to create new products. L. Start with a trial program, and expect to change the details as you go. Any take-back program will likely change over time, depending on what works for your customers and company goals. Maybe you see low customer participation at first, or conversely, so much success that the cost of recycling becomes too high. Best Buy, for instance, has been bearing the lion's share of e-waste volume since two of its largest competitors, Amazon and Wal-mart, do not have their own recycling programs. Since the launch of its program, Best Buy changed its policy to add a $25 fee for recycling old televisions in order to keep the program going. M. Build a culture of collective values with customers. A stronger relationship between the retailer/ producer and the consumer isn't just about financial incentives. By creating more awareness around your efforts to reduce waste, and by developing a culture of responsibility, repair, and reuse, you can build customer loyalty based on shared values and responsibilities. N. These examples are just the tip of the iceberg, but they demonstrate how helping customers get more use of their materials can transform value chains and operations. Reducing waste by incorporating used materials into production can cut costs and decrease the price of procurement (采购): less to be procured from the outside and more to be re-utilized from the inside. O. Companies play a big role in creating a circular economy, in which value is generating less from extracting new resources and more from getting better use out of the resources we already have—but they must also get customers engaged in the process.

单选题 Now listen to the following recording and answer questions21-23.

单选题 Trying too Hard Can Slow New Language Development A. Neuroscientists have long observed that learning a language presents a different set of opportunities and challenges for adults and children. B. Adults easily grasp the vocabulary needed to navigate a grocery store or order food in a restaurant, but children have an innate ability to pick up on subtle nuances of language that often elude adults. For example, within months of living in a foreign country, a young child may speak a second language like a native speaker. C. Experts believe that brain structure plays an important role in this 'sensitive period' for learning language, which is believed to end around adolescence. The young brain is equipped with neural circuits that can analyze sounds and build a coherent set of rules for constructing words and sentences out of those sounds. Once these language structures are established, it's difficult to build another one for a new language. D. In a new study, a team of neuroscientists and psychologists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) discovered another factor that contributes to adults' language difficulties: When learning certain elements of language, adults' more highly developed cognitive skills actually get in the way. E. The researchers discovered that the harder adults tried to learn an artificial language, the worse they were at deciphering the language's morphology—the structure and deployment of linguistic units such as root words, suffixes, and prefixes. F. 'We found that effort helps you in most situations, for things like figuring out what the units of language that you need to know are, and basic ordering of elements. But when trying to learn morphology, at least in this artificial language we created, it's actually worse when you try,' said Amy Flynn a postdoc at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research. G. Finn and colleagues from the University of California at Santa Barbara, Stanford University, and the University of British Columbia describe their findings in journal PLOS ONE. H. Linguists have known for decades that children are skilled at absorbing certain tricky elements of language, such as irregular past participles (examples of which, in English, include 'gone' and 'been') or complicated verb tenses like the subjunctive. 'Children will ultimately perform better than adults in terms of their command of the grammar and the structural components of language—some of the more idiosyncratic, difficult-to-articulate aspects of language that even most native speakers don't have conscious awareness of,' Finn says. I. In 1990, linguist Elissa Newport hypothesized that adults have trouble learning those nuances because they try to analyze too much information at once. Adults have a much more highly developed prefrontal cortex than children, and they tend to throw all of that brainpower at learning a second language. J. This high-powered processing may actually interfere with certain elements of learning language. 'It's an idea that's been around for a long time, but there hasn't been any data that experimentally show that it's true,' Finn says. Finn and her colleagues designed an experiment to test whether exerting more effort would help or hinder success. The study K. First, they created nine nonsense words, each with two syllables. Each word fell into one of three categories (A, B, and C), defined by the order of consonant and vowel sounds. Study subjects listened to the artificial language for about 10 minutes. One group of subjects was told not to overanalyze what they heard, but not to tune it out either. L. To help them not overthink the language, they were given the option of completing a puzzle or colouring while they listened. The other group was told to try to identify the words they were hearing. Each group heard the same recording, which was a series of three-word sequences—first a word from category A, then one from category B, then category C—with no pauses between words. M. Previous studies have shown that adults, babies, and even monkeys can parse this kind of information into word units, a task known as word segmentation. Subjects from both groups were successful at word segmentation, although the group that tried harder performed a little better. Both groups also performed well in a task called word ordering, which required subjects to choose between a correct word sequence (ABC) and an incorrect sequence (such as ACB) of words they had previously heard. N. The final test measured skill in identifying the language's morphology. The researchers played a three-word sequence that included a word the subjects had not heard before, but which fit into one of the three categories. O. When asked to judge whether this new word was in the correct location, the subjects who had been asked to pay closer attention to the original word stream performed much worse than those who had listened more passively. The findings support a theory of language acquisition that suggests that some parts of language are learned through procedural memory, while others are learned through declarative memory. P. Under this theory, declarative memory, which stores knowledge and facts, would be more useful for learning vocabulary and certain rules of grammar. Procedural memory, which guides tasks we perform without conscious awareness of how we learned them, would be more useful for learning subtle rules related to language morphology. Q. 'It's likely to be the procedural memory system that's really important for learning these difficult morphological aspects of language. In fact, when you use the declarative memory system, it doesn't help you, it harms you,' Finn says. Still unresolved is the question of whether adults can overcome this language-learning obstacle. Finn says she does not have a good answer yet but she is now testing the effects of 'turning off' the adult prefrontal cortex using a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation. R. Other interventions she plans to study include distracting the prefrontal cortex by forcing it to perform other tasks while language is heard, and treating subjects with drugs that impair activity in that brain region.

单选题 Everyone knows Hong Kong as the lively island city is home to over seven million people perpetually on the move. But it may be a surprise to learn that many of the residents in this bustling city don't spend much time searching in their pockets for change, especially on public transport. Instead, they whip out their Octopus, a contactless smart card with a chip that communicates with a fare processor in less than a second. It has been in use in Hong Kong since 1997. But what's new about Octopus is that recent advances in technology mean that it's being used with phones too. 'Now with the advance of smart card technology, we've been able to insert the Octopus mobile SIM inside a smart phone,' explained Octopus CEO Kevin Goldmintz, in an interview with CNN's Kristie Lu Stout. Since the Octopus card was released nearly two decades ago, its use has branched off into much more than just transport. Forgot your wallet, purse or cash? Not to worry. The Octopus can buy your coffee, a movie ticket, clothes, groceries and even allow you to shop online. Another new venture is that Octopus has recently partnered with Taobao. Though purchases have to remain relatively small with a current ceiling of $130 on each card, Octopus says it allows the customer to easily interact for a purchase. Octopus has broadened its reach into mainland China with a dual card in Guangdong province and another in Shenzhen. 'We're able to put a Hong Kong dollar purse inside the card, as an e-wallet' said Goldmintz. Octopus says its vision for the next ten years includes tackling the physical / digital convergence and growing its e-commerce strategy. 'And I think the other side of it will also be exporting the knowledge that we've accumulated over 17 years of doing contactless smart card, and placing that knowledge in other cities around the world,' Goldmintz told Stout. As for the future, Octopus is optimistic that a cashless society will spread to other areas, particularly in its own patch of the Asia-Pacific area. 'You know I buy my lunch with my Octopus. I pay for drinks on Octopus. I buy coffee with my Octopus,' said Goldmintz. 'So I think there will be day when both Hong Kong and other cities around Asia-Pacific particularly will be looking towards a cashless society,' he said. 'I think we're going to make huge in-roads in the next five to ten years in this.'

单选题 The Health Benefits of Drinking Water —Is Bottled Drinking Water Healthier Than Filtered Tap Water? A. Water is a key ingredient in a healthy diet and lifestyle. There are many health benefits of drinking water. It helps flush impurities and toxins out of our systems. It aids in the delivery of oxygen and nutrients. In fact, nearly every system in our bodies relies on water for proper functioning. But what will happen if the water you drink is unhealthy? B. In past decades, concerns about tap water and its impact on overall health led some people to turn to bottled drinking water instead. However, in those days, there were few choices of bottled waters. You could pay to have a company deliver large bulky plastic bottles of water for the water cooler. Or you could purchase gallon jugs of distilled or 'drinking water' at the grocery store. C. In recent years, there has been an explosion in the number of different bottled waters available, with big distributors such as Coke and Pepsi jumping on the bandwagon. But are bottled drinking waters like Coke's Dasani brand, Pepsi's Aquafina, or Wal-Mart's store brand really any healthier than your tap water? Or would you be better off with a drinking water filtration system? D. As we have learned more about the water we drink, the technology behind drinking water filters and purification systems has improved dramatically. There are filters to remove impurities, chemicals, heavy metals, bacteria and most every contaminant you can think of. With the fight size and filter combination for your specific home, your water can be exceptionally pure and healthy. Cost Comparison E. Drinking water filtration systems have also become more affordable and easy to use. Although the initial cost of a whole house system usually amounts to several hundred dollars, that cost is often less than $100 each year if spread out over the life of the system. There may be additional expenses to replace carbon filters, membranes in reverse osmosis drinking water filtration system, or lamps in an ultraviolet light water treatment device. These expenses can add another $100 or so to the annual costs of operating drinking water filters and purification systems. F. While some people may hesitate to spend so much each year for clean, safe drinking water, they are probably paying more for bottled drinking water. Calculations show that at a price of $1 to $4 per gallon, bottled or delivered water costs an average of $400 each year, especially if you purchase individual bottles. And that doesn't take into consideration the gas needed to drive to the store or the environmental impact of all the empty plastic bottles. Health Aspects G. Many people who choose bottled drinking water understand that it is more expensive, but they are still willing to pay the extra money because bottled water is thought to be safer and healthier than filtered drinking water. After all, bottled water is often marketed as 'natural spring water' or 'pure glacier water.' H. In reality, few bottled waters come from natural springs, and most of them use municipal tap water. The companies are able to get away with this false marketing because the regulations and standards for bottle drinking water are less stringent than those for residential drinking sources. I. The quality of bottled water is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), while drinking water systems are typically regulated by State regulations or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This doesn't mean that the FDA isn't doing their job. It's just that the rules for bottled water only require it to be as good as tap water, not better. J. In addition, the FDA regulations only apply to bottled drinking water that is transported across state lines. If a company sells their bottled drinking water in the same state where it was bottled, the federal regulations don't apply. The result is that many bottled waters are not any healthier than filtered water, and in fact some are less pure. K. This was demonstrated in a study which was conducted in 1999 by the Natural Resources Defense Council. They tested over 100 brands of bottled drinking water and found that about one third of the waters contained contamination in the form of chemicals, bacteria, and arsenic. The study also found that up to forty percent of bottled drinking waters come from a city water system. How to Tell if Your Water Is Healthy L. So how do you tell if the water you are drinking is healthy? With tap water, it is relatively easy. If you water comes from a municipal source, the suppliers are required by law to provide annual water quality reports. If you have a well, you can have an authorized lab test your water. It may cost $100 or more, but it's a small price to pay for peace of mind. Or you can purchase a kit and test it yourself, but naturally the results may not be as conclusive or reliable as those produced by authorized labs. M. When it comes to bottled drinking water, it can be more difficult to know what you are getting. Start by checking the label or the bottle cap. Some may tell you that the water comes from a municipal source or 'community water system', which means tap water. N. If the label doesn't give any information, you can call the bottler and ask. But don't be surprised if you get the run around and are transferred to several different departments. Some states have a bottled water program that tracks bottled drinking water and can tell you the origin of the source water as well as other information. O. Safe and healthy drinking water has become big business. Thousands of companies are vying for your hard earned cash, and some are not always honest about what their products offer. The initial investment for a home drinking water filtration system can seem expensive at first, but over time, it is usually less expensive than bottled drinking water. And with a water filter, you at least know where the water you drink came from and how it was treated. P. Before going out and spending your hard earned money for bottled drinking water that may, be no better than your own tap water, it is obviously a good idea to do some research. You are likely to decide that a drinking water filtration system and/or purifier is the healthier choice and provides the best value as well.

单选题 Apple's Stance Highlights a More Confrontational Tech Industry A. The battle between Apple and law enforcement officials over unlocking a terrorist's smartphone is the culmination of a slow turning of the tables between the technology industry and the United States government. B. After revelations by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden in 2013 that the government both cozied up to (讨好) certain tech companies and hacked into others to gain access to private data on an enormous scale, tech giants began to recognize the United States government as a hostile actor. But if the confrontation has crystallized in this latest battle, it may already be heading toward a predictable conclusion: In the long run, the tech companies are destined to emerge victorious. C. It may not seem that way at the moment. On the one side, you have the United States government's mighty legal and security apparatus fighting for data of the most sympathetic sort: the secrets buried in a dead mass murderer's phone. The action stems from a federal court order issued on Tuesday requiring Apple to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to unlock an iPhone used by one of the two attackers who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, in December. D. In the other comer is the world's most valuable company, whose chief executive, Timothy Cook, has said he will appeal the court's order. Apple argues that it is fighting to preserve a principle that most of us who are addicted to our smartphones can defend: Weaken a single iPhone so that its contents can be viewed by the American government and you risk weakening all iPhones for any government intruder, anywhere. E. There will probably be months of legal confrontation, and it is not at all clear which side will prevail in court, nor in the battle for public opinion and legislative favor. Yet underlying all of this is a simple dynamic: Apple, Google, Facebook and other companies hold most of the cards in this confrontation. They have our data, and their businesses depend on the global public's collective belief that they will do everything they can to protect that data. F. Any crack in that front could be fatal for tech companies that must operate worldwide. If Apple is forced to open up an iPhone for an American law enforcement investigation, what is to prevent it from doing so for a request from the Russians or the Iranians? If Apple is forced to write code that lets the FBI get into the Phone 5c used by Syed Rizwan Farook, the male attacker in the San Bernardino attack, who would be responsible if some hacker got hold of that code and broke into its other devices? G. Apple's stance on these issues emerged post-Snowden, when the company started putting in place a series of technologies that, by default, make use of encryption (加密) to limit access to people's data. More than that, Apple—and, in different ways, other tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft—have made their opposition to the government's claims a point of corporate pride. H. Apple's emerging global brand is privacy; it has staked its corporate reputation, not to mention the investment of considerable technical and financial resources, on limiting the sort of mass surveillance that was uncovered by Mr. Snowden. So now, for many cases involving governmental intrusions into data, once-lonely privacy advocates find themselves fighting alongside the most powerful company in the world. I. 'A comparison point is in the 1990s battles over encryption,' said Kurt Opsahl, general counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy watchdog group. 'Then you had a few companies involved, but not one of the largest companies in the world coming out with a lengthy and impassioned post, like we saw yesterday from Timothy Cook. Its profile has really been raised.' J. Apple and other tech companies hold another ace: the technical means to keep making their devices more and more inaccessible. Note that Apple's public opposition to the government's request is itself a hindrance to mass government intrusion. And to get at the contents of a single iPhone, the government says it needs a court order and Apple's help to write new code; in earlier versions of the iPhone, ones that were created before Apple found religion on (热衷于) privacy, the FBI might have been able to break into the device by itself. K. You can expect that noose (束缚) to continue to tighten. Experts said that whether or not Apple loses this specific case, measures that it could put into place in the future will almost certainly be able to further limit the government's reach. L. That is not to say that the outcome of the San Bernardino case is insignificant. As Apple and several security experts have argued, an order compelling Apple to write software that gives the FBI access to the iPhone in question would establish an unsettling precedent. The order essentially asks Apple to hack its own devices, and once it is in place, the precedent could be used to justify law enforcement efforts to get around encryption technologies in other investigations far removed from national security threats. M. Once armed with a method for gaining access to iPhones, the government could ask to use it proactively (先发制人地), before a suspected terrorist attack—leaving Apple in a bind as to whether to comply or risk an attack and suffer a public-relations nightmare. 'This is a brandnew move in the war against encryption,' Mr. Opsahl said. 'We have had plenty of debates in Congress and the media over whether the government should have a backdoor, and this is an end run (迂回战术) around that—here they come with an order to create that backdoor.' N. Yet it is worth noting that even if Apple ultimately loses this case, it has plenty of technical means to close a backdoor over time. 'If they are anywhere near worth their salt as engineers, I bet they are rethinking their threat model as we speak,' said Jonathan Zdziarski, a digital expert who studies the iPhone and its vulnerabilities. O. One relatively simple fix, Mr. Zdziarski said, would be for Apple to modify future versions of the iPhone to require a user to enter a passcode before the phone will accept the sort of modified operating system that the FBI wants Apple to create. That way, Apple could not unilaterally introduce a code that weakens the iPhone—a user would have to consent to it. P. 'Nothing is 100 percent hacker-proof,' Mr. Zdziarski said, but he pointed out that the judge's order in this case required Apple to provide 'reasonable security assistance' to unlock Mr. Farook's phone. If Apple alters the security model of future iPhones so that even its own engineers' 'reasonable assistance' will not be able to crack a given device when compelled by the government, a precedent set in this case might lose its lasting force. In other words, even if the FBI wins this case, in the long run, it loses.

单选题 Questions5-8 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

单选题 Questions2-4 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

单选题 Yamagata-born Ken Okuyama, well known in automobile design circles, was brought into style the company's super glossy new Cruise Train. Holding a maximum of 34 passengers, the Cruise Train will have 10 carriages made up of five suites, one deluxe suite, two glass-walled observation cars, a dining car and lounge. Okuyama has worked as a chief designer for General Motors, a senior designer for Porsche AG and design director for Pininfarina, the company behind the Ferrari Enzo and Maserati Quattroporte. According to his company, Ken Okuyama Design, he wanted to create a train that would allow passengers 'to appreciate the flow of the time and space,' while enjoying Japan's landscapes and culture throughout the journey. One of the more unique features is the observation carriage at the front of the train, which allows passengers to see onto the tracks ahead. The other observation car is at the end of the train. JR Rail says the train will be fitted with furniture that conveys the nobility of traditional Japanese culture. The Lounge, for instance, is wrapped in exquisite curves and features decoration inspired by trees. All suites will have a private bathroom with a shower and toilet, but the top sleeping space is the split level deluxe suite, which sleeps four. On the bottom are two double beds, on the top a traditional Japanese dining area, with seats on the floor. The train will be able to run on both electric and non-electric rails. JR East's upcoming Cruise Train won't be the first Japanese train to take the super-luxury route. JR Kyushu's Seven Stars train, which features Japanese and Western design elements, hit the tracks in the fall of 2013. This one only travels through the island of Kyushu and has 14 luxury guest rooms, two deluxe suites, three presidential suites, a lounge car, dining car and bar. Guests can choose either the two-or three-night experience. The name 'Seven Stars' represents the seven districts of Kyushu, the seven carriages of the train and the seven main tourist attractions of the island (nature, food, hot springs, history / culture, spiritual sites, local hospitality and sightseeing). Those who want to take a Seven Stars journey need to apply online. Prices start from ～180,000 ($1,765) per person for the two-night trip. No first come first serve here. The company says that in the event that applications exceed available places, a lottery will be conducted to select participants.