单选题 Every other week it seems a new study comes out that adds to our already-formidable store of parental worries. But even by those upgraded standards, the report issued last week by the federal government's National Center for Health Statistics contained a jaw-dropper: the parents of nearly one of every five boys in the United States were concerned enough about what they saw as their sons' emotional or behavioral problems that they consulted a doctor or a healthcare professional. By comparison, about one out of 10 parents of girls reported these kinds of problems. The report confirms what many of us have been observing for some time now: that lots of school-age boys are struggling. And, parents are intensely worried about them. What is bothering our sons? Some experts suggest we are witnessing an epidemic of ADD (attention deficit disorder) and say boys need more treatment. Others say that environmental pollutants found in plastics, among other things, may be eroding their attention spans and their ability to regulate their emotions. Those experts may be right but I have another suggestion. Let's examine the way our child rearing and our schools have evolved in the last 10 years. Then ask ourselves this challenging question: could some of those changes we have embraced in our families, our communities and our schools be driving our sons crazy? Instead of unstructured free play, parents now schedule their kids' time from dawn till dusk (and sometimes beyond). By age 4, an ever-increasing number of children are enrolled in preschool. There, instead of learning to get along with other kids, hold a crayon (蜡笔) and play Duck, Duck, Goose, children barely out of diapers are asked to fill out work sheets, learn calculation or study Mandarin. The drumbeat (鼓声) for early academics gets even louder when they enter 'real' school. Veteran teachers will tell you that first graders are now routinely expected to master a curriculum that, only 15 years ago, would have been considered appropriate for second, even third graders. The way we teach children has changed, too. In many communities, elementary schools have become test-prep factories—where standardized testing begins in kindergarten and 'teaching to the test' is considered a virtue. At the same time, recess (休息时间) is being pushed aside in order to provide extra time for reading and math drills. So is history and opportunities for hands-on activities—like science labs and art. Active play is increasingly frowned on—some schools have even banned recess and tag. In the wake of school shootings like the tragedy at Virginia Tech, kids who stretch out a pointer finger, bend their thumb and shout 'pow!' are regarded with suspicion and not little fear.

单选题 How many really suffer as a result of labor market problems? This is one of the most critical yet contentious social policy questions. In many ways, our social statistics exaggerate the degree of hardship. Unemployment does not have the same dire consequences today as it did in the 1930s, when most of the unemployed were primary bread winners, when income and earnings were usually much closer to the margin of subsistence, and when there were no countervailing social programs for those failing in the labor market. Increasing affluence, the rise of families with more than one wage earner, the growing predominance of secondary earners among the unemployed, and improved social welfare protection have unquestionably mitigated the consequences of joblessness. Earnings and income data also overstate the dimensions of hardship. Among the millions with hourly earnings at or below the minimum wage level, the over-whelming majority are from multiple-earner, relatively affluent families. Most of those counted by the poverty statistics are elderly or handicapped or have family responsibilities which keep them out of the labor force, so the poverty statistics are by no means an accurate indicator of labor market pathologies. Yet there are also many ways our social statistics underestimate the degree of labor-market-related hardship. The unemployment counts exclude the millions of fully employed workers whose wages are so low that their families remain in poverty. Low wages and repeated or prolonged unemployment frequently interact to undermine the capacity for self-support. Since the number experiencing joblessness at some time during the year is several times the number unemployed in any month, those who suffer as a result of forced idleness can equal or exceed average annual unemployment, even though only a minority of the jobless in any month really suffer. For every person counted in the monthly unemployment tallies, there is another working part-time because of the inability to find full-time work, or else outside the labor force but wanting a job. Finally, income transfers in our country have always focused on the elderly, disabled, and dependent, neglecting the needs of the working poor, so that the dramatic expansion of cash and inkind transfers does not necessarily mean that those failing in the labor market are adequately protected. As a result of such contradictory evidence, it is uncertain whether those suffering seriously as a result of thousands or the tens of millions, and, hence, whether high levels of joblessness can be tolerated or must be countered by job creation and economic stimulus. There is only one area of agreement in this debate—that the existing poverty, employment, and earnings statistics are inadequate for one their primary applications, measuring the consequences of labor market problems.

单选题 What If Middle-Class Jobs Disappear? [A] The most recent recession in the United States began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. However, two years after the official end of the recession, few Americans would say that economic troubles are behind us. The unemployment rate, in particular, remains above 9%. Some labor market indicators, such as the proportion of long-term unemployed, are worse now than for any postwar recession. [B] There are two widely circulated narratives to explain what's going on. The Keynesian narrative is that there has been a major drop in aggregate demand. According to this narrative, the slump can be largely cured by using monetary and fiscal(财政的) stimulus. The main anti-Keynesian narrative is that businesses are suffering from uncertainty and over-regulation. According to this narrative, the slump can be cured by having the government commit to and follow a more hands-off approach. [C] I want to suggest a third interpretation. Without ruling out a role for aggregate demand or for the regulatory environment, I wish to suggest that structural change is an important factor in the current rate of high unemployment. The economy is in a state of transition, in which the middle-class jobs that emerged after World War II have begun to decline. As Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee put it in a recent e-book Race Against the Machine: 'The root of our problems is not that we're in a great recession, or a great stagnation(停滞), but rather that we are in the early throes(阵痛) of a great restructuring.' [D] In fact, I believe the Great Depression of the 1930s can also be interpreted in part as an economic transition. The impact of the internal combustion engine (内燃机) and the small electric motor on farming and manufacturing reduced the value of uneducated laborers. Instead, by the 1950s, a middle class of largely clerical(从事文秘工作的) workers was the most significant part of the labor force. Between 1930 and 1950, the United States economy underwent a great transition. Demand fell for human effort such as lifting, squeezing, and hammering. Demand increased for workers who could read and follow directions. The evolutionary process eventually changed us from a nation of laborers to a nation of clerks. [E] The proportion of employment classified as 'clerical workers' grew from 5.2% in 1910 to a peak of 19.3% in 1980. (However, by 2000 this proportion had edged down to 17.4%.) Overall, workers classified as clerical workers, technical workers, managers and officials exceeded 50% of the labor force by 2000. Corresponding declines took place in the manual occupations. Workers classified as laborers, other than farm hands or miners, peaked at 11.4% of the labor force in 1920 but were barely 6% by 1950 and less than 4% by 2000. Farmers and farm laborers fell from 33% of the labor force in 1910 to less than 15% by 1950 and only 1.2% in 2000. [F] The introduction of the tractor and improvements in the factory rapidly reduced the demand for uneducated workers. By the 1930s, a marginal farm hand could not produce enough to justify his employment. Sharecropping, never much better than a subsistence occupation, was no longer viable(可行的). Meanwhile, machines were replacing manufacturing occupations like cigar rolling and glass blowing for light bulbs. [G] The structural-transition interpretation of the unemployment problem of the 1930s would be that the demand for uneducated workers in the United States had fallen, but the supply remained high. The high school graduation rate was only 8.8% in 1912 and still just 29% in 1931. By 1950, it had reached 59%. With a new generation of workers who had completed high school, the mismatch between skills and jobs had been greatly reduced. [H] What took place after World War II was not the revival of a 1920s economy, with its small farming units, urban manufacturing, and plurality of laborers. Instead, the 1950s saw the creation of a new suburban economy, with a plurality of white-collar workers. With an expanded transportation and communications infrastructure(基础设), businesses needed telephone operators, shipping clerks and similar occupations. If you could read, follow simple instructions, and settle into a routine, you could find a job in the post-war economy. [I] The trend away from manual labor has continued. Even within the manufacturing sector, the share of production and non-supervisory workers in manufacturing employment went from over 85% just after World War II to less than 70% in more recent years. To put this another way, the proportion of white-collar work in manufacturing has doubled over the past 50 years. On the factory floor itself, work has become less physically demanding. Instead, it requires more cognitive skills and the ability to understand and carry out well-defined procedures. [J] As noted earlier, the proportion of clerical workers in the economy peaked in 1980. By that date, computers and advanced communications equipment had already begun to affect telephone operations and banking. The rise of the personal computer and the Internet has widened the impact of these technologies to include nearly every business and industry. [K] The economy today differs from that of a generation ago. Mortgage and consumer loan underwriters(风险评估人) have been replaced by credit scoring. Record stores have been replaced by music downloads. Book stores are closing, while sales of books on electronic readers have increased. Data entry has been moved off shore. Routine customer support also has been outsourced(外包) overseas. [L] These trends serve to limit the availability of well-defined jobs. If a job can be characterized by a precise set of instructions, then that job is a candidate to be automated or outsourced to modestly educated workers in developing countries. The result is what David Autor calls the polarization of the American job market. [M] Using the latest Census Bureau data, Matthew Slaughter found that from 2000 to 2010 the real earnings of college graduates (with no advanced degree) fell by more in percentage terms than the earnings of high school graduates. In fact, over this period the only education category to show an increase in earnings was those with advanced degrees. [N] The outlook for mid-skill jobs would not appear to be bright. Communications technology and computer intelligence continue to improve, putting more occupations at risk. For example, many people earn a living as drivers, including trucks and taxicabs. However, the age of driverless vehicles appears to be moving closer. Another example is in the field of education. In the fall of 2011, an experiment with an online course in artificial intelligence conducted by two Stanford professors drew tens of thousands of registrants(报名者). This increases the student-teacher ratio by a factor of close to a thousand. Imagine the number of teaching jobs that might be eliminated if this could be done for math, economics, chemistry, and so on. [O] It's important to bear in mind that when we offer a structural interpretation of unemployment, a 'loss of jobs' means an increase in productivity. Traditionally, economists have argued that productivity increases are a good thing, even though they may cause unemployment for some workers in the short run. In the long run, the economy does not run out of jobs. Rather, new jobs emerge as old jobs disappear. The story we tell is that average well-being rises, and the more people are able to adapt, the more widespread the improvement becomes.

单选题 A Pioneering Woman of Science Re-Emerges after 300 Years A. Maria Sibylla Merian, like many European women of the 17th century, stayed busy managing a household and rearing children. But on top of that, Merian, a German-born woman who lived in the Netherlands, also managed a successful career as an artist, botanist, naturalist and entomologist (昆虫学家). B. 'She was a scientist on the level with a lot of people we spend a lot of time talking about,' said Kay Etheridge, a biologist at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania who has been studying the scientific history of Merian's work. 'She didn't do as much to change biology as Charles Darwin, but she was significant.' C. At a time when natural history was a valuable tool for discovery, Merian discovered facts about plants and insects that were not previously known. Her observations helped dismiss the popular belief that insects spontaneously emerged from mud. The knowledge she collected over decades didn't just satisfy those curious about nature, but also provided valuable insights into medicine and science. She was the first to bring together insects and their habitats, including food they ate, into a single ecological composition. D. After years of pleasing a fascinated audience across Europe with books of detailed descriptions and life-size paintings of familiar insects, in 1699 she sailed with her daughter nearly 5,000 miles from the Netherlands to South America to study insects in the jungles of what is now known as Suriname. She was 52 years old. The result was her masterpiece, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium. E. In her work, she revealed a side of nature so exotic, dramatic and valuable to Europeans of the time that she received much acclaim. But a century later, her findings came under scientific criticism. Shoddy (粗糙的) reproductions of her work along with setbacks to women's roles in 18th- and 19th-century Europe resulted in her efforts being largely forgotten. 'It was kind of stunning when she sort of dropped off into oblivion (遗忘),' said Dr. Etheridge. 'Victorians started putting women in a box, and they're still trying to crawl out of it.' F. Today, the pioneering woman of the sciences has re-emerged. In recent years, feminists, historians and artists have all praised Merian's tenacity (坚韧), talent and inspirational artistic compositions. And now biologists like Dr. Etheridge are digging into the scientific texts that accompanied her art Three hundred years after her death, Merian will be celebrated at an international symposium in Amsterdam this June. G. And last month, Metamorphosis Insectorum Snrinamensiwm was republished. It contains 60 plates (插图) and original descriptions, along with stories about Merian's life and updated scientific descriptions. Before writing Metamorphosis, Merian spent decades documenting European plants and insects that she published in a series of books. She began in her 20s, making textless, decorative paintings of flowers with insects. 'Then she got really serious,' Dr. Etheridge said. Merian started raising insects at home, mostly butterflies and caterpillars. 'She would sit up all night until they came out of the pupa (蛹) so she could draw them,' she said. H. The results of her decades' worth of careful observations were detailed paintings and descriptions of European insects, followed by unconventional visuals and stories of insects and animals from a land that most at the time could only imagine. It's possible Merian used a magnifying glass to capture the detail of the split tongues of sphinx moths (斯芬克斯飞蛾) depicted in the painting. She wrote that the two tongues combine to form one tube for drinking nectar (花蜜). Some criticized this detail later, saying there was just one tongue, but Merian wasn't wrong. She may have observed the adult moth just as it emerged from its pupa For a brief moment during that stage of its life cycle, the tongue consists of two tiny half-tubes before merging into one. I. It may not have been ladylike to depict a giant spider devouring a hummingbird, but when Merian did it at the turn of the 18th century, surprisingly, nobody objected. Dr. Etheridge called it revolutionary. The image, which also contained novel descriptions of ants, fascinated a European audience that was more concerned with the exotic story unfolding before them than the gender of the person who painted it. J. 'All of these things shook up their nice, neat little view,' Dr. Etheridge said. But later, people of the Victorian era thought differently. Her work had been reproduced, sometimes incorrectly. A few observations were deemed impossible. 'She'd been called a silly woman for saying that a spider could eat a bird,' Dr. Etheridge said. But Henry Walter Bates, a friend of Charles Darwin, observed it and put it in book in 1863, proving Merian was correct. K. In the same plate, Merian depicted and described leaf-cutter ants for the first time. 'In America there are large ants which can eat whole trees bare as a broom handle in a single night,' she wrote in the description Merian noted how the ants took the leaves below ground to their young. And she wouldn't have known this at the time, but the ants use the leaves to farm fungi (菌类) underground to feed their developing babies. L. Merian was correct about the giant bird-eating spiders, ants building bridges with their bodies and other details. But in the same drawing, she incorrectly lumped together army and leaf-cutter ants. And instead of showing just the typical pair of eggs in a hummingbird nest, she painted four. She made other mistakes in Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium as well: not every caterpillar and butterfly matched. M. Perhaps one explanation for her mistakes is that she cut short her Suriname trip after getting sick, and completed the book at home in Amsterdam. And errors are common among some of history's most-celebrated scientific minds, too. 'These errors no more invalidate Ms. Merian's work than do well-known misconceptions published by Charles Darwin or Isaac Newton,' Dr. Etheridge wrote in a paper that argued that too many have wrongly focused on the mistakes of her work. N. Merian's paintings inspired artists and ecologists. In an 1801 drawing from his book, General Zoology Amphibia, George Shaw, an English botanist and zoologist, credited Merian for describing a frog in the account of her South American expedition, and named the young tree frog after her in his portrayal of it. It wouldn't be fair to give Merian all the credit. She received assistance naming plants, making sketches and referencing the work of others. Her daughters helped her color her drawings. O. Merian also made note of the help she received from the natives of Suriname, as well as slaves or servants that assisted her. In some instances she wrote mooing passages that included her helpers in descriptions. As she wrote in her description of the peacock flower, 'The Indians, who are not treated well by their Dutch masters, use the seeds to abort their children, so that they will not become slaves like themselves. The black slaves from Guinea and Angola have demanded to be well treated, threatening to refuse to have children. In fact, they sometimes take their own lives because they are treated so badly, and because they believe they will be born again, free and living in their own land. They told me this themselves.' P. Londa Schiebinger, a professor of the history of science at Stanford University, called this passage rather astonishing. It's particularly striking centuries later when these issues are still prominent in public discussions about social justice and women's rights. 'She was ahead of her time,' Dr. Etheridge said.

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

单选题 More and more gadgets seek to replicate the sorts of things your mother used to needle you about: getting exercise, eating more slowly or brushing your teeth. Now one company has decided to embrace that image—it has named its product 'Mother'. The device, from a firm called Sense, caught my eye at a press preview for the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, in part because of its unique design. It looks like a cross between WALL-E's girlfriend EVE and Russian nesting dolls. Mother has slightly creepy glowing eyes—but surely has your best interest at heart? Mother's potential use is intriguing: Each Mother unit talks wirelessly to a set of smaller tracking devices, dubbed cookies, which can sense motion and temperature. You can put cookies on things and people—on your body to gather data about how much you walk, on your coffee machine to track many espressos you drink, on your front door to track whenever it is opened, on your toothbrush to see how often and how long you brush...and so forth. Whenever the cookies get close to the Mother unit, they wirelessly send back their data to the Internet. The company says users of Mother, which is supposed to start shipping in the spring, will be able look at all their information at once, or drill down on certain topics. And if something is really important, you can have an alert sent to your phone when a sensor detects a change. So what does all that data do for you? That's a question that bedevils many Interact of Things gadgets on display here at CES. Mother's makers say the data she tracks can help you gain peace of mind by answering specific questions in your life, such as, 'Am I drinking enough water?' or, 'Did somebody open my secret drawer?' Lots of companies want to connect parts of your body, home and life to the Internet—a trend called the 'Internet of Things'. Mother's maker, Raft Haladjian, told me he thinks having separate devices for all these things is too expensive and too cumbersome because they can't talk to each other. 'There are not so many needs that are worth $200' for a distinct Interact-connected device, he said. Mother, which costs $222 for a base unit and four cookies, is designed to be repurposed as new challenges or needs spring to mind, he said. It's kind of like a mobile device that can run an ever-changing array of apps. Where did the name come from? 'We need a device that does all sort of things,' Haladjian said. 'The metaphor that matched this noble caring figure is the mother. She is not a nurse, a gardener or a cop—she is everything at the same time.'

单选题A. As the world gets warmer, sea levels are rising. It has been happening at a snail's pace so far, but as it speeds up more and more low-lying coastal land will be lost. At risk are many of the world's cities and huge areas of fertile farmland. The sea is set to rise a metre or more by the end of this century. And that's just the start. 'Unless there is a rapid and dramatic about-face in emissions—which no one expects—the next century will be far worse than this century,' says glaciologist (冰川学家) Bob Bindshadler of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland. B. Throwing trillions of dollars at the problem could probably save big cities such as New York and London, but the task of defending all low-lying coastal areas and islands seems hopeless. Or is it? Could we find a way to slow the accelerating glaciers, drain seas into deserts or add more ice to the great ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica? C. These ideas might sound crazy but we have got ourselves into such a bad situation that maybe we should start to consider them. If we carry on as we are, sea levels will rise for millennia, probably by well over 10 metres. Slashing greenhouse gas emissions would slow the rise, but the longer we hesitate, the bigger the rise we will be committed to. Even if ''conventional' geo-engineering schemes for cooling the planet were put in place and worked as planned, they would have little effect on sea level over the next century unless combined with drastic emissions cuts. D. In short, if coastal dwellers don't want their children and grandchildren to have to abandon land to the sea, now is the time to start coming up with Plan C. So New Scientist set out in search of the handful of researchers who have begun to think about specific ways to hold back the waters. E. One of the reasons why the great ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are already shrinking is that the ice is draining off the land faster. Ice floating on the surrounding seas usually acts as a brake, holding back glaciers on land, so as this ice is lost the glaciers flow faster. The acceleration of the Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland is thought to be the result of warm currents melting the floating tongue of the glacier. Other outlet glaciers are being attacked in a similar way. F. Mike MacCracken of the Climate Institute in Washington DC is one of those starting to think that we shouldn't just sit back and let warm currents melt ice shelves. 'Is there some way of doing something to stop that flow, or cool the water?' he asks. G. Last year, physicist Russel Seitz at Harvard University suggested that the planet could be cooled by using fleets of customised boats to generate large numbers of tiny bubbles. This would whiten the surface of the oceans and so reflect more sunlight. MacCracken says the bubbles might be better arranged in a more focused way, to cool the currents that are undermining the Jakobshavn glacier and others like it. A couple of degrees of chill would take this water down to freezing point, rendering it harmless. 'At least that would slow the pace of change,' MacCracken says. H. What about a more direct approach: building a physical barrier to halt a glacier's flow into the sea by brute force? Bindshadler thinks that is a non-starter. 'The ice discharge has many sources, mostly remote and in environments where barriers are not likely to work,' he says. 'Taking just the one example I know best, the Pine Island glacier in Antarctica drains into an ice shelf that at its front is 25 kilometres across and 500 metres thick, and moves at over 10 metres per day. The seabed there is 1000 metres down and is made of sediment (深深物) hundreds of metres thick and the consistency of toothpaste.' Not your ideal building site. I. A slightly more subtle scheme to rein in the glaciers was proposed more than 20 years ago by Douglas MacAyeal of the University of Chicago. His idea is to fight ice with ice. The big outlet glaciers feed into giant floating shelves of ice, which break off into icebergs at their outer edges. MacAyeal suggested pumping water up from beneath the ice and depositing it on the upper surface, where it would freeze to form a thick ridge, weighing down the floating ice shelf. Add enough ice in this way, and the bottom of the ice shelf would eventually be forced down onto the seabed. Friction with the seabed would slow down the shells movement, which in turn would hold back the glaciers feeding into it. It would be like tightening an immense valve. J. 'I think it's quite an inspired idea,' says Bindshadler. But nobody has followed it up to work out how practical the scheme would be. 'On the back of an envelope it has promise—but these ice shelves are big. You would need a lot of drilling equipment all over the ice shelf, and my intuition is that if you look at the energetics of it, it won't work,' Bindshadler says. K. Even if we could apply brakes to glaciers, this would only slow down sea level rise. Could we do better than that and reverse it—actually make the sea retreat? If you think of the sea as a giant bathtub, then the most obvious way to lower its level is to take out the plug. L. 'One of the oldest notions is filling depressions on the land,' says MacCracken. Among the largest of these is the Qattara depression in northern Egypt, which at its lowest point is more than 130 metres below sea level. Various schemes have been proposed to channel water from the Mediterranean into the depression to generate hydroelectric (水力的) power, and as a by-product a few thousand cubic kilometres of the sea would be drained away. Unfortunately, that's only enough to shave about 3 millimetres off sea level: a drop in the ocean. And there would be grave consequences for the local environment. 'The leakage of salt water through fracture systems would add salt to aquifers (含水层) for good,' says Farouk El-Baz, a geologist at Boston University who has studied the region. M. Refining the Dead Sea is no better. Because of surrounding hills, this depression could be filled to 60 metres above sea level, but even that would only offset the rise by 5 millimetres—and drown several towns into the bargain. N. The notion of engineering lower sea levels remains a highly abstract topic. 'If the world doesn't control emissions, I'm pretty sure that no geo-engineering solution will work—and it would potentially create other side effects and false promises,' says MacCracken. 'But if we do get on a path to curbing emissions dramatically—down 50 per cent by 2050, say—then the question becomes, can geo-engineering help with the hump we're going to go through over the next few centuries?'

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

单选题 The U.S. isn't the only country with an expanding waistline (腰围). A new study from the European Society of Cardiology predicts that rates of obesity will increase in almost all European countries by 2030. And Ireland comes in as the fattest country, with a 47% projected obesity rate for both men and women. To be fair, everywhere people are expanding. The prevalence of obesity worldwide nearly doubled between 1980 and 2008, according to the World Health Organization (WHO. , and although the U.S. is still leading the pack with obesity at 34.9%, European countries aren't lagging far behind with rates at roughly 23% for women and 20% for men. Presented by Dr. Laura Webber at the EuroPRevent congress in Amsterdam, the study takes into account all available data on body mass index and obesity/overweight trends in the WHO's 53 Euro-region countries. In those countries the study revealed little evidence of any plateau (稳定期). Even as England's rate of increase today is less steep than it has been historically, levels continue to rise and will be much higher in 2030 than they were in 1993. Examining both overweight and obese rates combined, the numbers become even more shocking. The prevalence of overweight and obesity in males is set to reach 75% in the U.K. and 80% in the Czech Republic, Spain, and Poland. In Ireland, the projected rate is an enormous 90% for men and 84% for women. Considering that's almost everybody, Dr. Webber's comment that these results may be underestimates is all the more concerning. She points to the poor data available from many countries contributing to less certain predictions. The study also does not take into account the significant increase in childhood weight and obesity issues across Europe, with one in three 11-year-olds overweight or obese, according to the WHO. In accounting for differences in projected levels (the lowest found in Belgium at 44% and the Netherlands at 47%) the authors mention the potential effects of 'economic positioning' and 'type of market.' Ireland and the U.K., where obesity rates are highest, have unregulated markets similar to the U.S. Giant food companies work collectively to maximize profit-encouraging over-consumption. In areas with more controlled market economies, like the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, and Finland, obesity levels are lower. However, obesity is a complex disease. 'The United Nations has called for a whole-of-society approach to preventing obesity and related diseases,' Dr. Webber said. 'Policies that reduce obesity are necessary to avoid premature mortality and prevent economic strain on already overburdened health systems. The WHO has put in place strategies that aim to guide countries towards reducing obesity through the promotion of physical activity and healthy diets.'

单选题The human nose is an underrated tool. Humans are often thought to be insensitive smellers compared with animals, but this is largely because, unlike animals, we stand upright. This means that our noses are 35 to perceiving those smells which float through the air, missing the majority of smells which stick to surfaces. In fact, though, we are 36 sensitive to smells, even ff we do not generally realize it. Our noses are capable of 37 human smells even when these are diluted to far below one part in one million. Strangely, some people find that they can smell one type of flower but not another, whereas others are sensitive to the smells of both flowers. This may be because some people do not have the genes necessary to generate 38 smell receptors in the nose. These receptors are the cells which sense smells and send 39 to the brain. However, it has been found that even people insensitive to a certain smell at first can suddenly become sensitive to it when 40 to it often enough. The explanation for insensitivity to smell seems to be that the brain finds it 41 to keep all smell receptors working all the time but can create new receptors if necessary. This may also explain why we are not usually sensitive to our own smells—we 42 do not need to be. We are not 43 of the usual smell of our own house, but we notice new smells when we visit someone else's. The brain finds it best to keep smell receptors available for unfamiliar and 44 signals such as the smell of smoke, which might indicate the danger of fire. A. simply E. permanently I. dedicated M. distinguishing B. emergency F. limited J. exposed N. particular C. aware G. sure K. impulses O. extremely D. detecting H. inefficient L. messages

单选题 Amitai Etzioni is not surprised by the latest headings about scheming corporate crooks(骗子). As a visiting professor at the Harvard Business School in 1989, he ended his work there disgusted with his students' overwhelming lust for money. 'They're taught that profit is all that matters,' he says. 'Many schools don't even offer ethics (伦理学) courses at all.' Etzioni expressed his frustration about the interests of his graduate students. 'By and large, I clearly had not found a way to help classes full of MBAs see that there is more to life than money, power, fame and self-interest,' he wrote at the time. Today he still takes the blame for not educating these 'business-leaders-to-be.' 'I really feel like I failed them,' he says. 'If I was a better teacher maybe I could have reached them.' Etzioni was a respected ethics expert when he arrived at Harvard. He hoped his work at the university would give him insight into how questions of morality could he applied to places where serf-interest flourished. What he found wasn't encouraging. Those would-be executives had, says Etzioni, little interest in concepts of ethics and morality in the boardroom—and their professor was met with blank stares when he urged his students to see business in new and different ways. Etzioni sees the experience at Harvard as an eye-opening one and says there's much about business schools that he'd like to change. 'A lot of the faculty teaching business are bad news them-selves.' Etzioni says. From offering classes that teach students how to legally manipulate contracts, to reinforcing the notion of profit over community interests, Etzioni has seen a lot that's left him shaking his head. And because of what he's seen taught in business schools, he's not surprised by the latest rash of corporate scandals. 'In many ways things have got a lot worse at business schools, I suspect,' says Etzioni. Etzioni is still teaching the sociology of right and wrong and still calling for ethical business leadership. 'People with poor motives will always exist,' he says. 'Sometimes environments con-strain those people and sometimes environments give those people opportunity. 'Etzioni says the booming economy of the last decade enabled those individuals with poor motives to get rich before getting in trouble. His hope now: that the cries for reform will provide more fertile soil for his long-standing messages about business ethics.

单选题 中国传统节日与洋节 随着中国经济和社会迅猛发展，中西方经济文化交流也越来越频繁。在海外华侨华人的大力传播(dissemination)、推动下，中国传统节日走出国门，向世界展示出了它的魅力。中国传统节日有其独特的吸引力。想想春节期间全家团圆的温馨、愉快以及很多节日中民族情感的慰藉。西方人也开始了解中华传统节日文化元素的迷人之处，并将其融合到西方的传统节日中去。如今，圣诞节里，“福”字电开始有了一席之地，圣诞节显然过出了浓浓的中国味儿。

单选题Directions:Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteashortessayentitledMoreCandidatesforCivilServants.Youressayshouldstartwithabriefdescriptionofthechart.Youshouldwriteatleast150wordsbutnomorethan200words.

单选题 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay by referring to the saying 'Storms make trees take deeper roots.' You can give examples to illustrate your point. You are required to write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.