单选题Can the Internet help patients jump the line at the doctor's office? The Silicon Valley Employers Forum, a sophisticated group of technology companies, is launching a pilot program to test online "virtual visits" between doctors at three big local medical groups and about 6 000 employees and their families. The six employers taking part in the Silicon Valley initiative, including heavy hitters such as Oracle and Cisco Systems, hope that online visits will mean employees won't have to skip work to tend to minor ailments or to follow up on chronic conditions. "With our long commutes and traffic, driving 40 miles to your doctor in your hometown can be a big chunk of time, "says Cindy Conway, benefits director at Cadence Design Systems, one of the participating companies. Doctors aren't clamoring to chat with patients online for free; they spend enough unpaid time on the phone. Only 1 in 5 has ever e-mailed a patient, and just 9 percent are interested in doing so, according to the research firm Cyber Dialogue. "We are not stupid," says Stifling Somers, executive director of the Silicon Valley employers group. "Doctors getting paid is a critical piece in getting this to work." In the pilot program, physicians will get $20 per online consultation, about what they get for a simple office visit. Doctors also fear they'll be swamped by rambling e-mails that tell everything but what's needed to make a diagnosis. So the new program will use technology supplied by Healinx, an Alameda, Calif-based star-up. Healinx's "Smart Symptom Wizard" questions patients and turns answers into a succinct message. The company has online dialogues for 60 common conditions. The doctor can then diagnose the problem and outline a treatment plan, which could include e-mailing a prescription or a face-to-face visit. Can e-mail replace the doctor's office? Many conditions, such as persistent cough, require a stethoscope to discover what's wrong and to avoid a malpractice suit. Even Larry Bonham, head of one of the doctor's groups in the pilot, believes the virtual doctor's visits offer a "very narrow" sliver of service between phone calls to an advice nurse and a visit to the clinic. The pilot program, set to end in nine months, also hopes to determine whether online visits will boost worker productivity enough to offset the cost of the service. So far, the Internet's record in the health field has been underwhelming. The experiment is "a huge roll of the dice for Healinx", notes Michael Barrett, an analyst at Internet consulting firm Forester Research. If the "Web visits" succeed, expect some HMOs (Health Maintenance Organizations) to pay for online visits. If doctors, employers, and patients aren't satisfied, figure on one more E health star-up to stand down.

单选题What'sFrank'sson'shobby?A.Gardening.B.Bowling.C.Collectingstamps.D.Painting.

单选题Why does the author mention genetic engineering and computer science?

单选题How does Serkis' version differ from the original one?

单选题The man behind this notion, Jack Maple, is a dandy who affects dark glasses, homburgs(翘边帽)and two-toe shoes; yet he has become something of a legend in America's police departments. For some years, starting in New York and moving on to high-crime spots such as New Orleans and Philadelphia, he and his business partner, John Linder have marketed a two-tier system for cutting crime. First, police departments have to sort themselves out: root out corruption, streamline their bureaucracy, and make more contact with the public. Second, they have to adopt a computer system called Comstat which helps them to analyze statistics of all major crimes. These are constantly keyed into the computer, which then displays where and when they have occurred on a color-coded map, enabling the police to monitor crime trends as they happen and to spot high-crime areas. In New York, Comstat's statistical maps are analyzed each week at a meeting of the city's police chief and precinct captains. Messrs Maple and Linder ( "specialists in crime-reduction services" ) have no doubt that their system is a main contributor to the drop in crime. When they introduced it in New Orleans in January 1997, violent crime dropped by 22 % in a year; when they merely started working informally with the police department in Newark, New Jersey, violent crime fell by 13%. Police departments are now lining up to pay as much as $50,000 a month for these two men to put them straight. Probably all these new policies and bits of technical wizardry, added together, have made a big difference to crime. But there remain anomalies that cannot be explained, such as the fact that crime in Washington D.C. , has fallen as fast as anywhere, although the police department has been corrupt and hopeless and, in large stretches of the city, neither police nor residents seem disposed to fight the criminals in their midst. The more important reason for the fall in crime rates, many say, is a much less sophisticated one. It is a fact that crime rates have dropped as the imprisonment rate soared. In 1997 the national incarceration rate, at 645 per 100,000 people was more than double the rate in 1985, and the number of inmates in city and county jails rose by 9.4%, almost double its annual average increase since 1990. Surely some criminologists argue, one set of figures is the cause of the other. It is precise because more people are being sent to prison, they claim that crime rates are falling. A 1993 study by the National Academy of Sciences actually concluded that the tripling of the prison population between 1975 and 1989 had lowered violent crime by 10-15%. Yet cause and effect may not be so obviously linked. To begin with, the sale and possession of drugs are not counted by the FBI in its crime index, which is limited to violent crimes and crimes against property. Yet drug offences account for more than a third of the recent increase in the number of those jailed; since 1980, the incarceration rate for drug arrests has increased by 1,000%. And although about three-quarters of those going to prison for drug offences have committed other crimes as well, there is not yet a crystal-clear connection between filling the jails with drug-pushers and a decline in the rate of violent crime. Again, though national figures are suggestive, local ones diverge: the places where crime has dropped most sharply( such as New York City)are not always the places where incarceration has risen fastest.

单选题 Questions 11 to 13 are based on the following conversation between two friends about a trip. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11 to 13.

单选题All of the following except ______are very important in baseball.

单选题From China to America, political leaders are wondering how to handle with the newly-elected Russian President Vladimir V. Putin. The 47-year-old leader has not yet to reveal details of his foreign-policy vision, but this is much clear. He wants Russia to stand tall—or at least, taller—in the world. "It would be unreasonable to be afraid of a strong Russia, but one should reckon with it, "he declared in an "open letter" to voters shortly after they elected him on March 26. "One can insult us only at one"s own peril." The important point is whether Putin"s efforts to build new respect for Russia will lead to confrontation with the West. For now, Putin seems hopeful of putting Russian—Western relations on a better standing— despite U.S. and European criticism of the Chechen War. Putin is the one taking the initiative, media say, for a tete-a-tete with U. S. President Bill Clinton. The pair discussed a possible meeting when Clinton called Putin on March 27 to congratulate him. They hope to meet before the July Group of Eight meetimg in Okinawa. "Putin wants it to be constructive," says Robert Legvold, a Russia watcher at Columbia University. The new president, Putin seems willing to negotiate arms control and security issues with Washington. Clinton wants Russia"s agreement to revise the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty so that the U. S. can build a limited national missile defense. Putin would want something in return—perhaps the right to sell its missile-defense technology to potential customers such as South Korea. Putin is also looking for a deal from the Paris Club of creditor governments on reducing $40 billion in Soviet debt. Encouraged by Putin"s promises to enforce the rule of law, the creditors are likely to give him a break. Any sober calculation of Russia"s global status suggests that Russia needs the West more than the West needs Russia. And whatever is generally thought, Russia has more to gain from America and Europe than it does from China. That"s why the West should be unafraid of laying down rules for Putin—and brace for a time of testing. Putin is often described as both an opportunist and a cynic, but there is no doubt one attribute that he respects: power.

单选题 {{I}}Questions 14 to 17 are based on the radio news. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14 to 17.{{/I}}

单选题 {{I}}Questions 14～16 are based on the following talk. You now have 15 seconds to rend Questions 14～16.{{/I}}

单选题According to the author, the importance of greenspace in the urban environment ______. A. is being closely studied B. is usually neglected C. has been fully recognized D. is still unknown

单选题What is the main message of this text?

单选题The word "deforestation" in Paragraph 3 means

单选题 {{I}}Questions 14～16 are based on the following talk. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14～16.{{/I}}

单选题Replying to our Christmas "good guru guide", Peter Drucker, the grand old man of management theory, speculated that the word "guru" had become popular only because "charlatan" was too long a word for most headlines. Few people are easier to ridicule than management gums. Irrepressible self-publicists and slavish fashion-merchants, they make a splendid living out of recycling other people's ideas ("chaos management" ), coining euphemisms ("downsizing" ) and laboring the obvious ("managing by wandering around" or the customer is king" ). Their books draw heavily on particular case studies— often out-of-date ones that have nasty knack of collapsing later. And their ideas change quickly. Tom Peters, once a self-confessed sycophant to the corporate behemoth is now an apostle of the small, chaotic, "virtual" organization. Gums do have their uses, however. Begin with the circumstantial evidence. In America, where management theories are treated with undue reverence, business is bouncing back. In Germany, where business schools hardly exist and management theory is widely seen as an oxymoron, many companies are in trouble. German business magazines are suddenly brimming with articles about "downsizing" and "business process re-engineering" . In Japan firms are once again turning to business theories from America — just as their fathers learnt after the Second World War from American quality control techniques. Coincidence does not prove causation: American firms were just as much in love with gums when they were doing badly. But the fact that Germans and Japanese are paying attention again does offer some clues. The most important point in favor of management theories is that they are on the side of change. In 1927 a group of psychologists studying productivity at Western Electric's Hawthorne factory in Illinois found that workers increased their output whenever the level of lighting was changed, up or down. At the very least, theorists can make change easier by identifying problems, acting as scapegoats for managers — or simply making people think. A vested interest in change can lead to faddism. But, taken with a requisite dose of scepticism, it can be fine complacency-shaker. A second argument for gurus relates to knowledge. The best management theorists collect a lot of information about what makes firms successful. This varies from the highly technical, such as how to discount future cash flow, to softer organizational theories. Few would dispute the usefulness of the first. It is in the second area— the land of "flat hierarchies' and" multi-functional teams" — that gums have most often stumbled against or contradicted each other. This knowledge is not obviously providing a strategic recipe for success: there are too many variables in business, and if all competitors used the same recipe it would automatically cease to work. But it does provide something managers want: information about, and understanding of, other companies experience in trying out tactics— thinner management structures, handing power to workers, performance-related pay, or whatever. A good analogy may be with diets. There is no such thing as the "correct" diet, but it is clear that some foods, in some quantities, arc better for you than others: and it is also likely that the main virtue of following a diet is not what you eat but the fact that it forces you to think about it. If management diets come with a lot of hype and some snake-oil, so be it.

单选题Questions 14 to 16 are based on the following talk about the reform of public education. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14 to 16.

单选题{{B}}TEXT 2{{/B}} In my newspaper column some months ago, I reprinted a short essay on youth by Samuel Ullman, an author unknown to me. Then I got a call from Ullman's great-grandson, Richard Ullman Rosenfield, a psychologist. He told me that he had been intrigued with the "spiritual journey" of the essay, especially in Japan. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, I learned, often quoted Ullman's "Youth" essay and kept a framed copy over his desk throughout the Pacific campaign. It's believed that the Japanese picked up the work from his Tokyo headquarters. Unlikely as it may sound, this essay, written more than 70 years ago, is the underpinning of much Japanese productivity and the basis of many businessmen's life philosophies. Many carry creased copies in their wallets. "Anyone worth his salt in Japanese business knows and uses this essay," says one longtime Japan observer, "It is our Popeye's spinach," said Tatsuro Ishida, who was deputy chairman of Fujisankei Communications Group. "It touches me at the core of my heart," says Kokichi Hagiwara, the 67-year-old chairman of Japanese/American-owned National Steel in Pittsburgh. "This kind of enthusiasm is indispensable. We must have the spirit of youth to make change." Some Japanese leaders see the essay as a bridge between the two cultures, If Westerners can understand Japanese reverence for it, maybe they can better understand the Japanese businessman's quest for spiritual sustenance in the midst of material abundance. When one of Ullman's grandsons, Jonas Rosenfield, Jr. , was having dinner in Japan a few years ago, "Youth" came up in conversation, Rosenfield told his dinner companion, a Japanese business leader, that the author was his grandfather. The news was staggering. "'You are the grandson of Samuel Ullman? ' he kept repeating," says Rosenfield, head of the American Film Marketing Association. "He couldn't get over it." Then the executive pulled a copy of "Youth" from his pocket and told Rosenfield, "I carry it with me always." Three years ago, several hundred top businessmen and government leaders gathered in Tokyo and Osaka to celebrate their admiration of Ullman's essay. Testimonials abounded, including one from Konosuke Matsushita, founder of the Panasonic Company, who said "Youth" has been his motto for 20 years. Someone asked, "Why don't Americans love the essay as much as we do? It sends a message about how to live beautifully to men and women, old and young alike." Samuel Ullman was born in 1840 in Germany and came to American as a boy. He fought in the U. S, Civil War and settled in Birmingham, Alabama. He was a hardware merchant with a penchant for public service that continues 67 years after his death. In the last few years more than $ 36,000 from Japanese royalties on a book and a cassette reading of his work has gone to a University of Alabama at Birmingham scholarship fund, not bad for a man who started writing in his 70s.

单选题 Few words are more commonly used in our modern world than the word modern itself. The modernity of manufactured articles, of institutions, of attitudes, of works of art is constantly brought to our attention. We ourselves may well be judged by whether we are modern or not; indeed, many people go to considerable lengths to make quite certain that they will be accepted as modern — modern in their dress, their behaviour, their beliefs. And yet, we may ask, must not earlier generations have felt precisely the same? Surely men throughout history must have recognized themselves as modern. Surely innovators like Julius Caesar, Peter the Great or Oliver Cromwell saw themselves as breaking with the past, as establishing a new order. (Must they not also have shared our awareness of the significance of what is modern?) What is modern is distinct from what belongs to the past and men in earlier times must have experienced this sense of distinctiveness. Men cannot escape, and never have been able to escape, from an awareness of change. But reflection will tell us that our awareness of change, our sense of distinctiveness, is very different from that of our distant ancestors. Change for us is more, much more, than the change brought about by the passing of time, by important events or by the actions of outstanding individuals or groups of people. We make use of change and are ourselves a part of a process of change. Change for us has become modernization and modernization implies both direction and consciousness. Change is something we seek, something that has no end. This consciousness of change and this desire to direct change derives from the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. The term revolution is usually applied to an historical event, an event we can place in time. We can normally speak of a time before the revolution and a time after the revolution. But the Industrial Revolution, although it had a beginning, has never come to an end. It is a process which cannot stop. It is a process which effects more and more people in more and more ways. We may argue that it is a process directed by men and this would be true if we look at the details of the process. But the whole process is, as yet, beyond control. We can decide the direction of modernization to some extent but we cannot decide to halt it. This has led to a disturbing situation. What we boast of as modern or up-to-date today, will be old-fashioned or out-of-date tomorrow. The noisy insistence that something is modern often conceals fear of the knowledge that it will inevitably soon be superseded. Again, the very fact that modernization has one direction only and involves every member of society permits only two attitudes: acceptance or rejection. The desire to change or modify the world we live in implies acceptance, since the world is a world of change. Rejection of modernization may, therefore, lead to a sense of the world as unreal and meaningless, and this, in turn, to a breakdown, either individual or social.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Paul Straussmann, retired vice president of Xerox,, indicates in his book Information Pay-off that" almost half of the U. S. information workers are in executive, managerial, administrative and professional positions. " He further states that "managers and professionals spend more than half of their time in communicating with each other. " In other words ,people are a corporation's most expensive resource. For a typical office, over 90 percent of the operating budget is for salaries, benefits and over head. With this investment, is it any wonder that managers are focusing more and more attention on employee productivity? They realize that the paper jungle cannot be tamed simply by hiring more people. To receive a return on their investment, wise corporate executive officers are realizing what industrialists and agriculturists learned long ago--efficient tools are essential for increased productivity. A direct relationship exists between efficient flow of information and the quality and speed of the output of the end product. For those companies using technology, the per document cost of information processing is only a fraction of what it was a few years ago. The decreasing cost of computers and peripherals( equipment tied to the computer) will continue to make technology a cost-effective tool in the future. An example of this type of saving is illustrated in the case of the Western Division of General Telephone and Electronics Company(GTE). By making a one-time investment of $10 million to automate its facilities, management estimates an annual saving of $ 8.5 million for the company. This savings is gained mainly through the elimination of support people once needed for proposal projects. Through a telecommunications network that supports 150 computer terminals with good graphics capabilities, the engineers who conceptualize the projects are now direct participants. They use the graphics capacities of the computer rather than rely on drafters to prepare drawings, they enter their own text rather than employ typists, and they use the network to track project progress rather than conducting meetings.

单选题Whatisthereasonwhymangahavetocoveradiverserangeofthemes?A.Theyhaveacomplexhistory.B.Theyhavetoattractaudiencefromallagegroups.C.Theyhavetoexpandit'smarketworldwide.D.Theyhavetoincreaseit'spopularity.