单选题Professor Charles R. Schwenk's research shows ______.

单选题 {{I}}Questions 11～13 are based on the following conversation. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11～13.{{/I}}

单选题 {{B}} Questions 17 to 20 are based on the following biographies for the presidential candidates in US 2008. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17 to 20.{{/B}}

单选题Which of the following statements is true about insurance products?

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Managers spend a great deal of their time in meetings. According to Henry Mintzbery, in his book, The Nature of Managerial Work, managers in large organizations spend only 22 per cent of their time on meetings. So what are the managers doing in those meetings? There have conventionally been two answers. The first is the academic version: Managers are coordinating and controlling, making decisions, solving problems and planning. This interpretation has been largely discredited because it ignores the social and political forces at work in meetings. The second version claims that meetings provide little more than strategic sites for corporate gladiators to perform before the organizational emperors. This perspective is far more attractive, and has given rise to a large, and often humorous, body of literature on gamesmanship and posturing in meetings. It is, of course, true that meeting rooms serve as shop windows for managerial talent, but this is far from the truth as a whole. The suggestion that meetings are actually battle grounds is misleading since the raison d'etre of meetings has far more to do with comfort than conflict. Meetings are actually vital props, both for the participants and the organization as a whole. For the organization, meetings represent recording devices. The minutes of meetings catalogue the change of the organization, at all levels, in a more systematic way than do the assorted memos and directives which are scattered about the company. They enshrine the minutes of corporate history, they itemize proposed actions and outcomes in a way which makes one look like the natural culmination of the other. The whole tenor of the minutes is one of total premeditation and implied continuity. They are a sanitized version of reality which suggests a reassuring level of control over events. What is more, the minutes record the debating of certain issues in an official and democratic forum, so that those not involved in the process can be assured that decision was not taken lightly. As Dong Bennett, an administrative and financial manager with Allied Breweries, explains: "Time and effort are seen to have been invested in scrutinizing a certain course of action. " Key individuals are also seen to have put their names behind that particular course of action. The decision can therefore proceed with the full weight of the organization behind it, even if it actually went through" on the nod ". At the same time, the burden of responsibility is spread, so that no individual takes the blame. Thus, the public nature of formal meetings confers a degree of legitimacy on what happens in them. Having a view pass unchallenged at a meeting can be taken to indicate consensus. However, meetings also serve as an alibi for action, as demonstrated by one manager who explained to his subordinates: "I did what I could to prevent it—I had our objections minutes in two meetings. "The proof of conspicuous effort was there in black and white. By merely attending meetings, managers buttress their status, while non-attendance can carry with it a certain stigma. Whether individual managers intend to make a contribution or not, it is satisfying to be considered one of those whose views matter. Ostracism, for senior managers, is not being invited to meetings. As one cynic observed, meetings are comfortingly tangible: "Who on the shop floor really believes that managers are working when they tour the works? But assemble them behind closed doors and call it a meeting and everyone will take it for granted that they are hard at work. " Managers are being seen to earn their corn. Meetings provide managers with another form of comfort too—that of formality. Meetings follow a fixed format: Exchanges are ritualized, the participants are probably known in advance, there is often a written agenda, and there is a chance to prepare. Little wonder then, that they come as welcome relief from the upheaval and uncertainty of life outside the meeting room. Managers can draw further comfort from the realization that their peers are every bit as bemused and fallible as themselves. Meetings provide constant reminders that they share the same problems, preoccupations and anxieties, that they are all in the same boat. And for those who may be slightly adrift, meetings are ideal occasions for gently pulling them round. As Steve Styles, the process control manager (life services) at Legal & General, puts it: "The mere presence of others in meetings adds weight to teasing or censure and helps you to 'round up the strays'. " Such gatherings therefore provide solace and direction for the management team—a security blanket for managers. Meetings do serve a multitude of means as well as ends. They relieve managerial stress and facilitate consensus. For the organization, they have a safety-net-cum-rubber-stamping function without which decisions could not proceed, much less gather momentum. In short, meetings are fundamental to the well-being of managers and organizations alike.

单选题 Paolo Fril, chairman and scientific officer of GeneDupe, based in San Melito, California, is a man with a dream. The dream is a dragon in every home. GeneDupe's business is biotech pets. Not for Dr. Fill, though, the cloning of dead cats and dogs. He plans a range of entirely new animals—or, rather, of really quite old animals, with the twist that when they did exist, it was only in the imagination. Making a mythical creature real is not easy. But GeneDupe's team of biologists and computer scientists reckon they are equal to the task. Their secret is a new field, which they call "virtual cell biology". Biology and computing have a lot in common, since both are about processing information—in one case electronic; in the other, biochemical. Virtual cell biology aspires to make a software model of a cell that is accurate in every biochemical detail. That is possible because all animal cells use the same parts list—mitochondria for energy processing, the endoplasmic reticulum for making proteins, Golgi body for protein assembly, and so on. Armed with their virtual cell, GeneDupe's scientists can customize the result so that it belongs to a particular species, by loading it with a virtual copy of that animal's genome. Then, if the cell is also loaded with the right virtual molecules, it will behave like a fertilized egg, and start dividing and developing—first into embryo, and ultimately into an adult. Because this "growth" is going on in a computer, it happens fast. Passing from egg to adult in one of GeneDupe's enormous Mythmaker computers takes less than a minute. And it is here that Charles Darwin gets a look in. With such a short generation time, GeneDupe's scientists can add a little evolution to their products. Each computer starts with a search image (dragon, unicorn, griffin, etc), and the genome of the real animal most closely resembling it (a lizard for the dragon, a horse for the unicorn and most taxingly, the spliced genomes of a lion and an eagle for the griffin). The virtual genomes of these real animals are then tweaked by random electronic mutations. When they have matured, the virtual adults most closely resembling the targets are picked and cross-bred, while the others are culled. Using this rapid evolutionary process, GeneDupe's scientists have arrived at genomes for a range of mythological creatures—in a computer, at least. The next stage, on which they are just embarking, is to do it for real. This involves synthesizing, with actual DNA, the genetic material that the computer models predict will produce the mythical creatures. The synthetic DNA is then inserted into a cell that has had its natural nucleus removed. The result, Dr. Fill and his commercial backers hope, will be a real live dragon, unicorn or what you have. Dr. Fril is confident about his new idea. Indeed, if be can get the dragon's respiration correct, he thinks they will set the world on fire.

单选题The language of the passage is mostly

单选题Evolutionary theories. The Belgian George Lemaitre proposed the idea that about 20,000 million years ago all the matter in the universe — enough, he estimated, to make up a hundred thousand million galaxies — was all concentrated in one small mass, which he called the "primeval atom". This primeval atom exploded for some reasons, sending its matter out in all directions, and as the expansion slowed down, a steady state resulted, at which time the galaxies formed. Something then upset the balance and the universe started expanding again, and this is the state in which the universe is now. There are variations on this theory: it may be that there was no steady state. However, basically, evolutionary theories take it that the universe was formed in one place at one point in time and has been expanding ever since. Will the universe continue to expand? It may be that the universe will continue to expand for ever, but some astronomers believe that the expansion will slow down and finally stop. Thereafter the universe will start to contract until all the matter in it is once again concentrated at one point. Possibly the universe may oscillate for ever in this fashion, expanding to its maximum and then contracting over again. The steady-state theory. Developed at Cambridge by Hoyle, Gold and Bodi, the steady-state theory maintains that the universe as a whole has always looked the same and always will. As the galaxies expand away from each other, new material is formed in some ways between the galaxies and makes up new galaxies to take place of those which have receded. Thus the general distribution of galaxies remains the same. How matter could be formed in this way is hard to see, but no harder than seeing why it should all form in one place at one time. How can we decide which of these theories is closer to the truth? The method is in principle quite simple. Since the very distant galaxies are thousands of millions of light years away, then we are seeing them as they were thousands of millions of years ago. If the evolutionary theory is correct, the galaxies were closer together in the past than they are now, and so distant galaxies ought to appear to be closer together than nearer ones. According to the steady-state theory there should be no difference. The evidence seems to suggest that there is a difference, that the galaxies were closer together than they are now, and so the evolutionary theory is partially confirmed and the steady-state theory — in its original form at least — must be rejected.

单选题Studies investigating fathers' involvement in child-rearing show that

单选题Defenders of special protective labor legislation for women often maintain that eliminating such laws would destroy the fruits of a century-long struggle for the protection of women workers. Even a brief examination of the historic practice of courts and employers would show that the fruit of such laws has been bitter; they are, in practice, more of a curse than a blessing. Sex-defined protective laws have often been based on stereotypical assumptions concerning women's needs and abilities, and employers have frequently used them as legal excuses for discriminating against women. After the Second World War, for example, businesses and government sought to persuade women to vacate jobs in factories, thus making room in the labor force for returning veterans. The revival or passage of state laws limiting the. daily or weekly work hours of women conveniently accomplished this. Employers had only to declare that overtime hours were a necessary condition of employment or promotion in their factory, and women could be quite legally fired, refused jobs, or kept at low wage levels, all in the name of "protecting" their health. By validating such laws when they are challenged by lawsuits, the courts have colluded over the years in establishing different, less advantageous employment terms for women than for men, thus reducing women's competitiveness on the job market. At the same time, even the most well-intentioned lawmakers, courts, and employers have often been blind to the real needs of women. The lawmakers and the courts continue to permit employers to offer employee health insurance plans that cover all known human medical disabilities except those relating to pregnancy and childbirth. Finally, labor laws protecting only special groups are often ineffective at protecting the workers who are actually in the workplace. Some chemicals, for example, pose reproductive risks for women of childbearing years; manufacturers using the chemicals comply with laws protecting women against these hazards by refusing to hire them. Thus the sex-defined legislation protects the hypothetical female worker, but has no effect whatever on the safety of any actual employee. The health risks to male employees in such industries cannot be negligible, since chemicals toxic enough to cause birth defects in fetuses or sterility in women are presumably harmful to the human metabolism. Protective laws aimed at changing production materials or techniques in order to reduce such hazards would benefit all employees without discriminating against any. In sum, protective labor laws for women are discriminatory and do not meet their intended purpose. Legislators should recognize that women are in the work force to stay, and that their needs—good health care, a decent wage, and a safe workplace—are the needs of all workers. Laws that ignore these facts violate women's rights for equal protection in employment.

单选题 {{I}}Questions 11 - 13 are based on the following talk. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11 - 13.{{/I}}

单选题{{B}}PartB{{/B}}Inthefollowingarticlesomeparagraphshavebeenremoved.ForQuestions66～70,choosethemostsuitableparagraphfromthelistA-Ftofitintoeachofthenumberedgaps.Thereisoneparagraphwhichdoesnotfitinanyofthegaps.MarkyouranswersonANSWERSHEET1.Itwasamomentmostbusinessexecutiveswouldpausetosavor:latelastyear,GermansportinggoodspioneerAdidaslearnedthatafteryearsofdecliningmarketshare,thecompanyhadsprintedpastU.S.ReebokInternationaltotakethesecondplacebehindNikeintheraceforworldwidesales.ButRobertLouis-Dreyfus,therumpledFrenchmanwhonowrunsAdidas,anddidn'tevenstopforoneofhistrademarkHavanacigarsincelebration,worriedthatthecompanywouldgrowcomplacent.Instead,heandagroupoffriendsboughtFrenchsoccerclubOlympicdeMarseille"Nowthat'ssomethingIhavedreamedaboutsinceIwasakid."Louis-Dreyfussayswithanadolescentgrin.66.______.Withsalesinthefirstthreequartersof1996at2.5billion,upablithering30.7%over1995,it'shardtorecallthedismalshapeAdidaswasinwhenLouis-DreyfustookeveraschairmaninApril1993.Foundedin1920byAdiDassler,theinventorofthefirstshoesdesignedespeciallyforsports,thecompanyenjoyedanearmonopolyinathleticshoesuntilanupstartcalledNikeappearedinthe1970sandrodetherunningfadtoriches.Bytheearly1990sAdidashadcomeunderthecontrolofFrenchbusinessmanBernardTapie,whowaslaterjailedforbribingthreeFrenchsoccerplayer.AlthoughthecompanytriedtospruceupitsstaidimagewithateamofAmericandesigners,Adidaslostmorethan100millionin1992,promptingtheFrenchbanksthathadacquiredcontrolofthecompanyfromTapietobeginadesperatesearchforanewowner.67.______.Thetinker-lovingLouis-Dreyfusknewhehadbeendealtawinninghand.FollowingtheleadsetbyNikeinthe1970s,hemovedproductiontolow-wagefactoriesinChina,IndonesiaandThailandandsoldAdidas'Europeanfactories"foratokenoneDeutschemarkapiece.HehiredPeterMoore,aformerproductdesigneratNike,ascreativedirector,andsetupstudiosinGermanyfortheEuropeanmarketandinPortland,Qregon,fortheU.S.Hethenriskedeverythingbydoublinghisadvertisingbudget."Wewentfromamanufacturingcompanytoamarketingcompany,"saysLouis-Dreyfus."Itdidn'ttakeagenius—youjusthadtolookatwhatNikeandReebokweredoing.Itwaseasierforsomeonecomingfromtheoutside,withnobaggage,todoit,thanforsomebodyfrominsidethecompany."68.______."ThemarketingatAdidasisvery,verygoodrightnow,"saysEugenioDiMaria,editorofSportingGoodIntelligence,anindustrynewsletterperceivingAdidasasaveryyoungbrand."Thecompanyisparticularlystronginapparel,muchstrongerthanNikeandReebok."Although90%ofAdidasproductsforwearonstreetinsteadofsportsfields,Louis-DreyfusfeltthepreviousmanagementhadlostsightofAdidas'rootsasasportingproductscompany.Afterall,AdiDasslerinventedthescrew-instudforthesoccershoeandshodAmericanchampionJesseOwensinthe1936Olympics.Sohesoldofforfoldedothernon-corebrandsthatAdidashaddeveloped,includingLeCoqSportif,ArenaandPony.Europeisstillthecompany'slargestmarketbecauseAdidasdominatestheapparelindustryandthankstosoccer'smassivepopularitythere,Louis-Dreyfusisquicktosharecreditfortheturnaroundwithasmallgroupoffriendswhoboughtthecompanywithhimin1993.OneofthosefellowinvestorsisaformerIMScolleague,ChristianTourres,nowsalesdirectoratAdidas."we'reprettycomplementarybecauseFmabitofadreamer,soit'sgoodtohavesomebodyknockingonyourheadtoremindyouthere'sabudget,"saysLouis-Dreyfus.Commutingtothefirm'sheadquartersintheBavariantownofHerzogenaurachfromhislakesidehouseoutsideZurich,Louis-DreyfusalsotransformedAdidasfromastodgyGermancompanyintoabusinesswithaglobaloutlook.Appalledonhisfirstdayatworkthatthechiefexecutivehadtosignasalesman'stravelvoucherfor300,heslashedthecompany'sbureaucracy,adoptedAmericanaccountingrulesandbroughtininternationalmanagementtalent.Thecompany'schieffinancialofficerisAustralianandtheinternationalmarketingmanagerisaSwede.EnglishistheofficiallanguageoftheheadofficeandnoGermansremainonthemanagingbeardofthecompany,nowwhittleddowntojusthimselfandafewtrustedaides."Itwasclearweneededdecentralizationandfinancialcontrols,"recallsLouis-Dreyfus."WithGermanaccountingrules,IneverknewifIwasmakingmoneyorlosing."69.______."Hegivesyoualotoffreedom,"saysMichaelMichalsky,a29-year-oldGermanwhoheadsthecompany'sappareldesignteam."Hehasneverinterferedwithadecisionandnevercomplained.He'sincrediblyeasytoworkfor."70.______.ThechallengeforLouis-Dreyfusistokeepsalesgrowinginanotoriouslytrend-drivenbusiness.IncontrasttotheboomatAdidas,forexample,Reebokreporteda3%lineinsalesinthethirdquarter.LastfallAdidasrolledoutanewlineofshoescalled"FeetYouWear"whicharesupposedtofitmorecomfortablythanconventionalsneakersbymatchingthenaturalcontourofthefoot.Thefirst500,000soldout.AdidasisanofficialsponsoroftheWorldCup,tobeheldnextJuneinFrance,whichthecompanyhopestoturntoamarketingbonanzathatwillbuildonthestrengthofsoccerworldwide.ButReebokalsohasintroducedanewlinecalledDMXSeries2000andcompetitionisexpectedtobefiercecomingspring.A.Justasthetransitionwastakingplace,Adidashadarunofgoodluck,Theficklefashiontrendsettersdecidedinearly1993thattheywantedthe"retrolook",andthethree-stripesAdidaslogo,whichhadbeenovertakenbyNikeswoop,wassuddenlyhotagain.ModelssuchasCindyCrawfordandClaudiaSchifferandascoreofrockidolsportedAdidasgearontelevision,infilmsandmusicvideos,givingthecompanyafreepublicitybonanza.DemandforAdidasproductssoared.B.Louis-Dreyfus,scionofaprominentFrenchtradingdynastywithanM.B.A.formHarvard,earnedareputationasadoctortosickcompaniesafterturningaroundLondon-basedmarketresearchfirmIMS-afeatthatbroughthimmorethan10millionwhenthecompanywaseventuallysold.HelaterservedaschairmanofSaatchi&Saatchithentheworld'slargestadagency,whichcalledhiminwhenrapidgrowthsentprofitsintoatailspin.WithnoothercompanyorentrepreneurwillingtogambleonAdidas,Louis-Dreyfusgotanincrediblebargainfromthebanks:heandagroupoffriendsfromhisdaysatIMScontributedjust$10,000eachincashandsignedupfor$100millioninloansfor15%ofthecompanywithanoptiontobuytheremainderatafixedprice18monthslater.C.InanotherbreakwiththetraditionalGermanworkplace,Louis-Dreyfusmadecorporatelifealmostgratinglyinformal:employeesostentatiouslycalledhim"Rowbear"ashestridesdownthecorridors,andbankersarestillamazedwhencounterpartsfromAdidasshowupfornegotiationswearingsweatshirtsandsneakers.D.Thecompany'spayroll,whichhadreachedahighof14,600in1986,wasparedbacktojust4,600in1994.(Ithassincegrowntoover6,000.)E.Asportsfunwhoclaimshehasn'tmissedattendingasoccerWorldCupfinalsincethe1970sortheOlympicGamessince1968,the50-year-oldLouis-Dreyfusnowiseminentlywellplacedtoliveoutmanyofhisboyhoodfantasies.NotonlyhasheturnedAdidasintoaglobalcompanywithmarketcapitalizationof$4billion(heownsstockworth$250million),buthealsohasendorsementcontractswithahost.ofsportsheroesfromtennisgreatSteffiGraftotrack'sDonovanBailey,andconsidersitpartofthejobtowatchhisstarathletesperformonthefield."Thereareveryfewchancesinlifetohavesuchfun."hesays.F.Afterreducinglossesin1993,Adidasturnedtoaprofitin1994andhascontinuedtosurge:netincomeforthefirstthreequartersin1996wasarecord$214million,up29%fromthepreviousyear.Louis-Dreyfusandhisfriendsmade"greatpersonalfortuneswhenthecompanywentpublicin1995.Theoriginalinvestorsstillown26%ofthestock,whichsoldfor$46asharewhentradinghasdoubledto$90.

单选题Why are horses used to catch the electric eels?

单选题The Village Green in New Milford, Connecticut, is a snapshot of New England charm: a carefully manicured lawn flanked by scrupulously maintained colonial homes. Babysitters dandle kids in the wooden gazebo, waiting for commuter parents to return from New York. On a lazy afternoon last week Caroline Nicholas, 16, had nothing more pressing to do than drink in the early-summer sunshine and discuss the recent events in town. "I don't think a lot of older people knew there were unhappy kids in New Milford," she said, "I could see it coming." In a five-day period in early June eight girls were brought to New Milford Hospital after what hospital officials call suicidal gestures. The girls, all between 12 and 17, tried a variety of measures, including heavy doses of alcohol, over-the-counter medicines and cuts or scratches to their wrists. None was successful, and most didn't require hospitalization; but at least two attempts, according to the hospital, could have been vital. Their reasons seemed as mundane as the other happen-stances of suburban life. "I was just sick of it all," one told a reporter, "Everything in life." Most alarming, emergency-room doctor Frederick Lohse told a local reporter that several girls said they were part of a suicide pact. The hospital later backed away from this remark. But coming in the wake of at least sixteen suicide attempts over the previous few months, this sudden cluster—along with the influx of media—has set this well-groomed suburb of 23,000 on edge. At a town meeting last Wednesday night, Dr Simon Sobo, chief of psychiatry at the hospital, told more than 200 parents and kids, "We're talking about a crisis that has really gotten out of hand." Later he added, "There have been more suicide attempts this spring than I have seen in the 13 years I have been here." Sobo said that the girls he treated didn't have serious problems at home or school. "Many of these were popular kids," he said, "They got plenty of love, but beneath the reassuring signs, a swath of teens here are not making it." Some say that drugs, Both pot and 'real drugs', are commonplace. Kids have shown up with LIFE SUCKS and LONG LIVE DEATH penned on their arms. A few girls casually display scars on their arms where they cut themselves. "You'd be surprised how many kids try suicide, "said one girl, 17." You don't want to put pain on other people; you put it on yourself." She said she used to cut herself "just to release the pain". Emily, 15, a friend of three of the girls treated in June, said one was having family problems, one was "upset that day "and the third was"just upset with everything else going on". She said they weren't really trying to kill themselves—they just needed concern. As Sobo noted, "What's going on in New Milford is not unique to New Milford." The same underlying culture of despair could be found in any town. But teen suicide, he added, can be a "contagion". Right now New Milford has the bug—and has it bad.

单选题At 18, Ashanthi DeSilva of suburban Cleveland is a living symbol of one of the great intellectual achievements of the 20th century. Born with an extremely rare and usually fatal disorder that left her without a functioning immune system (the "bubble-boy disease", named after an earlier victim who was kept alive for years in a sterile plastic tent), she was treated beginning in 1990 with a revolutionary new therapy that sought to correct the defect at its very source, in the genes of her white blood cells. It worked. Although her last gene-therapy treatment was in 1992, she is completely healthy with normal immune function, according to one of the doctors who treated her, W. French Anderson of the University of Southern California. Researchers have long dreamed of treating diseases from hemophilia to cancer by replacing mutant genes with normal ones. And the dreaming may continue for decades more. "There will be a gene-based treatment for essentially every disease," Anderson says, "within 50 years." It's not entirely clear why medicine has been so slow to build on Anderson's early success. The National Institutes of Health budget office estimates it will spend $432 million on gene-therapy research in 2005, and there is no shortage of promising leads. The therapeutic genes are usually delivered through viruses that don't cause human disease. "The virus is sort of like a Trojan horse," says Ronald Crystal of New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical College. "The cargo is the gene." At the University of Pennsylvania's Abramson Cancer Center, immunologist Carl June recently treated HIV patients with a gene intended to help their cells resist the infection. At Cornell University, researchers are pursuing gene-based therapies for Parkinson's disease and a rare hereditary disorder that destroys children's brain cells. At Stanford University and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, researchers are trying to figure out how to help patients with hemophilia who today must inject themselves with expensive clotting drugs for life. Animal experiments have shown great promise. But somehow, things get lost in the translation from laboratory to patient. In human trials of the hemophilia treatment, patients show a response at first, but it fades over time. And the field has still not recovered from the setback it suffered in 1999, when Jesse Gelsinger, an 18-year-old with a rare metabolic disorder, died after receiving an experimental gene therapy at the University of Pennsylvania. Some experts worry that the field will be tarnished further if the next people to benefit are not patients but athletes seeking an edge. This summer, researchers at the Salk Institute in San Diego said they had created a "marathon mouse" by implanting a gene that enhances miming ability; already, officials at the World Anti-Doping Agency are preparing to test athletes for signs of "gene doping". But the principle is the same, whether you're trying to help a healthy runner run faster or allow a muscular-dystrophy patient to walk. "Everybody recognizes that gene therapy is a very good idea," says Crystal. "And eventually it's going to work./

单选题 Questions 17—20 are based on the following talk.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Throughout history there have been many unusual taxes levied on such things as hats, beds, baths, marriages, and funerals. At one time England levied a tax on sunlight by collection from every household with six or more windows. And according to legend, there was a Turkish ruler who collected a tax each time he dined with one of his subjects. Why? To pay for the wear and tear on his teeth! Different kinds of taxes help to spread the tax burden. Anyone who pays a tax is said to "bear the burden" of the tax. The burden of a tax may fall more heavily on some persons than on others. That is why the three levels of government in this country use several kinds of taxes. This spreads the burden of taxes among more people. From the standpoint of their use, the most important taxes are income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and estate, inheritance, and gift taxes. Some are used by only one level of government; others by or even all three levels. Together these different taxes make up what is called our tax system. Income taxes are the main source of federal revenues. The federal government gets more than three-fourths of its revenue from income taxes. As its name indicated, an income tax is a tax on earnings. Both individuals and business corporations pay a federal income tax. The oldest tax in the United States today is the property tax. It provides most of the income for local governments. It provides at least a part of the income for all but a few states. It is not used by the federal government. A sales tax is a tax levied on purchases. Most people living in the United States know about sales taxes since they are used in all but four states. Actually there are several kinds of sales taxes, but only three of them are important. They are general sales taxes, excise taxes, and import taxes. Other three closely related taxes are estate, inheritance, and gift taxes. Everything a person owns, including both real and personal property, makes up his or her estate. When someone dies, ownership of his or her property or estate passes on to one or more individuals or organizations. Before the property is transferred, however, it is subject to an estate tax if its value exceeds a certain amount.

单选题Poetry, said Robert Frost, is what gets lost in the translation, and in the week that the Turner prize was announced it is worth remembering that there are still people working at the sort of art which has something to be lost in the translation to fame. Hellen Gibart fell in love with oil painting when her sixth form teacher gave her a small canvas. "I"ve still got it upstairs. Oil painting has had a classic period and is being sidelined too much now, but I"m sure it will live through that. It can articulate things so specifically. I layer it, I build it, and I knock it or scrape it back. It"s like a sculpture, in a way: an attempt to get closer to the subject. "I found it very diffcult initially, because it has a life and a spirit of its own that it can lead you to if you allow it and I never wanted to do any other material." For the first part of her career she set herself to learn drawing as well. In the mornings she would teach English as a foreign language, and in the afternoons and evenings "just drawing, drawing, drawing. It wasn"t stuffy old evening classes: there was a lot of energy and it was very exciting. I knew I wanted to work and paint. I didn"t know anything about the art world." After about five years of this life, a gallery where she had been working was closed, and she got a grant to go to Cyprus for a year. It was the first time she had ever been able to work full time as an artist. And she loved it. She ended up living in the mountains. Nowadays she prefers Spain, because fewer people there speak English. On Cyprus, she say"s, everyone she knew spoke English so well that she could never break through into the Greek side of their lives, no matter how friendly they were. This urge to push through and find what is really there seems to be the same feeling she has in front of a canvas. It is extraordinary how often artists talk as if what they were doing were finding or releasing something already there, rather than creating things themselves. Sometimes she talks like a musician. "I don"t know if you ever, when you"re writing, feel what it is just not to be there: a blind wandering that isn"t a dead end, when you"re not hitting walls. I can spend weeks and weeks just mashing at canvas and then it will suddenly happen. Sometimes it"s an accident." Her most recent studies were of a local collection of fossils—she lives in Suffolk, near Aldeburgh—and in her studio they seemed as agelessly fresh as the rocks, two or three hundred million years old, from which they had come. They seemed to have nothing in common with the lemony heat and stillness of the painting of a church interior in Spain, which was propped against another wall. "I have never been able to support myself by selling paintings," she says, which has been the case for most artists this century. What changed for her generation (she is 44) was that the art schools started using specialist teachers rather than working artists. "It"s very sad. I think that practitioners teaching in the college are the only people who should be there. They understand the problems and—as a huge generalisation—educationalists don"t." Her views on the Turnerish stuff are discriminating. "I thought Carl Andre"s bricks were extremely beautiful." She admires Damien Hirst. She had been to see the Turner show at the Tate and even enjoyed one of the video installations there. "But with a lot of the art that is being promoted now it seems to me that what is being sold is an idea, a formula. It is the idea rather than the substantiation which matters. And this means there is a question of charlatanism, when a few people can ride on the back of the ones who are genuinely involved. "And then her politeness cracks for a second or three. "If I"m going to be radical or challenging it"s not acknowledged, because the form that I work in is old. That is very tiresome. Perhaps it"s the price that must be paid for the art that conceals artiness.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Injuries can happen at any time, any place. When they do occur everyone likes to get the best treatment to help them heal quickly and properly. For athletes, the need to receive proper medical care is crucial in order for them to continue their sports careers. Athletes depend on the knowledge of doctors who are specially trained in sports medicine, which is a field of medicine that has grown rapidly since 1950s. Sports medicine is more than just the treatment of injuries. It is also concerned with the prevention of injuries, the maintaining of a proper diet, the creation of individual exercise programs for an athlete and the mental preparation of the athlete. In general, sports medicine is relevant to all aspects of monitoring athletes while they are in training. The field of sports medicine includes nutrition, surgery, physical therapy, research, and orthopedics, which is the correction or cure of disease or deformities of bones, joints and muscles. The doctors who specialize in sports medicine are called sports traumatologists. These experts' specialize in the care of injuries to the musculoskeletal system. They do physical examination, diagnose injuries, and refer patients to surgeons if necessary. Although people have been interested in sports medicine for many years, it actually became more specialized after World War Ⅱ, with great developments in the 1960s and 1970s. The modem idea of complete care for the athlete emerged from the widespread surge in sports participation over this time period. The field of sports medicine is very broad because there are so many types of sports injuries and because each individual athlete's body is different-their make-up, build, immune system, etc. Because of this, virtually every injury is treated in a different way. As injuries continue to occur and the sports medicine field grows, recovery methods are becoming more advanced. Two of the more modern methods of treatment are the hyperbaric chamber and magnetic resonance imaging. A hyperbaric chamber is a cylindrical steel tube into which a person can enter. Inside the chamber, the athlete is exposed to high levels of oxygen. This promotes oxygenation of the blood and speeds recovery time. Use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in medicine began in the early 1980s. MRI presents a hazard-free way to get images of thin slices of the body and a reliable method of detecting injuries. It is a superior imaging technique because it doesn't use radiation or need any special dyes. MRI uses magnets to concentrate and focus on small areas of the body, which produces detailed images. Besides being used to diagnose sports injuries, MRI is capable of producing high-contrast pictures of the brain, heart, liver, kidneys and can detect things such as tumors. It is quite possible that with the increased interest in sports, the field of sports medicine will become even more specialized. Sports medicine continues to grow and take care of the needs of athletes from the professional playing in front of a stadium full of people to the person working out at their local health club.