单选题Tomorrow Japan and South Korea will celebrate White Day, an annual event when men are expected to buy a gift for the adored women in their lives. It is a relatively new (21) that was commercially created as payback for Valentine's Day. That's (22) in both countries, 14 February is all about the man. On Valentine's Day, women are expected to buy all the important male (23) in their lives a token gift= not just their partners, (24) their bosses or older relatives too. This seems (25) enough. Surely it's reasonable for men to be indulged on one day of the year, (26) the number of times they're expected to produce bouquets of flowers and (27) their woman with perfume or pearls. But the idea of a woman (28) a man didn't sit easily with people. In 1978, the National Confectionery Industry Association (糖果业协会) (29) an idea to solve this problem. They started to market white chocolate that men could give to women on 14 March, as (30) for the male-oriented Valentine's Day. It started with a handful of sweet makers' producing candy (31) a simple gift idea. The day (32) the public imagination, and is now a nationally (33) date in the diary— and one where men are (34) to whip out their credit cards. In fact, men are now expected to give gifts worth (35) the value of those they received. What a complication: not only do men have to remember who bought them what, they have to estimate the value and multiply it by three.

单选题For multinational corporations, tax planning has become extremely complex affairs. It has been stated that no multinational corporation possesses the ultimate tax expertise. Therefore, in addition to having their own experts, MNCs rely on heavily on local tax experts and legal counsel. Taxes have a very important impact on foreign direct investment decisions. Taxes will determine the financial structure of subsidiary, and they will influence pricing decisions. They may also lead to the formation of holding companies. An MNC may decide to establish a branch rather than a subsidiary because of a given tax situation. The absence of a tax treaty between the country of a would-be investor and the nation where a foreign investment is to take place might lead to cancellation of investment plans. An unfavorable depreciation allowance may keep the foreign investor out. This unit will deal with the different tax systems in the world and their impact on an MNC's global strategy. Basically, any tax system can be divided into direct and indirect taxes. Corporate and individual income taxes are direct, value-added taxes, sales taxes, and import duties are indirect taxes. Corporate income taxes (taxes levied on earning) vary among the industrialized nations. France, the United States, Holland, Canada, and Germany have rates of around 50 percent; Italy, the United Kingdom and Japan have rates of between 36 and 40 percent. Less developed countries usually have lower corporate tax rates in order to attract foreign investment. Thus, Brazil has a rate of 30 percent, and Indonesia has a 40 percent tax rate. A corporate tax is levied on taxable earnings. Taxable earnings are more significant than the tax rate itself. They determine what can be deducted before the tax is computed; in other words, these items are tax deductible. Countries differ greatly in determining taxable earnings. Some allow accelerated depreciation, whereby the asset (usually the plant or equipment) is written off at a substantially higher rate during the first years than in the later years. This allows for smaller taxable earnings in the early years. Other countries allow tax-free investment reserves. These are used at a later stage for investment in undeveloped areas of countries or are sent when countries are in a recession. A recent type of tax that has won recognition in the European Common Market is value-added tax (VAT). This is a national sales tax levied at each stage of production or at the sale of consumer goods. The tax is assessed in proportion to the value added during that stage. Generally, manufacturing goods, such as plant and equipment, have been exempted from this tax. In most cases, food items also have been exempted. Here is an example of how VAT works. A tree owner who sells part of a tree to a lumber mill for $1 must set aside ten cents VAT to pay to the government. The lumber mill processes the tree into building material and sells the wood for $3 to a lumber wholesaler. The mill adds $2 in value, and thus sets aside 10 percent of the added value, or twenty cents, to pay to the government. And so the VAT continues until the final sale. The VAT system offers advantages, such as rebates on exports. Profitable and unprofitable firms are taxed alike, as there is no possibility of tax deductions to determine taxable income. A badly run company is, therefore, forced to improve or go out of business. Further, VAT is easy to calculate and collect. But VAT is often accused of having contributed to serious inflation in countries where it was introduced, notably in Western Europe.

单选题The damage to his car was ______; therefore, he could repair it himself.

单选题Statuses are marvelous human inventions that enable us to get along with one another and to determine where we "fit" in society. As we go about our everyday lives, we mentally attempt to place people in terms of their statuses. For example, we must judge whether the person in the library is a reader or a librarian, whether the telephone caller is a friend or a salesman, whether the unfamiliar person on our property is a thief or a meter reader, and so on. The statuses we assume often vary with the people we encounter, and change throughout life. Most of us can, at very high speed, assume the statuses that various situations require. Much of social interaction consists of identifying and selecting among appropriate statuses and allowing other people to assume their statuses in relation to us. This means that we fit our actions to those of other people based on a constant mental process of appraisal and interpretation. Although some of us find the task more difficult than others, most of us perform it rather effortlessly. A status has been compared to ready-made clothes. Within certain limits, the buyer can choose style and fabric. But an American is not free to choose the costume of a Chinese peasant or that of a Hindu prince. We must choose from among the clothing presented by our society. Furthermore, our choice is limited to a size that will fit, as well as by our pocketbook. Having made a choice within these limits we can have certain alterations made, hut apart from minor adjustments, we tend to be limited to what the stores have on their racks. Statuses too come ready made, and the range of choice among them is limited.

单选题A strong support from the local authority is ______ to the success of the project.

单选题What is the______in going by boat when the plane costs no more and is quic ker?

单选题2 Between 1833 and 1837, the publishers of a "penny press" proved that a low-priced paper, edited to interest ordinary people, could win what amounted to a mass circulation for the times and thereby attract an advertising volume that would make it independ- ent. These were papers for the common citizen and were not tied to the interests of the bus iness community, like the mercantile press, or dependent for financial support upon polit ical party allegiance. It did not necessarily follow that all the penny papers would be superi or in their handling of the news and opinion functions. But the door was open for some to make .important journalistic advances. The first offerings of a penny paper tended to be highly sensational; human interest stories overshadowed important news, and crime and sex stories were written in full de tail. But as the penny paper attracted readers from various social and economic brackets, its sensationalism was modified. The ordinary reader came to want a better product, too. A popularized style of writing and presentation of news remained, but the penny paper be came a respectable publication that offered significant information and editorial leader ship. Once the first of the successful penny papers had shown the way, later ventures could enter the competition at the higher level of journalistic responsibility the pioneering papers had reached. This was the pattern of American newspapers in the years following the founding of the New York Sun in 1833. The Sun, published by Benjamin Day, entered the lists against 11 other dailies. It was tiny in comparison; but it was bright and readable, and it preferred human interest features to important but dull political speech reports. It had a police re porter writing squibs of crime news in the style already proved successful by some other papers. And, most important, it sold for a penny, whereas its competitors sold for six cents. By 1837 the Sun was printing 30,000 copies a day, which was more than the total of all 11 New York daily newspapers combined when the Sun first appeared. In those same four years James Gordon Bennett brought out his New York Herald (1835), and a trio of New York printers who were imitating Day's success founded the Philadelphia Public Ledger (1836) and the Baltimore Sun (1837). The four penny sheets all became famed newspapers.

单选题The new secretary has written a remarkably ______ report only in a few pages but with all the details. A. concise B. clear C. precise D. elaborate

单选题Solid fuel rockets are expensive to operate because of their ______.

单选题His imprisonment ______ his colleagues, for they cannot believe that such a respectable and law-abiding person will take bribes.

单选题The storm sweeping over this area is sure to cause ______ of vegetables in the coming days. A. rarity B. sufficiency C. scarcity D. invalidity

单选题{{B}}Passage Two{{/B}} To what extent are the unemployed failing in their duty to society to work, and how far has the State an obligation to ensure that they have work to do? It is by now increasingly recognized that workers may be thrown out of work by industrial forces beyond their control, and that the unemployed are in some sense paying the price of the economic progress of the rest of the community. But concern with unemployment and the unemployed varies sharply. The issues of duty and responsibility were reopened and revitalized by the unemployment scare of 1971-1972. Rising unemployment and increased sums paid out in benefits to the workless had reawakened controversies which had been inactive during most of the period of fuller employment since the war ended the Depression. It looked as though in future there would again be too little work to go round, so there were arguments about how to produce more work, how the available work should be shared out, and who was responsible for unemployment and the unemployed. In 1972 there were critics who said that the State's action in allowing unemployment to rise was a faithless act, a breaking of the social contract between society and the worker. Yet in the main any contribution by employers to unemployment such as lying off workers in order to introduce technological changes and maximize profits tended to be ignored. And it was the unemployed who were accused of failing to honor the social contract, by not fulfilling their duty to society to work. In spite of general concern at the scale to the unemployment statistics, when the unemployed were considered as individuals, they tended to attract scorn and threats of punishment. Their capacities and motivation as workers and their value as members of society became suspect. Of all the myths of the Welfare State, stories of the work shy and borrowers have been the least well founded on evidence, yet they have proved the most persistent. The unemployed were accused of being responsible for their own workless condition, and doubts were expressed about the State's obligation either to provide them with the security of work or to support them through Social Security. Underlying the arguments about unemployment and the unemployed is a basic disagreement about the nature and meaning of work in society. To what extent can or should work be regarded as a service, not only performed by the worker for society but also made secure for the worker by the State. and supported if necessary? And apart from cash are there social pressures and satisfactions which cause individuals to seek and keep work, so that the workless need work rather than just cash?

单选题The history of responses to the work of the artist Sandro Botticelli (1444-1510) suggests gests that widespread appreciation by critics is a relatively recent phenomenon. Writing in 1550, Vasari expressed an unease with Botticelli's work, admitting that the artist fitted awkwardly into his evolutionary scheme of the history of art. Over the next two centuries, academic art historians defamed Botticelli in favor of his fellow Florentine, Michelangelo. Even when anti-academic art historians of the early nineteenth century rejected many of the standards of evaluation adopted by their predecessors, Botticelli's work remained out side of accepted taste, pleasing neither amateur observers nor connoisseurs. (Many of his best paintings, however, remained hidden away in obscure churches and private homes. ) The primary reason for Botticelli's unpopularity is not difficult to understand: most observers, up until the mid-nineteenth century, did not consider him to be noteworthy, because his work, for the most part, did not Seem to these observers to exhibit the traditional characteristics of fifteenth-century Florentine art. For example, Botticelli rarely employed the technique of strict perspective and, unlike Michelangelo, never used chiaroscuro. Another reason for Botticelli's unpopularity may have been that his attitude toward the style of classical art was very different from that of his contemporaries. Although he was thoroughly exposed to classical art, he showed little interest in borrowing from the classical style. Indeed, it is paradoxical that a painter of large-scale classical subjects adopted a style that was only slightly similar to that of classical art. In any case, when viewers began to examine more closely the relationship of Botticelli's work to the tradition of fifteenth-century Florentine art, his reputation began to grow. Analyses and assessments of Botticelli made between 1850 and 1870 by the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, as well as by the' writer Pater (although he, unfortunately, based his assessment on an incorrect analysis of Botticelli's personality), inspired a new appreciation of Botticelli throughout the English-speaking world. Yet Botticelli's work, especially the Sistine frescoes, did not generate worldwide attention until it was finally subjected to a comprehensive and scrupulous analysis by Home in 1908. Home rightly demonstrated that the frescoes shared important features with paintings by other fifteenth-century Florentines-features such as skillful representation of anatomical proportions, and of the human figure in motion. However, Home argued that Botticelli did not treat these qualities as ends in themselves-rather, that he emphasized clear depletion of a story, a unique achievement and one that made the traditional Florentine qualities less central. Because of Home's emphasis crucial to any study of art, the twentieth century has come to appreciate Botticelli's achievements.

单选题The Supreme Court ______ the judgment of the lower court in that case last week. A. amplified B. affirmed C. ascended D. applauded

单选题Classified Advertising is that advertising which is grouped in certain sections of the paper and is thus distinguished from display advertising. Such groupings as "Help Wanted", "Real Estate", "Lost and Found" are made, the rate charged being less than that for display advertising. Classified advertisements are a convenience to the reader and a saving to the advertiser. The reader who is interested in a particular kind of advertisement finds all advertisements of that type grouped for him. The advertiser may, on this account, use a very small advertisement that would be lost if it were placed among larger advertisements in the paper. It is evident that the reader approaches the classified advertisement in a different frame of mind from that in which he approaches the other advertisements in the paper. He turns to a page of classified advertisements to search for the particular advertisement that will meet his needs. As his attention is voluntary, the advertiser does not need to rely to much extent on display type to get the reader's attention. Formerly all classified advertisements were of the same size and did not have display type. With the increase in the number of such advertisements, however, each advertiser within a certain group is vying with others in the same group for the reader's attention. In many cases the result has been an increase in the size of the space used and the addition of headlines and pictures. In that way the classified advertisement has in reality become a display advertisement. This is particularly true of real-estate advertising.

单选题{{B}}Passage Two{{/B}} Already lasers can obliterate skin blemishes, topically applied drugs can smooth facial lines and injected agents can remove deep wrinkles. Future products will be faster, better and longer lasting. "New substances will be developed by entrepreneurs," says Brian Mayou, an aesthetic plastic surgeon, "that will be more successful than liquid silicone that we use today to eradicate wrinkles." The next major breakthrough, says Mel Braham, plastic surgeon and chief executive of the Harley Medical Group, will be laser treatment that needs no recovery period. Nicholas Lowe, clinical professor of dermatology at the University of Los Angeles, adds: "There will be more efficient anti-oxidants to help reduce sun damage and aging. There will also be substances that increase the production of new collagen and elastic tissue to maintain the elasticity of youthful skin." Lee Shreider, a research cosmetic chemist, says that we may be able to look better without any kind of operation as semi-permanent make-up gets better. "Crooked noses will be improved by effectively sealing on shaded colors that either enhance or subdue areas of the face. We will be able to straighten eyebrows and lips making the face more metrical—which remains one of the keys to beauty, and even close blocked pores with permanent, custom-designed foundation." The development of the safe Sun tan is a potential gold mine. Being researched at the University of Arizona, but a long way from reality, is the injectable tan. Professor Lowe is optimistic: "There will almost certainly be a safe way of developing a sunless tan that protects against sun damage. In animal research, we've applied creams to guinea pigs that can actually 'turn on' some of the genes that produce pigmentation without any sunlight exposure."

单选题India is ______ to China.

单选题Pneumonia is closely related to ______.

单选题We are going on the ______ that the work will he finished tomorrow.

单选题In times of war, we must take precautions against acts of ______ as well as of direct violence.