单选题A very important world problem, if not the most serious of all the great world problems which affect us at the moment, is the increasing number of people who actually inhabit this planet. The limited amount of land and land resources will soon be unable to support the huge population if it continues to grow at its present rate. In an early survey conducted in 1888, a billion and a half people inhabited the earth. Now, the population exceeds five billion and is growing fast--by the staggering figure of 90 million in 1988 alone. This means that the world must accommodate a new population roughly equal to that of the United States and Canada every three years! Even though the rate of growth has begun to slow down, most experts believe the population size will still pass eight billion during the next 50 years. So why is this huge increase in population taking place? It is really due to the spread of the knowledge and practice of what is becoming known as "Death Control". You have no doubt heard of the term "Birth Control"--" Death Control" is something rather different. It recognizes the work of the doctors and scientists who now keep alive people who, not very long ago, would have died of a variety of then incurable diseases. Through a wide variety of technological innovations that include farming methods and sanitation, as well as the control of these deadly diseases, we have found ways to reduce the rate at which we die--creating a population explosion. We used to think that reaching seventy years old was a remarkable achievement, but now eighty or even ninety is becoming recognized as the normal life-span for humans. In a sense, this represents a tremendous achievement for our species. Biologically this is the very definition of success and we have undoubtedly become the dominant animal on the planet. However, this success is the very cause of the greatest threat to mankind. Man is constantly destroying the very resources which keep him alive. He is destroying the balance of nature which regulates climate and the atmosphere, produces and maintains healthy soils, provides food from the seas, etc. In short, by only considering our needs of today, we are ensuring there will be no tomorrow. An understanding of man's effect on the balance of nature is crucial to be able to find the appropriate remedial action. It is a very common belief that the problems of the population explosion are caused mainly by poor people living in poor countries who do not know enough to limit their reproduction. This is not true. The actual number of people in an area is not as important as the effect they have on nature. Developing countries do have an effect on their environment, but it is the populations of richer countries that have a far greater impact on the earth as a whole. The birth of a baby in, for example, Japan, imposes more than a hundred times the amount of stress on the world's resources as a baby in India. Most people in India do not grow up to own cars or air-conditioners--nor do they eat the huge amount of meat and fish that the Japanese child does. Their life-styles do not require vast quantities of minerals and energy. Also, they are aware of the requirements of the land around them and try to put something back into nature to replace what they take out. For example, tropical forests are known to be essential to the balance of nature yet we are destroying them at an incredible rate. They are being cleared not to benefit the natives of that country, but to satisfy the needs of richer countries. Central American forests are being destroyed for pastureland to make pet food in the United States cheaper; in Papua New Guinea, forests are destroyed to supply cheaper cardboard packaging for Japanese electronic products; in Burma and Thailand, forests have been destroyed to produce more attractive furniture in Singapore and Japan. Therefore, a rich person living thousands of miles away may cause more tropical forest destruction than a poor person living in the forest itself. In short then, it is everybody's duty to safeguard the future of mankind--not only through population control, but by being more aware of the effect his actions have on nature. Nature is both fragile and powerful. It is very easily destroyed; on the other hand, it can so easily destroy its most aggressive enemy--man.

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}}Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} Henry Kissinger may be the most successful, certainly the most flamboyant, Secretary of State to hold that office in modern times. When he was appointed in the late 1960's, there were no American ties with Communist China, Vietnam and Berlin seemed ready to draw the United States into a third world war, and Russia was seen as "the enemy". But all this has changed, and Henry Kissinger caused much of the change; in 1971, he made his first trip to China, a trip that was the beginning of the current ties between the United States and China. He brought the United States and Russia closer together on major issues by the policy he called "detente", literally meaning a relaxation. His philosophy was always to talk and to bring together. With these two policies, Kissinger did much to draw attention away from any possible Russia-American friction. In 1973 he made his first visit to Egypt. Here he was able to begin U.S. relations with Egypt. He used his contact later to begin the sort of talks that the American press called "shuttle diplomacy". For ninety-nine days, he "shuttled" back and forth on flights between Cairo and Jerusalem to work out a step-by-step withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Sinai desert. His wit, his careful approach to detail, and his presence made "shuttle diplomacy" work. It was the only successful approach to Mid-east peace in the thirty years since the state of Israel was founded. Another major work was the Strategic Arms Limitation Talk. Though his term in office passed with the treaty unsigned, Kissinger left a draft of the treaty to which the Russians had already agreed. The SALT treaty spelled out a one-tenth reduction in nuclear arms, a major accomplishment by any standard, even if one does not consider all the other conditions and limitations included in the treaty. Even though he successfully helped bring an end to the Vietnam War, Kissinger's final days in office were affected, as was the entire executive branch in one way or another, by the scandals of the Nixon White House. Kissinger's critics point to his role in placing wiretaps on the phones of reporters and officials and to what they consider his "high-handed" approach to setting foreign policy. But Kissinger, during the last few months of the Nixon presidency, limited the effects of American domestic problems on our foreign policy. He continued talks in the Middle East. He continued close contact with the Soviet Union. History will decide in the final view, as Kissinger--and many presidents--often said, on the value of his service. Whatever they decide, whether his actions are finally to be considered wise or foolish, he had a personal vision that will be difficult to match. (459 words){{B}}Notes:{{/B}} work out 制定。spell out 清楚地说明。wiretap 窃听(电话)。scandal 丑闻。

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} The human Y chromosome--the DNA chunk that makes a man a man—has lost so many genes over evolutionary time that some scientists have suspected it might disappear in 10 million years. But a new study says it'll stick around. Researchers found no sign of gene loss over the past 6 million years, suggesting the chromosome is "doing a pretty good job of maintaining itself," said researcher David Page of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass. That agrees with prior mathematical calculations that suggested the rate of gene loss would slow as the chromosome evolved, Page and study co-authors note in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. And, they say, it clashes with what Page called the "imminent demise" idea that says the Y chromosome is doomed to extinction. The Y appeared 300 million years ago and has since eroded into a dinky chromosome, because it lacks the mechanism other chromosomes have to get rid of damaged DNA. So mutations have disabled hundreds of its original genes, causing them to be shed as useless. The Y now contains only 27 genes or families of virtually identical genes. In 2003, Page reported that the modern-day Y has an unusual mechanism to fix about half of its genes and protect them from disappearing. But he said some scientists disagreed with his conclusion. The new paper focuses on a region of the Y chromosome where genes can't be fixed that way. Researchers compared the human and chimpanzee versions of this region. Humans and chimps have been evolving separately for about 6 million years, so scientists reasoned that the comparisons would reveal genes that have become disabled in one species or the other during that time. They found five such genes on the chimp chromosome, but none on the human chromosome, an imbalance Page called surprising. "It looks like there has been little if any gene loss in our own species lineage in the last 6 million years," Page said. That contradicts the idea that the human Y chromosome has continued to lose genes so fast it'll disappear in 10 million years, he said. "I think we can with confidence dismiss ... the 'imminent demise' theory," Page said. Jennifer A. Marshall Graves of the Australian National University in Canberra, a gene researcher who argues for eventual extinction of the Y chromosome, called Page's work "beautiful" but said it didn't shake her conviction that the Y is doomed. The only real question is when, not if, the Y chromosome disappears, she said. "It could be a lot shorter than 10 million years, but it could be a lot longer," she said. The Y chromosome has already disappeared in some other animals, and "there's no reason to expect it can't happen to humans," she said. If it happened in people, some other chromosome would probably take over the sex-determining role of the Y, she said.

单选题What is the "main question for the poor" (Line 1, Paragraph 2) according to the passage?

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}}Reading the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} It was inevitable that any of President George W. Bush's fans had to be very disappointed by his decision to implement high tariffs on steel imported to the U. S. The president's defense was pathetic. He argued that the steel tariffs were somehow consistent with free trade, that the domestic industry was important and struggling t and that the relief was a temporary measure to allow time for restructuring. One reason that this argument is absurd is that U. S. integrated steel companies ({{U}}"Big Steel"{{/U}}) have received various forms of government protection and subsidy for more than 30 years. Instead of encouraging the industry to restructure, the long-term protection has sustained inefficient companies and cost U. S. consumers dearly. As Anne O. Krueger, now deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said in a report on Big Steel: "The American Big Steel industry has been the champion lobbyist and seeker of protection... It provides a key and disillusioning example of the ability to lobby in Washington for measures which hurt the general public and help a very small group. Since 1950s, Big Steel has been reluctant to make the investments needed to match the new technologies introduced elsewhere. It agreed to high wages for its unionized labor force. Hence, the companies have difficulty in competing not only with more efficient producers in Asia and Europe but also with technologically advanced U.S. mini-mills, which rely on scrap metal as an input. Led by Nucor Cor. , these mills now capture about half of overall U. S. sales. The profitability of U. S. steel companies depends also on steel prices, which, despite attempts at protection by the U. S. and other governments, are determined primarily in world markets. These prices are relatively high as recently as early 2000 but have since declined with the world recession to reach the lowest dollar values of the last 20 years. Although these low prices are unfortunate for U.S. producers, they are beneficial for the overall U.S. economy. The low prices are also signal that the inefficient Big Steel companies should go out of business even faster than they have been. Instead of leaving or modernizing, the dying Big Steel industry complains that foreigners dump steels by selling at low prices. However, it is hard to see why it is bad for the overall U.S. economy if foreign producers wish to sell us their goods at low prices. After all, the extreme case of dumping is one where foreigners give us their steel for free and why would that be a bad thing?

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Animal studies are under way, human trial protocols are taking shape and drug makers are on alert. All the international health community needs now is a human vaccine for the bird flu pandemic sweeping a cluster of Asian countries. The race for a vaccine began after the first human case emerged in Hong Kong in 1997. Backed by the World Health Organization (WHO), three research teams in the US and UK are trying to create a seed virus for a new vaccine. Their task is formidable, but researchers remain optimistic." There are obstacles, but most of the obstacles have been treated sensibly," says Richard Webby, a virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. The biggest challenge is likely to be the rapidly mutating virus. Candidate vaccines produced last year against the H5N1 virus are ineffective against this year's strain. Scientists will have to constantly monitor the changes and try to tailor the vaccine as the virus mutates. They can't wait to see which one comes next. The urgency stems from fears that I-ISN1 will combine with a human flu virus, creating a pathogen(病原体) that could be transmitted from person to person. But if people have no immunity to the virus, the strain may not mutate as rapidly in people as it does in birds. To quickly generate the vaccine, researchers are using reverse genetics, which allows them to skip the long process of searching through reassorted viruses for the correct genetic combination. Instead, scientists clone sequences for hemagglutinin(红血球凝聚素) and neuraminidase(神经氨酸苷酶), the two key proteins in the virus. The sequences are then combined with human influenza genes to create a customized reference strain. Because products developed with reverse genetics have never been tested in humans, the candidate vaccines will first have to clear regulatory review. In anticipation, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (EMEA) are both preparing pandemic response plans. The EMEA has produced a fist-track licensing program, an industry task force and detailed guidance for potential applicants. In Europe, a reassortant influenza virus -- but not the inactivated vaccine -- produced by reverse genetics would be considered a genetically modified organism, and manufacturers would need approval from their national or local safety authorities. The WHO has prepared a preliminary biosafety risk assessment of pilot-lot vaccine, which could help speed up the review. A preliminary version of their protocol calls for several hundred subjects, beginning with a group of young adults and gradually expanding to include those most susceptible to the flu -- children and the elderly." If we had product," says Lambert," it would probably be a couple of months at the earliest before we have early data in healthy adults."

单选题The phrase "save his skin" (Line 4, Paragraph 1) denotes

单选题"My own feelings went from disbelief to excitement to downright fear," says Carl Hergenrother, 23, an Arizona undergraduate who verified a large asteroid barreling toward Earth with a 230em telescope atop nearby Kitt Peak. "It was scary, because there was the possibility that we were confirming the demise of some city somewhere, or some state or small country." Well, not quite. Early last week, his celestial interloper whizzed by Earth, missing the planet by 450620 km--a hairbreadth in astronomical terms. Perhaps half a kilometer across, it was the largest object ever observed to pass that close to Earth. Duncan Steel, an Australian astronomer, has calculated that if the asteroid had struck Earth, it would have hit at some 93450 km/h. The resulting explosion, scientists estimate, would have been in the 3000-to-12000-megaton range. That, says astronomer Eugene Shoemaker, a pioneer asteroid and comet hunter, "is like taking all of the U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons, putting them in one pile and blowing them all up." And what if one them is found to be on a collision course with Earth? Scientists at the national laboratories at Livermore, California, and Los Alamos, New Mexico, have devised a number of ingenious plans that, given enough warning time, could protect Earth from a threatening NEO. Their defensive weapons of choice include long-distance missiles with conventional or, more likely, nuclear warheads that could be used either to nudge an asteroid into a safe orbit or blast it to smithereens. Many people-including some astronomers--are understandably nervous about putting a standby squadron of nuclear tipped missiles in place. Hence the latest strategy, which in some cases would obviate the need for a nuclear defense: propelling a fusillade of cannonball-size steel spheres at an approaching asteroid. In a high-velocity encounter with a speeding NEO, explains Gregory Canavan, a senior scientist at Los Alamos, "the kinetic energy of the balls would change into heat energy and blow the thing apart." Some astronomers oppose any immediate defensive preparations, citing the high costs and low odds of a large object's striking Earth in the coming decades. But at the very least, Shoemaker contends, NEO detection should be accelerated. "There's this thing cal4ed the 'giggle factor' in Congress," he says, "people in Congress and also at the top level in NASA still don't take it seriously. But we should move ahead. It's a matter of prudence." The world, however, still seems largely unconcerned with the danger posed by large bodies hurtling in from space, despite the spectacle two years ago of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 riddling the planet Jupiter with mammoth explosions. It remains to be seen whether last week's record near-miss has changed any minds.

单选题Farmers in the United States and around the world are likely to face serious challenges in the coming decades as new kinds of weather test their ability to bring us the food we all depend on. The weather, of course, has never been exactly dependable—farmers have always been at the mercy of the vagaries of sun and rain. But general weather patterns have at least been broadly predictable, allowing farmers to know when to sow their seed, when to transplant, when to harvest. As weather patterns become less reliable, growers will be tested to develop new rhythms and systems for growing crops. Climate change is likely to impact different parts of the world in vastly different ways, climatologists and agronomists say. Scientists at a recent international conference in London reported that warming temperatures could lead to substantial harvest reductions in major food crops such as wheat, soy and rice. And for years the World Bank and others have been warning that climate change will be especially burdensome on poor countries in the tropics, where soil quality is generally inferior. According to a study conducted in the Philippines, for every one degree C increase in temperature, there will be a 10-percent reduction in yields for rice, a staple crop for billions of people. But here in the U.S., most observers agree, it's doubtful that climate change could cause a food security crisis. The U.S. food system—though highly concentrated in terms of ownership and control—is geographically very diverse, which means that crops could be shifted to other areas if necessary. Also, the U.S. produces so much surplus grains for animal feed and food processing that it would take enormous crop failures to create real food scarcities. At least for residents of the U.S., a climate-change induced famine is unlikely. Farmers are a famously adaptive lot, well accustomed to reacting to forces beyond their control. The worry among scientists is that if the agriculture establishment does not take climate change seriously enough, it will become much more difficult to respond effectively when weather disruptions hit. Easterling says the window for farmers to successfully adapt to new weather conditions is about six to ten years—the time it takes for researchers to breed new seed varieties suited for specific conditions. "What would worry anyone is if climate change starts to exceed the system's built-in adaptive response," easterling says. Among farmers and researchers, there is disagreement about which types of growers climate change will impact most—large agribusiness growing operations, or smaller, family-run farms. Some agriculture industry observers say that the bigger farmers will have an advantage in coping with weather changes, as they will have more resources to switch to new crops. Others say that since family farms usually grow a wider range of crops, their biological diversity will make it easier to cope with whatever changes occur.

单选题Imagine a world where your doctor could help you avoid sickness, using knowledge of your genes as well as how you live your life. Or where he would prescribe drugs he knew would work and not have debilitating side-effects . Such a future is arriving faster than most realise: genetic tests are already widely used to identify patients who will be helped or harmed by certain drugs. And three years ago, in the face of a torrent of new scientific data, a number of new companies set themselves up to interpret this information for customers. Through shop fronts on the internet, anyone could order a testing kit , spit into a tube and send off their DNA—with results downloaded privately at home. Already customers can find out their response to many common medications, such as antivirals and blood-thinning agents . They can also explore their genetic likelihood of developing deep-vein thrombosis , skin cancer or glaucoma. The industry has been subject to conflicting criticisms. On the one hand, it stands accused of offering information too dangerous to trust to consumers; on the other it is charged with peddling irrelevant, misleading nonsense. For some rare disorders, such as Huntington"s and Tay-Sachs, genetic information is a diagnosis. But most diseases are more complicated and involve several genes, or an environmental component, or both. Someone"s chance of getting skin cancer, for example, will depend on whether he worships the sun as well as on his genes. America"s Government Accountability Office (GAO) report also revealed what the industry has openly admitted for years: that results of disease-prediction tests from different companies sometimes conflict with one another, because there is no industry-wide agreement on standard lifetime risks. Governments hate this sort of anarchy and America"s, in particular, is considering regulation. But three things argue against wholesale regulation. First, the level of interference needs to be based on the level of risk a test represents. The government does not need to be involved if someone decides to trace his ancestry or discover what type of earwax he has. Second, the laws on fraud should be sufficient to deal with the snake-oil salesmen who promise to predict, say, whether a child might be a sporting champion. And third, science is changing very fast. Fairly soon, a customer"s whole genome will be sequenced, not merely the parts thought to be medically relevant that the testing companies now concentrate on, and he will then be able to crank the results through open-source interpretation software downloadable from anywhere on the planet. That will create problems, but the only way to stop that happening would be to make it illegal for someone to have his genome sequenced— and nobody is seriously suggesting that illiberal restriction. Instead, then, of reacting in a hostile fashion to the trend for people to take genetic tests, governments should be asking themselves how they can make best use of this new source of information. Restricting access to tests that inform people about bad reactions to drugs could do harm. The real question is not who controls access, but how to minimise the risks and maximise the rewards of a useful revolution.

单选题Pronouncing a language is a skill. Every normal person is expert in the skill of pronouncing his own language, but few people are even moderately proficient at pronouncing foreign languages. Now there are many reasons for this, some obvious, some perhaps not so obvious. But I suggest that the fundamental reason why people in general do not speak foreign languages very much better than they do is that they fail to grasp the true nature of the problem of learning to pronounce, and consequently never set about tackling it in the right way. Far too many people fail to realize that pronouncing a foreign language is a skill, one that needs careful training of a special kind, and one that cannot be acquired by just leaving it to take care of itself. I think even teachers of language, while recognizing the importance of a good accent, tend to neglect, in their practical teaching, the branch of study concerned with speaking the language. So the first point I want to make is that English pronunciation must be taught; the teacher should be prepared to devote some of the lesson time to this, and by his whole attitude to the subject should get the student to feel that here is a matter worthy of receiving his close attention. So there should be occasions when other aspects of English, such as grammar or spelling, are allowed for the moment to take second place. Apart from this question of the time given to pronunciation, there are two other requirements for the teacher: the first, knowledge; the second, technique. It is important that the teacher should be in possession of the necessary information. This can generally be obtained from books. It is possible to get from books some idea of the mechanics of speech, and of what we call general phonetic theory. It is also possible in this way to get a clear mental picture of the relationship between the sounds of different languages, between the speech habits of English people and those, say, of your students. Unless the teacher has such a picture, any comments he may make on his students' pronunciation are unlikely to be of much use, and lesson time spent on pronunciation may well be time-wasted. But it does not follow that you can teach pronunciation successfully as soon as you have read the necessary books. It depends, after that, on what use you make of your knowledge, and this is a matter of technique. Now the first and most important part of a language teacher's technique is his own performance, his ability to demonstrate the spoken language, in every detail of articulation as well as in fluent speaking, so that the student's latent capacity for imitation is given the fullest scope and encouragement. The teacher, then, should be as perfect a model in this respect as he can make himself. And to supplement his own performance, however satisfactory this may be, the modern teacher has at his disposal recordings, radio, television and video, to supply the authentic voices of native speakers, or, if the teacher happens to be a native speaker himself or speaks just like one, then to vary the method of presenting the language material. (537 words)Notes: set about 着手，试图。articulation 发音。latent 潜在的，不明显的。at one's disposal 供某人任意支配使用。

单选题Why did the writer say "Wheelchairs had never seemed like scary objects to me before I had to sit in one" ?

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} When I was 13 my mother died. Through my own sorrow I was aware of the great loss this was to Pop. But he made only one reference to his own misery. He said, "To be happy every day is to be not happy at all." He was saying to his sons that happiness is not a state you achieve and keep, but something that must be won over and over, no matter what the defeats and losses. Later that year I got a job as an entertainer in small clubs, and suddenly I knew this was the career I had been searching for. The world of the theater was far removed from the world of my father, yet I found myself returning to him time and again, for the same reason his friends did. When I was 20 I got what every actor dreams of—a permanent job! At that time, at the depth of the depression, actors were out of work by the hundreds, yet I wanted to quit that job because I needed new experiences and challenges. Pop heard me out, then said, "There are some people who always have to test themselves, to stretch their wings and try new winds. If you think you can find more happiness and usefulness this way, then you should do it." This advice came from a man who never left a secure job in his life, who had the European tradition of family responsibility, but who knew I was different. He understood what I needed to do and he helped me do it. For the next few years I worked in clubs, and then I got my big break, appearing in a major movie. After that I went to Hollywood, and from then on Pop lived with me and my family there. We had a big party one evening. That night I thought Pop might enjoy hearing some of the old folk songs we used to sing at home. When I began to sing, the music and the memories were too much for him to resist, and he came over to join me. I faded away, and he was in the middle of the room singing alone—in a clear, true voice. He sang for 15 minutes before some of the world's highest-paid stars. This simple, kindly old man singing of our European roots had touched something deep in these sophisticated people. When he finished there was overwhelming applause. I knew the applause that night was not just for a performance; it was for a man.

单选题Spain's government is now championing a cause called "right to be forgotten". It has ordered Google to stop indexing information about 90 citizens who filed formal complaints with its Data Protection Agency. All 90 people wanted information deleted from the Web. Among them was a victim of domestic violence who discovered that her address could easily be found through Google. Another, well into middle age now, thought it was unfair that a few computer key strokes could unearth an account of her arrest in her college days. They might not have received much of a hearing in the United States, where Google is based and where courts have consistently found that the right to publish the truth about someone's past supersedes any right to privacy. But here, as elsewhere in Europe, an idea has taken hold —individuals should have a "right to be forgotten" on the Web. In fact, the phrase "right to be forgotten" is being used to cover a batch of issues, ranging from those in the Spanish case to the behavior of companies seeking to make money from private information that can be collected on the Web. Spain's Data Protection Agency believes that search engines have altered the process by which most data ends up forgotten—and therefore adjustments need to be made. The deputy director of the agency, Jesfis Rubi, pointed to the official government gazette(公报), which used to publish every weekday, including bankruptcy auctions, official pardons, and who passed the civil service exams. Usually 220 pages of fine print, it quickly ended up gathering dust on various backroom shelves. The information was still there, but not easily accessible. Then two years ago, the 350-year-old publication went online, making it possible for embarrassing information—no matter how old—to be obtained easily. The publisher of the government publication, Fernando Pérez, said it was meant to foster transparency. Lists of scholarship winners, for instance, make it hard for the government officials to steer all the money to their own children. "But maybe, " he said, "there is information that has a life cycle and only has value for a certain time. " Many Europeans are broadly uncomfortable with the way personal information is found by search engines and used for commerce. When ads pop up on one's screen, clearly linked to subjects that are of interest to him, one may find it Orwellian. A recent poll conducted by the European Union found that most Europeans agree. Three out of four said they were worried about how Internet companies used their information and wanted the right to delete personal data at any time. Ninety percent wanted the European Union to take action on the right to be forgotten. Experts say that Google and other search engines see some of these court cases as an assault on a principle of law already established—that search engines are essentially not responsible for the information they corral from the Web, and hope the Spanish court agrees. The companies believe if there are privacy issues, the complainants should address those who posted the material on the Web. But some experts in Europe believe that search engines should probably be reined in. "They are the ones that are spreading the word. Without them no one would find these things. /