单选题Which of the following can best describe the Euro area's finance ministers?

单选题Keneally's biography is intended mainly to

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Vinton Cerf, known as the father of the Internet, said on Wednesday that the Web was outgrowing the planet Earth and the time had come to take the information superhighway to outer space. "The Internet is growing quickly, and we still have a lot of work to do to cover the planet," Cerf told the first day of the annual conference of the Internet Society in Geneva where more than 1,500 cyberspace fans have gathered to seek answers to questions about the tangled web of the Internet Ced believed that it would soon be possible to send real-time science data on the Internet from a space mission orbiting another planet such as Mars. "There is now an effort under way to design and build an interplanetary Internet. The space research community is coming closer and closer and merging. We think that we will see interplanetary Internet networks that look very much like the ones we use today. We will need interplanetary gateways and there will be protocols to transmit data between these gateways," Cerf said. Francois Fluekiger, a scientist attending the conference from the European Particle Physics Laboratory near Geneva, was not entirely convinced, saying.. "We need dreams like this. But I don't know any Martian whom I'd like to communicate with through the Internet. ' Cerf has been working with NASA's Pasadena Jet Propulsion Laboratory--the people behind the recent Mars expedition--to design what he calls an "interplanetary Internet protocol" He believes that astronauts will want to use the Internet, although special problems remain with interference and delay. "This is quite real The effort is becoming extraordinarily concrete over the next few months because the next Mars mission is in planning stages now," Cerf told the conference. "If we use domain names like Earth or Mars jet propulsion laboratory people would be coming together with people from the Internet community. ' He added. "The idea is to take the interplanetary Internet design and make it a part of the infrastructure of the Mars mission." He later told a news conference that designing this system now would prepare mankind of future technological advances. "The whole ides is to create an architecture so the design works anywhere. I don't know where we're going to have to put it but my guess is that we'll be going out there some time," Cerf said. "If you think 100 years from now, it is entirely possible that what will be purely research 50 years from now will become commercialized."

单选题In his 1979 book, The Sinking Ark, biologist Norman Myers estimated that (1) of more than 100 human-caused extinctions occur each clay, and that one million species (2) by the century's end. Yet there is little evidence of (3) that number of extinctions. For example, only seven species on the (4) species list have become extinct (5) the list was created in 1973. Bio- (6) is an important value, according to many scientists. Nevertheless, the supposed mass extinction rates bandied about are (7) by multiplying (8) by improbables to get imponderables. Many estimates, for instance, rely a great deal on a "species-area (9) ", which predicts that twice as many species will be found on 100 square miles (10) on ten square miles. The problem is that species are not distributed (11) , so bow much of a forest are destroyed may be as important as (12) . (13) , says Ariel Lugo, director of the International Institute of Tropical Forestry in Puerto Rico, "Biologists who predict high (14) rates (15) the resiliency of nature". One of the main muses of extinctions is deforestation. According to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, what destroys tropical trees is not commercial logging, (16) "poor farmers who have no other (17) for feeding their families than slashing and burning a (18) of forest". In countries that practice modern (19) agriculture, forests are in (20) danger. In 1920, U. S. forests covered 732 million acres. Today they cover 737 million.

单选题Mr. Hunter disagrees to the intelligence reform bill for the following reasons EXCEPT

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It's often been said that history is written by the winners. This was never more true than on March 12, when the Texas board of education voted 10-5 in favor of curriculum standards that would promote conservative takes on controversial issues in the pages of the state's textbooks. The changes, expected to win final approval in May, include an increased emphasis on and sympathetic treatment of such Republican standards as the National Rifle Association and the Moral Majority. They also boast the advantage of capitalism and the role of Christianity in the nation's founding. Even Thorn as Jefferson's profile will be reduced; some board members were less than fond of his ideas about the division of church and state. This is not Texas' first such skirmish. Since the 1970s, the state has tried to drop books that were seen as too liberal or anti-Christian, to omit passages on the gay-rights movement and to tone down global-warming arguments. But the nation's battle over textbooks stretches back almost half a century earlier. In 1925, Tennessee's Butler Act (which was abolished in 1967) made it illegal to teach "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible". The Scopes "monkey trial" famously followed. In 1974, a clash erupted in Kanawha County, West Virginia, over the controversial writings of such authors as George Orwell, Arthur Miller and Alien Ginsberg. Opposition was so heated that some schools were threatened with explosions. As one of America's largest textbook buyers, the Longhorn State has a good deal of sway over what is sold to schools nationwide. And while Napoleon may have maintained that "history is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon", getting Texans to come together on the past may prove to be their Waterloo.

单选题For thousands of Canadians, bad service is neither make-believe nor amusing. It is an aggravating and worsening real-life phenomenon that encompasses behaviour ranging from indifference and rudeness to naked hostility and even physical violence. Across the country, better business bureaus report a lengthening litany of complaints about contractors, car dealers, repair shops, moving companies, airlines and department stores. There is almost an adversarial feeling between businesses and consumers. Experts say there are several explanations for ill feeling in the marketplace. One is that customer service was an early and inevitable casualty when retailers responded to brutal competition by replacing employees with technology such as 1-800 numbers and voice mail. Another factor is that business generally has begun placing more emphasis on getting customers than on keeping them. Still another is that strident, frustrated and impatient shoppers vex shop owners and make them even less hospitable—especially at busier times of the year like Christmas. On both sides, simple courtesy has gone by the board. And for a multitude of consumers, service went with it. The Better Business Bureau at Vancouver gets 250 complaints a week, twice as many as five years ago. The bureau then had one complaints counsellor and now has four. People complain about being insulted, having their intelligence and integrity questioned, and being threatened. One will hear about people being hauled almost bodily out the door by somebody saying things like "I don't have to serve you!" or "this is private property, get out and don't come back!" What can customers do? If the bureau's arbitration process fails to settle a dispute, a customer's only recourse is to sue in small claims court. But because of the costs and time it takes, relatively few ever do. There is a lot of support for the notion that service has, in part, fallen victim to generational change. Many young people regard retailing "as just a dead-end job that you're just going to do temporarily on your way to a real job". Young clerks often lack both knowledge and civility. Employers are having to train young people in simple manners because that is not being done at home. Salespeople today, especially the younger ones, have grown up in a television-computer society where they've interacted largely with machines. One of the biggest complaints from businesses about graduates is the lack of interpersonal skills. What customers really want is access. They want to get through when they call, they don't want busy signals, they don't want interactive systems telling them to push one for this and two for that— they don't want voice mail. And if customers do not get what they want, they defect. Some people go back to local small businesses: the Asian greengrocer, a Greek baker and a Greek fishmonger. They don't wear name tags, but one gets to know them, all by name.

单选题EI Nino is the term used for the period when sea surface temperatures are above normal off the South American coast along the equatorial Pacific, sometimes called the Earth's heartbeat, and is a dramatic but mysterious climate system that periodically rages across the Pacific. EI Nino means "the little boy" or "the Christ child" in Spanish, and is so called because its warm current is felt along coastal Peru and Ecuador around Christmas. But the local warming is just part of an intricate set of changes in the ocean and atmosphere across the tropical Pacific, which covers a third of the Earth's circumference. Its intensity is such that it affects temperatures, storm tracks and rainfall around the world. Droughts in Africa and Australia, tropical storms in the Pacific, torrential rains along the Californian coast and lush greening of Peruvian deserts have all been ascribed to the whim of EI Nino. Until recently it has been returning about every three to five years. But recently it has become more frequent--for the first time on record it has returned for a fourth consecutive year--and at the same time a giant pool of unusually warm water has settled clown in the middle of the Pacific and is showing no signs of moving. Climatologists don't yet know why, though some are saying these aberrations may signal a worldwide change in climate. The problem is that nobody really seems sure what causes the EI Nino to start up, and what makes some stronger than others. And this makes it particularly hard to explain why it has suddenly started behaving so differently. In the absence of EI Nino and its cold counterpart, La Nina, conditions in the tropical eastern Pacific are the opposite of those in the west: the east is cool and dry, while the west is hot and wet. In the east, it's the winds and currents that keep things cool. It works like this. Strong, steady winds, called trade winds, blowing west across the Pacific drag the surface water along with them. The varying influence of the Earth's rotation at different latitudes, known as the Coriolis effect, causes these surface winds and water to veer towards the poles, north in the northern hemisphere and south in the southern hemisphere. The surface water is replaced by colder water from deeper in the ocean in a process known as upwelling. The cold surface water in turn chills the air above it. This cold dense air cannot rise high enough for water vapor to condense into clouds. The dense air creates an area of high pressure so that the atmosphere over the equatorial eastern Pacific is essentially devoid of rainfall.

单选题The majority of people, about nine out of ten, are right-handed. 1 until recently, people who were left-handed were considered 2 , and once children showed this tendency they were forced to use their right hands. Today left-handedness is generally 3 , but it is still a disadvantage in a world 4 most people are right-handed. For example, most tools and implements are still 5 for right-handed people. In sports 6 contrast, doing things with the left hand or foot, is often an advantage. Throwing, kicking, punching or batting from the " 7 " side may result in throwing 8 many opponents who are more accustomed to dealing with the 9 of players who are right-handed. This is why, in many 10 at a professional level, a 11 proportion of players are left-handed than in the population as a whole. The word "right" in many languages means "correct" or is 12 with law- fulness, whereas the words associated 13 "left", such as "sinister", generally have 14 associations. Moreover, among a number of primitive peoples, there is 15 close association between death and the left hand. In the past, in 16 Western societies, children were often forced to use their right hands, especially to write with. In some cases the left hand was 17 behind the child"s back so that it could not be used. If, in the future, they are allowed to choose, 18 will certainly be more left-handers, and probably 19 people with minor psychological disturbances as a result of being forced to use their 20 hand.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} IN 2005 Congress considered an emergency spending bill that designated $81 billion for military spending and Asian tsunami relief. It passed easily. A politician would have to be mighty confident to vote against humanitarian aid and supporting the troops. But complaints have steadily grown about a law that came with the spending bill. The Real ID Act of 2005 established national standards for driving licences. By 2008, it said, every state would have to make sure its licences included "physical security features" and "a common machine readable technology". A state would be responsible for verifying that anyone applying for licences is in America legally. Only licences that met the new standards would be accepted by the federal government. An American who wanted to fly commercially, or do anything else for which he needed to identify himself, would end up in a queue at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The idea was to make life harder for would-be terrorists. But the scheme will certainly make life harder for the states. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reckons that implementing the changes will cost states up to $14.6 billion, with individuals on the line for an additional $8.5 billion. And the federal government plans to meet only a fraction of the cost. Critics also argue that the new licences will amount to national identification cards and will contain ton much information about the bearer. Immigration advocates say that the Real ID Act unfairly targets illegal immigrants. And from a security standpoint the act raises as many fears as it allays. Licences that meet the revised standards would be rich of sensitive data. They might prove irresistibly tempting to identity thieves and marketing firms. On January 25th Maine became the first state to oppose the Act. Its legislature passed a resolution refusing to implement the Real ID Act with nearly unanimous support. On March 8th, Idaho approved a similar bill. Two dozen other states have measures pending that question the act or oppose it outright. On March 1st the DHS issued guidelines for implementing the Real ID Act that manage to ignore most of these objections. The guidelines allow states a bit more time to implement the act. But they give no quarter on the expensive physical security features and suggest that states deal with privacy concerns on their own. And as the National Governors Association promptly noted, they "do nothing" to address the cost to states.

单选题We can learn from the text that a new law in Pennsylvanian ______.

单选题What does the sentence "the college experience has gone from a rite passage to a right of pas- sage" ( Last line, Paragraph 1 ) mean?