单选题More and more people are starting to work from home, re-assessing their "work-life balance" and capitalising on what industry calls "remote working". A recent survey of British companies showed that eight out of ten businesses have now agreed new working arrangements for their personnel. The object of the exercise was to improve the work-life Balance of employees and encourage greater levels of efficiency. During 2003/2004, some 900,000 requests to work flexibly were made under a new Government scheme and 800,000 of the applications were granted. Furthermore, seven out of ten businesses said that they also would be prepared to consider flexible working requests from other staff who did not qualify under the Government scheme. One of the new technological developments that makes remote working possible is the Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), broadband that can carry both voice and data at high-speed. Remote workers can connect to their company's Virtual Private Network either through Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) internet, which is permanently connected, or through a Remote Access Service (RAS), which involves having to dial in each time. "People started thinking about remote working back in the Eighties but the technology was not available to consider it a possibility," says Meyrick Vevers, Commercial Director of Telewest Broadband, one of UK's communication and media groups. "However, now with the increased availability and use of DSL to home users, remote working is definitely on the increase." Of course, security is very important and IT directors are understandably cautious. But they are now beginning to feel more comfortable about allowing their staff a higher level of access from home. Telewest Business's experience in putting together product solutions is based on the company's focus on understanding their customers' needs. Because customers' needs are diverse and Telewest Business's possible solutions are wide-ranging, the company invites businesses seeking further information to visit their web site or call direct. Call centre workers, mobile staff, such as sales executives and local authority social workers or parents at home, are among those for whom remote working appears to be increasingly attractive. "People in industry in the UK have some of the longest working hours in the world," says Vevers. "Doing those hours solely in the office is more disruptive to the personal life of the individual than having the flexibility to work from home." "Remote working is all about personal choice and giving people more flexibility that suits their personal lives. At Telewest Business, we aim to try and help play a part in enabling companies to give their employees that flexibility./

单选题According to Westley, NYSE's problem results from______.

单选题It is often observed that the aged spend much time thinking and talking about their past lives, rather than about the future. These reminiscences are not simply random or trivial memories, (1) is their purpose merely to make conversation. The old person's recollections of the past help to (2) an identity that is becoming increasingly fragile: (3) any role that brings respect or any goal that might provide (4) to the future, the individual mentions their (5) as a reminder to listeners, that here was a life (6) living. (7) , the memories form part of a continuing life (8) , in which the old person (9) the events and experiences of the years gone by and (10) on the overall meaning of his or her own almost completed life. As the life cycle (11) to its close, the aged must also learn to accept the reality of their own impending death. (12) this task is made difficult by the fact that death is almost a (13) subject in the United States. The mere discussion of death is often regarded as (14) As adults, many of us find the topic frightening and are (15) to think about it and certainly not to talk about it (16) the presence of someone who is dying. Death has achieved this taboo (17) only in the modern industrial societies. There seems to be an important reason for our reluctance to (18) the idea of death; It is the very fact that death remains (19) our control; it is almost the only one of the natural processes (20) is so. Notes: reminiscence n. 回忆 fragile adj. 脆弱的。impending adj. 即将发生的。

单选题Manners nowadays in metropolitan cities like London are practically non-existent. It is nothing for a big, strong schoolboy to elbow an elderly woman aside in the dash for the last remaining seat on the tube or bus, much less stand up and offer his seat to her, as he ought. In fact, it is saddening to note that if a man does offer his seat to an older woman, it is nearly always a Continental man or one from the older generation. This question of giving up seats in public transport is much argued about by young men, who say that, since women have claimed equality, they no longer deserve to be treated with courtesy, and that those who go out to work should take their turn in the rat race like anyone else. Women have never claimed to be physically as strong as men. Even if it is not agreed, however, that young men should stand up for younger women, the fact remains that courtesy should be shown to the old, the sick and the burdened. Conditions in travel are really very hard on everyone, we know, but hardship is surely no excuse. Sometimes one wonders what would have been the behavior of these stout young men in a packed refugee train or a train on its way to a prisoner-camp during the war. Would they have considered it only right and their proper due to keep the best places for themselves then? Older people, tired and irritable from a day's work, are not angels, either--far from it. Many a brisk argument or an insulting quarrel breaks out as the weary queues push and shove each other to get on buses and tubes. One cannot commend this, of course, but one does feel there is just a little more excuse. If cities are to remain pleasant places to live in at all, however, it seems urgent, not only that communications in transport should be improved, but also that communication between human beings should be kept smooth and polite. All over cities, it seems that people are too tired and too rushed to be polite. Shop assistants won't bother to assist, taxi drivers shout at each other as they dash dangerously round corners, bus conductors pull the bell before their desperate passengers have had time to get on or off the bus, and so on and so on. It seems to us that it is up to the young and strong to do their small part to stop such deterioration.

单选题To understand the roughly 100,000 genes in the human genome, researchers say they must investigate an even more complicated set of molecules-proteins. Genes are the blueprints for making proteins, and the "sequence" of a gene—its structural pattern— determines the kind of protein it makes. Some proteins become building blocks for structural parts of the cell. Other proteins become molecular "machines" enzymes, hormones, antibodies that carry out the myriad activities necessary to keep the cell and the body working properly. With an understanding of human proteins (or the proteome), scientists will be able to fight disease on many fronts. For example, scientists at the Center for Proteome Analysis in Odense, Denmark, have isolated a protein, galectin, that may fight diabetes. Diabetes seems to be caused when insulin-producing cells in the pancreas are inadvertently killed by the body's immune system. The Danish scientists spent years analyzing the proteins present in diabetes-prone and diabetes-resistant cells, and they tentatively concluded that galectin protects diabetes-prone cells from being attacked by the immune system. Preliminary animal tests, in which the galectin gene has been inserted into diabetes-prone cells, seem to confirm the hypothesis. Effective cancer drugs may also arise from a deeper understanding of genes and proteins, says Ken Carter, president of Therapeutic Genomics, one of the many biotech companies working to devise new drugs based on genetic knowledge. Soon, scientists will be able to quickly and accurately compare cancer tissue with normal tissue to see which genes are "switched on" and making proteins and which genes are not, he says. "If you found a gene that was highly expressed in prostate cancer cells but not other tissues, you could deduce that gene was involved in prostate cancer," according to Carter. "We would try to develop in the lab a way to block the expression of that gene." One possibility would be a "small molecule" drug that would attach to and inactivate that gene's protein. Finally, drugs themselves will likely become safer and more effective because they will be tailored to an individual's genetic ability to process medicines, predicts Robert Waterston, director of the Human Genome Project sequencing center at Washington University in St.Louis. In the future, a blood test could show how much of a particular drug-processing enzyme a person has, Waterston explains. The doctor would then adjust the dose accordingly or prescribe a drug custom designed for that person's genetic makeup. This new field, called pharmacogenomics, should eliminate many of the drug side effects that result from our current, cruder methods of determining dosage.

单选题What is Geoff Regan, the federal fisheries minister, most probably going to do?

单选题 The willingness of doctors at several major medical centers to apologize to patients for harmful errors is a promising step toward improving the rather disappointing quality of a medical system that kills tens of thousands of innocent patients a year inadvertently. For years, experts have lamented that medical malpractice litigation is an inefficient way to deter lethal or damaging medical errors. What they noticed, simply put it, is that most victims of malpractice never sue, and there is some evidence that many patients who do sue were not harmed by a physician's error but instead suffered an adverse medical outcome that could not have been prevented. The details of what went wrong are often kept secret as part of a settlement agreement. What is needed, many specialists agree, is a system that quickly brings an error to light so that further errors can be headed off and that compensates victims promptly and fairly. Many doctors, unfortunately, have been afraid that admitting and describing their errors would only invite a costly lawsuit. Now, as described by Kevin Sack in The Times, a handful of prominent academic medical centers have adopted a new policy of promptly disclosing errors, offering earnest apologies and providing fair compensation. It appears to satisfy many patients, reduce legal costs and the litigation burden and, in some instances, helps reduce malpractice premiums. Here are some examples from colleges of the United States: at the University of Illinois, of 37 cases where the hospital acknowledged a preventable error and apologized, only one patient filed suit; at the University of Michigan Health System, existing claims and lawsuits dropped from 262 in August 2001 to 83 in August 2007, and legal costs fell by two-thirds. To encourage greater candor, more than 30 states have enacted laws making apologies for medical errors inadmissible in court. That sounds like a sensible step that should be adopted by other states or become federal law. Such laws could help bring more errors to light. Patients who have been harmed by negligent doctors can still sue for malpractice, using other evidence to make their case. Admitting errors is only the first step toward reforming the health care system so that far fewer mistakes are made. But reforms can be more effective if doctors are candid about how they went astray. Patients seem far less angry when they receive an honest explanation, an apology and prompt, fair compensation for the harm they have suffered.

单选题New graduates in America are used to facing an uncertain future while saddled with heavy debts. Now Sallie Mae, the firm that provides many of them with the financial wherewithal to complete their education, will understand how they feel. On Monday April 16th it was announced that two private-equity firms along with two banks, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, had agreed to pay $25 billion for America's leading student-loan provider. In the past decade the market for student loans has doubled to around $85 billion a year. Student numbers have swelled while incomes have failed to keep pace with the soaring cost of college education. Sallie Mae has over a quarter of the entire business in America. And though margins are wafer-thin the firm made a profit of $1.2 billion last year. This profitability has attracted the interest of both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, seeking ways to save money while making education more affordable. Particularly vulnerable is the proportion doled out to big and profitable private companies like Sallie Mae to subsidise affordable government-backed loans. These now account for around 85% of its lending. Sallie Mae's profits and healthy cash-flow are a draw for private equity. And the involvement of the two banks could prove useful for plugging any gap in financing, if the firm's credit rating slips following the assumption of so much debt. It helps that Sallie Mae is also making money beyond its core business. The market for private loans, without government subsidies or guarantees, is growing fast as the cost of education grows while the size of federal loans that students can take out has remained flat. This sort of loan is nicely profitable because lenders can levy high interest rates. New graduates are also targets: Sallie Mae has built a big debt-collection arm for reluctant repayers and a college-fund business for fast breeders. Even the renewed interest from politicians could play into Sallie Mae's hands. The lure of profits over the past decade has drawn more lenders into the business. Any future regulations or legislation that might shave profit margins further could deter new entrants or force smaller lenders out of the business, and Sallie Mae may get more opportunities to offset the reduction. But despite all the safeguards, students are high risk borrowers who quickly amass big debts. Sallie Mae, like many of the students it serves, could wake up one day with a nasty hangover (拖欠) and little recollection about how it came about.

单选题How many really suffer as a result of labor market problems? This is one of the most critical yet contentious social policy questions. In many ways, our social statistics exaggerate the degree of hardship. Unemployment does not have the same dire consequences today as it did in the 1930's when most of the unemployed were primary breadwinners, when income and earnings were usually much closer to the margin of subsistence, and when there were no countervailing social programs for those failing in the labor market. Increasing affluence, the rise of families with more than one wage earner, the growing predominance of secondary earners among the unemployed, and improved social welfare protection have unquestionably mitigated the consequences of joblessness. Earnings and income data also overstate the dimensions of hardship. Among the millions with hourly earnings at or below the minimum wage level, the over-whelming majority are from multiple earner, relatively afflunent families. Most of those counted by the poverty statistics are elderly or handicapped or have family responsibilities which keep them out of the labor force, so the poverty statistics are by no means an accurate indicator of labor market pathologies. Yet there are also many ways our social statistics underestimate the degree of labor-market- related hardship. The unemployment counts exclude the millions of fully employed workers whose wages are so low that their families remain in poverty. Low wages and repeated or prolonged unemployment frequently interact to undermine the capacity for self-support. Since the number experiencing joblessness at some time during the year is several times the number unemployed in any month, those who suffer as a result of forced idleness can equal or exceed average annual unemployment, even though only a minority of the jobless in any month really suffer. For every person counted in the monthly unemployment tallies, there is another working part-time because of the inability to find fulltime work, or else outside the labor force but wanting a job. Finally, income transfers in our country have always focused on the elderly, disabled, and dependent, neglecting the needs of the working poor, so that the dramatic expansion of cash and in kind transfers does not necessarily mean that those failing in the labor market are adequately protected. As a result of such contradictory evidence, it is uncertain whether those suffering seriously as a result of thousands or the tens of millions, and, hence, whether high levels of joblessness can be tolerated or must be countered by job creation and economic stimulus. There is only one area of agreement in this debate--that the existing poverty, employment, and earnings statistics are inadequate for one of their primary applications, measuring the consequences of labor market problems.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} In the two decades between 1910 and 1930, over ten percent to the Black population of the United States left the South, where the preponderance of the Black population had been located, and migrated to northern states, with the largest number moving, it is claimed, between 1916 and 1918. It has been frequently assumed, but not proved, that the majority of the migrants in what has come to be called the Great Migration came from rural areas and were motivated by two concurrent factors: the collapse of the cotton industry following the boll weevil infestation, which began in 1898, and increased demand in the North for labor following the cessation of European immigration caused by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. This assumption has led to the conclusion that the migrants' subsequent lack of economic mobility in the North is tied to rural background, a background that implies unfamiliarity with urban living and a lack of industrial skills. But the question of who actually left the South has never been rigorously investigated. Although numerous investigations document an exodus from rural southern areas to southern cities prior to the Great Migration. No one has considered whether the same migrants then moved on to northern cities. In 1910 over 600,000 Black workers, or ten percent of the Black work force, reported themselves to be engaged in "manufacturing and mechanical pursuits," the federal census category roughly encompassing the entire industrial sector. The Great Migration could easily have been made up entirely of this group and their families. It is perhaps surprising to argue that an employed population could be enticed to move, but an explanation lies in the labor conditions then prevalent in the South. About thirty-five percent of the urban Black population in the South was engaged in skilled trades. Some were from the old artisan class of slavery-blacksmiths, masons, carpenters-which had had a monopoly of certain trades, but they were gradually being pushed out by competition, mechanization, and obsolescence. The remaining sixty-five percent, more recently urbanized, worked in newly developed industries—tobacco, lumber, coal and iron manufacture, and railroads. Wages in the South, however, were low, and Black workers were aware, through labor recruiters and the Black press, that they could earn more even as unskilled workers in the North than they could as artisans in the South. After the boll weevil infestation, urban Black workers faced competition from the continuing influx of both Black and White rural workers, who were driven to undercut the wages formerly paid for industrial jobs. Thus, a move north would be seen as advantageous to a group that was already urbanized and steadily employed, and the easy conclusion tying their subsequent economic problems in the North to their rural background comes into question.

单选题If you are a tourist interested in seeing a baseball game while in New York, you can Find out which of its teams are in town simply by sending a message to AskForCents. com. In a few minutes, the answer comes back, apparently supplied by a machine, but actually composed by a human. Using humans to process information in a machine-like way is not new- it was pioneered by the Mechanical Turk, a famed 18th-century chess-playing machine that was operated by a hidden chessmaster. But while computers have since surpassed the human brain at chess, many tasks still baffle even the most powerful electronic brain. For instance, computers can find you a baseball schedule, but they cannot tell you directly if the Yankees are in town. Nor can they tell you whether sitting in the bleachers is a good idea on a first date. AskForCents can, because its answers come from people. "Whatever question you can come up with, there's a person that can provide the answer-- you don't have the inflexibility of an algorithm-driven system," says Jesse Heitler, who developed AskForCents. Mr. Heitler was able to do this thanks to a new software tool developed by Amazon, the online retailer, that allows computing tasks to be farmed out to people over the internet. Aptly enough, Amazon's system is called Mechanical Turk. Amazon's Turk is part toolkit for software developers, and part online bazaar: anyone with internet access can register as a Turk user and start performing the Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) listed on the Turk website (mturk.com ). Companies can become "requesters" by setting up a separate account, tied to a bank account that will pay out fees, and then posting their HITs. Most HITs pay between one cent and $ 5. So far, people from more than 100 countries have performed HITs, though only those with American bank accounts can receive money for their work; others are paid in Amazon gift certificates. Mr. Heitler says he had previously tried to build a similar tool, but concluded that the infrastructure would be difficult to operate profitably. Amazon already has an extensive software infrastructure designed for linking buyers with sellers, however, and the Turk simply extends that existing model. Last November Amazon unveiled a prototype of the system, which it calls "artificial artificial intelligence". The premise is that humans are vastly superior to computers at tasks such as pattern recognition, says Peter Cohen, director of the project at Amazon, so why not let software take advantage of human strengths? Mr. Cohen credits Amazon's boss, Jeff Bezos, with the concept for the Turk. Other people have had similar ideas. Eric Bonabeau of Icosystem, an American firm that builds software tools modeled on natural systems, has built what he calls the "Hunch Engine" to combine human intelligence with computer analysis. The French postal service, for example, has used it to help its workers choose the best delivery routes, and pharmaceutical researchers are using it to determine molecular structures by combining their gut instincts with known results stored in a database. And a firm called Seriosity hopes to tap the collective brainpower of the legions of obsessive players of multiplayer online games such as "World of Warcraft", by getting them to perform small real-world tasks (such as sorting photographs) while playing, and paying them in the game's own currency.

单选题The open-source movement is based on the idea that

单选题After their 20-year-old son hanged himself during his winter break from the University of Arizona five years ago, Donna and Phil Satow wondered what signs they had overlooked, and started asking' other students for answers. What grew from this soul searching was Ulifeline (www. ulifeline, org), a website where students can get answers to questions about depression by logging on through their universities. The site has been adopted as a resource by over 120 colleges, which can customize it with local information, and over 1.3 million students have logged on with their college ID's. "It's a very solid website that raises awareness of suicide, de-stigmatizes mental illness and encourages people to seek the help they need," said Paul Grayson, the director of counseling services at New York University, which started using the service nearly a year ago. The main component of the website is the Self-E-Valuator, a self-screening program developed by Duke University Medical Center that tests students to determine whether they are at risk for depression, suicide and disorders like anorexia and drug dependence. Besides helping students, the service compiles anonymous student data, offering administrators an important window onto the mental health of its campus. The site provides university users with links to local mental health services, a catalog of information on prescription drugs and side effects, and access to Go Ask Alice, a vast archive developed by Columbia University with hundreds of responses to anonymously posted inquiries from college students worldwide. For students concerned about their friends, there is a section that describes warning signs for suicidal behavior and depression. Yet it is hard to determine how effective the service is. The anonymity of the online service can even play out as a negative. "There is no substitute for personal interaction(个人互动才能解决)," said Dr. Lanny Berman, executive director of the American Association of Suicidology, based in Washington. Ulifeline would be the first to say that its service is no replacement for an actual therapist. "The purpose is to find out if there are signs of depression and then direct people to the right places," said Ron Gibori, executive director of Ulifeline. Mrs. Satow, who is still involved with Ulifeline, called it "a knowledge base" that might have prevented the death of her son, Jed. "If Jed's friends had known the signs of depression, they might have seen something," she said.

单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}}Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on ANSWER SHEET 1. Digital photography is still new enough that mast of us have yet to form an opinion about it, much less {{U}}(1) {{/U}} a point of view. But this hasn't stopped many film and computer fans from agreeing {{U}}(2) {{/U}} the early {{U}}(3) {{/U}} wisdom about digital cameras -- they're neat {{U}}(4) {{/U}} for your PC, but they're not suitable for everyday picture-taking. The fans are wrong: more than anything else, digital cameras are radically {{U}}(5) {{/U}} what photography means and what it can be. The venerable medium of photography as we know {{U}}(6) {{/U}} is beginning to seem out of {{U}}(7) {{/U}} with the way we live. In our computer and camcorder culture, saving pictures {{U}}(8) {{/U}} digital files and watching them on TV is no less {{U}}(9) {{/U}} -- and in many ways more {{U}}(10) {{/U}} -- than fumbling with rolls of film that must be sent off to be {{U}}(11) {{/U}}. Paper is also terribly {{U}}(12) {{/U}} . Pictures that are incorrectly framed, focused, or lighted are nonetheless {{U}}(13) {{/U}} to film and ultimately processed into prints. The digital medium changes the {{U}}(14) {{/U}} . Still images that are {{U}}(15) {{/U}} digitally can immediately be shown on a computer monitor, TV screen, or a small liquid-crystal display (LCD) built right into the camera. And since the points of light that {{U}}(16) {{/U}} an image are saved as a series of digital bits in {{U}}(17) {{/U}} memory, {{U}}(18) {{/U}} being permanently etched onto film, they can be erased, retouched, and transmitted on-line. What's it like to {{U}}(19) {{/U}} with one of these digital cameras? It's a little like a first date -- exciting, confusing and fraught with {{U}}(20) {{/U}}.