单选题I came across an old country guide the other day. It listed all the tradesmen in each village in my part of the country, and it was impressive to see the great variety of services which were available on one’s own doorstep in the late Victorian countryside. Nowadays a superficial traveler in rural England might conclude that the only village tradesmen still flourishing were either selling frozen food to the inhabitants or selling antiques to visitors. Nevertheless, this would really be a false impression. Admittedly there has been a contraction of village commerce, but its vigor is still remarkable. Our local grocer’s shop, for example, is actually expanding in spite of the competition from supermarkets in the nearest town. Women sensibly prefer to go there and exchange the local news while doing their shopping, instead of queueing up anonymously at a supermarket. And the proprietor knows well that personal service has a substantial cash value. His prices may be a bit higher than those in the town, but he will deliver anything at any time. His assistants think nothing of bicycling down the village street in their lunch, hour to take a piece of cheese to an old-age pensioner who sent her order by word of mouth with a friend who happened to be passing. The more affluent customers telephone their shopping lists and the goods are on their doorsteps within an hour. They have only to hint at a fancy for some commodity outside the usual stock and the grocer a red-faced figure, instantly obtains it for them. The village gains from this sort of enterprise, of course. But I also find it satisfactory because a village shop offers one of the few ways in which a modest individualist can still get along in the world without attaching himself to the big battalions of industry or commerce. Most of the village shopkeepers I know, at any rate, are decidedly individualist in their ways. For exampie, our shoemaker is a formidable figure: a thick-set, irritable man whom children treat with marked respect, knowing that an ill-judged word can provoke an angry eruption at any time. He stares with contempt at the pairs of cheap, mass-produced shoes taken to him for repair: has it come to this, he seems to be saying, that he, a craftsman, should have to waste his skills upon such trash? But we all know he will in fact do excellent work upon them. And he makes beautiful shoes for those who can afford such luxury.

单选题 American suffers from an overdose of work.{{U}} (1) {{/U}}who they are or what they do, they spend{{U}} (2) {{/U}}time at work than at any time since World WarⅡ. In 1950, the US had fewer working hours than any other{{U}} (3) {{/U}}country. Today, it{{U}} (4) {{/U}}every country but Japan, where industrial employees log 2,155 hours a year compared{{U}} (5) {{/U}}1,951 in the US and 1,603{{U}} (6) {{/U}}West employees. Between 1969 and 1989, employed American{{U}} (7) {{/U}}an average of 138 hours to their yearly work schedules. The work-week{{U}} (8) {{/U}}at about 40 hours, but people are working more weeks each year.{{U}} (9) {{/U}}, paid time off — holidays, vacations, sick leave —{{U}} (10) {{/U}}15 percent in the 1990s. As Corporations have{{U}} (11) {{/U}}stiffer competition and slower growth in productivity, they would{{U}} (12) {{/U}}employees to work longer. Cost-cutting layoffs in the 1980s{{U}} (13) {{/U}}the professional and managerial ranks, leaving fewer people to get the job done. In lower-paid occupations,{{U}} (14) {{/U}}wages have been reduced, workers have added hours{{U}} (15) {{/U}}overtime or extra jobs to{{U}} (16) {{/U}}their living standard. The Government estimates that more than seven million people hold a second job. For the first time, large{{U}} (17) {{/U}}of people say they want to cut{{U}} (18) {{/U}}on working hours, even if it means earning less money. But most employers are{{U}} (19) {{/U}}to let them do so. The government which has stepped back from its traditional{{U}} (20) {{/U}}as a regulator of work time, should take steps to make shorter hours possible.

单选题In the author's view, the Greeks who studied conic sections

单选题Can this be the right time to invest in luxury goods? Miuccia Prada was obviously biting her nails. The granddaughter of the founder of the Italian fashion group has just opened spectacular new stores in quick succession in New York and London. With its magic mirrors, silver displays and computer-controlled changing rooms, Prada's two-month-old shop in Manhattan cost a staggering $ 40m, sits just a mile from Ground Zero, and sells practically nothing. The luxury-goods business has been in despair in hasty succession against a background of a weakening global economy, an enduring slump in Japanese spending, and the September 11th terrorist attacks. The Japanese, who used to buy a third of the world's luxury goods, cut their foreign travel in half after the attacks and tightened their Louis Vuitton purse-strings. At the same time, wealthy Americans stopped flying, which has a dramatic effect on the luxury-goods purveyors of London, Paris and Rome. At home too, Americans' attitudes to luxury changed, at least temporarily. "Conspicuous abstention" replaced greedy consumerism among the fast-growing, younger breed of newly rich. The decline in job security, the lower bonuses in financial services, and the stock market bust that wiped out much of the paper wealth generated in the late 1990s, bred a new frugality. Sales of expensive jewelry, watches and handbags--the products that make the juiciest profits for the big luxury-goods groups--dropped sharply. The impact has been most striking among the handful of large, quoted luxury-goods companies. France's Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH), the industry leader, issued four profits warnings after September 11th and ended up reporting a 20% decline in operating profit for 2001, after having repeatedly promised its investors double-digit growth; and Italy's Gucci Group, the third largest, announced this week that second-half profits dropped by 33%. Meanwhile, privately held Prada had to postpone its stock market flotation and was forced to sell a recently acquired stake in Fendi, a prestigious Italian bag maker, in order to reduce its debts. Luxury is an unusual business. A luxury brand cannot be extended indefinitely: if it becomes too common, it is devalued, as Pierre Cardin and Ralph Lauren proved by sticking their labels on everything from T-shirts to paint. Equally, a brand name can be undermined if it is not advertised consistently, or if it is displayed and sold poorly. Sagra Maceira de Rosen, a luxury-goods analyst at J. P. Morgan, argues that, "Luxury companies are primarily retailers. In retailing, the most important thing is execution, and execution is all about management. You may have the best designed product, but if you don't get it into the right kind of shop at the right time, you will fail./

单选题House-price falls are gathering momentum and are spreading across the UK, according to a monthly poll of surveyors which on Monday delivered its gloomiest reading for nearly 12 years. Fifty-six per cent of surveyors contacted by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors reported price falls in the three months to October. Only 3 per cent saw prices rise in their area, compared with 58 per cent as recently as May. There was further evidence of slowing activity in the property market as the number of sales per surveyor dived to a nine-year low. Unsold stock on agents' books has increased 10 per cent since the summer. Ian Perry, Rics' national housing spokesman, said it was now very clear that buyers were unsettled by higher interest rates. The Bank of England raised rates five times to 4.75 per cent over the last year to cool the property boom. But he also blamed comments by Mervyn King, the Bank's governor, and misleading media headlines for "injecting additional uncertainty into the market by continued speculation over more serious price declines". "Mervyn King presumably felt that he had to be more explicit in the summer when people were still buying. His warnings of a drop in property prices then have had the desired effect. "But our concern now is that the pendulum is swinging too far," he said. Last week, the Bank's monetary policy committee predicted for the first time that "house prices may fall modestly for a period" in its November inflation report. The Nationwide and Halifax mortgage lenders both showed a modest monthly decline in house prices in their latest loan approval data. Although the majority of surveyors expect prices to fall further in the next three months, Mr. Perry stressed there were signs of stabilizing demand from buyers in London. "London tends to be ahead of the rest of the market. And agents are telling us that more people are looking to buy. It is much better than it was," Mr. Perry said. However, falling prices continued to spread from the South of England as surveyors reported the first clear decline in prices in Yorkshire and the Humber, the north and the north- west. Scotland remained the only region with rising prices.

单选题How many volunteers are tested by VaxGen's vaccine ?

单选题It can be inferred from the text that the author believes that

单选题The author's attitude toward left-handers is

单选题Washington, DC has traditionally been an unbalanced city when it comes to the life of the mind. It has great national monuments, from the Smithsonian museums to the Library of Congress. But day-to-day cultural life can be thin. It attracts some of the country's best brains. But far too much of the city's intellectual life is devoted to the minutiae of the political process. Dinner table conversation can all too easily turn to budget reconciliation or social security. This is changing. On October 1st the Shakespeare Theatre Company opened a 775-seat new theatre in the heart of downtown. Sidney Harman hall not only provides a new stage for a theatre company that has hitherto had to make do with the 450-seat Lansburgh Theatre around the corner. It will also provide a platform for many smaller arts companies. The fact that so many of these outfits are queuing up to perform is testimony to Washington's cultural vitality. The recently-expanded Kennedy Centre is by some measures the busiest performing arts complex. But it still has a growing number of arts groups which are desperate for mid-sized space down- town. Michael Kahn, the theatre company's artistic director, jokes that, despite Washington's aversion (厌恶) to keeping secrets, it has made a pretty good job of keeping quiet about its artistic life. The Harman Centre should act as a whistle blower. Washington still bows the knee to New York and Chicago when it comes to culture. But it has a good claim to be America's intellectual capital. It has the greatest collection of think-tanks on the planet, and it regularly sucks in a giant share of the country's best brains. Washington is second only to San Francisco for the proportion of residents twenty-five years and older with a bachelor's degree or higher. Washington's intellectual life has been supercharged during the Bush years, despite the Decider's aversion to ideas. September 11th, 2001, put questions of global strategy at the center of the national debate. Most of America's intellectual centers are firmly in the grip of the left-liberal establishment. For all their talk of "diversity" American universities are allergic to a diversity of ideas. Washington is one of the few cities where conservatives regularly do battle with liberals. It is also the center of a fierce debate about the future direction of conservatism. The danger for Washington is that this intellectual and cultural renaissance will leave the majority of the citizens untouched. The capital remains a city deeply divided between over-educated white itinerants and under- educated black locals. Still, the new Shakespeare theatre is part of job-generating downtown revival. Twenty years ago downtown was a desert of dilapidated(破旧的) buildings and bag people. Today it is bustling with life. If Washington is struggling to fix the world, at least it is making a reasonable job of fixing itself.

单选题What is the author's attitude toward "fatalistic approach"?

单选题The amount of sunlight reaching Earth's surface appears to be growing. The phenomenon, which some dub "global brightening," (1) scientists with a puzzle. If the (2) is real and global, how long will it last and what are the consequences for climate change, the planet's water cycle, and other (3) that draw energy from sunlight? (4) , the answer might seem obvious: More sunlight reaching the ground in a warming world means that temperatures will get warmer (5) . Not so fast, some researchers say. Additional warming would be certain (6) nothing else in the climate system changes. And the climate system is (7) static. Some combinations of changes could reinforce the heating; others could (8) it. Unraveling these interactions and forecasting their course require an accurate accounting of the sunlight reaching the surface and the (9) the surface sends skyward. Moreover, researchers say, measurements of the sun's strength at Earth's surface are potentially powerful tools for (10) human influences on the climate. Earth's radiation "budget" (11) an "extremely important parameter that is (12) known,' says Robert Charlson, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington at Seattle. "It needs to be (13) much better than it is." (14) about the amount of sunlight reaching Earth's surface were first raised in 1974. Researchers from the United States and Israel recorded a 12% drop (15) sunlight over 40 years at a (16) station in the southern Sinai Peninsula. Since then, others have used a variety of techniques to try to track (17) sunlight. Three years ago, for example, a (18) led by Beate Liepert at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory gathered data from ground (19) around the world and found that solar radiation reaching the surface fell (20) 4% from 1961 to 1990.