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. (40 points){{B}}Text 1{{/B}} Some people talk about immigration in terms of politics, some in terms of history. But the core of the matter is numbers. The Labor Department says that immigrants make up about 15 percent of the work force. It's estimated that a third of those are undocumented workers. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that one in four farmhands in the United States is an undocumented immigrant, and that they make up a significant portion of the people who build our houses, clean our office buildings and prepare our food. America has become a nation dependent on the presence of newcomers, both those with green cards and those without. Business leaders say agriculture, construction, meatpacking and other industries would collapse without them. Sure, it would be great if everyone were here legally, if the immigration service weren't such a disaster that getting a green card is a life's work. It would be great if other nations had economies robust enough to support their citizens so leaving home wasn't the only answer. But at a certain point public policy means dealing not only with how things ought to be but with how they are. Here's how they are: these people work the jobs we don't want, sometimes two and three jobs at a time. They do it on the cheap, which is tough, so that their children won't have to, which is good. They use services like hospitals and schools, which is a drain on public coffers, and they pay taxes, which contribute to them. Immigration is never about today, always about tomorrow, an exercise in that thing some native-born Americans seem to have lost the knack for: deferred gratification. It's the educated man who arrived in the Washington D. C., area and took a job doing landscaping, then found work as a painter, then was hired to fix up an entire apartment complex by someone who liked his work ethic. He started his own business and wound up employing others. Does it matter that he arrived in this country with no work visa if he is now supporting the nation's economy? If any towns, whose aging populations were on the wane before the immigrants arrived, succeed in driving newcomers away, those who remain will find themselves surrounded by empty storefronts, deserted restaurants and houses that will not sell. It's the civic equivalent of starving to death because you don't care for the food. But at least everyone involved can tell themselves their town wasted away while they were speaking English.

单选题Intangible cultural heritage generally refers to immaterial aspects of culture—ephemeral products like stories and language itself, as well as to the beliefs, values, and forms of knowledge and skill give cultures their vitality. This heritage can, for example, include wedding dances and funeral laments, artisans' skills and orally conveyed knowledge of farming. You might find its traces in a museum—plants used by a traditional healer, for example—but it is mostly the living, oral tradition of a people. Scholars have long recognized the intangibility of culture. In the 18th and 19th century's philologists, folklorists and others tried to document the world's oral traditions. Yet the term "intangible cultural heritage" is relatively recent. In 1950, Japan initiated a living national treasures program to recognize the great skills of masters of the traditional arts. In the West, meanwhile, jurists recognized the idea of intellectual property and defined copyright and patent. In the 1970s, discussion of UNESCO's World Heritage List stimulated broader thinking about the need to safeguard intangible cultural heritage. Meetings of experts, recommendations and technical discussions ensued until 2001, when UNESCO proclaimed the first 19 Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Why so long for this concept to make it into international consciousness? For one, it has suffered the problem of vagueness long associated with the term "culture". Second, there's a terminology problem. Vagueness and terminology aside, interest in the subject has grown with public awareness of globalization. On the macro-level, cultural resources, in a similar way to natural resources, seem to be endangered or disappearing. Of more than 6, 000 languages still spoken on the planet, linguists predict that 50 to 95 percent will not last through the next century. When a language dies, there is a startling loss of knowledge and expression accumulated over generations. On the micro-level, many people do not want to accept a social universe of homogenized global consumers bereft of ancestors, stories, and meaningful experiences. In less benign circumstances, intangible cultural heritage has captured the world's attention when conflict over the practice of religions and the expression of ethnicities has turned violent. As an anthropologist, I was skeptical about the ability, to define and select intangible cultural treasures and address the many questions that could be raised about the concept. But one could take heart that in the age of globalization, local cultures have survived, and sometimes even flourished. One would appreciate that in an age of constant innovation, tradition had some lasting value. The power and tenacity of the selected traditions and their practitioners was palpable. One can only hope that with local, national, and now international action plans in place, they will continue to inspire future generations.

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. (40 points){{B}}Text 1{{/B}} When European Union (EU) leaders took delivery of Europe's first draft of a constitution at a summit in Greece last June, it was with almost universal praise. There was wide agreement that the text could save the EU from paralysis once it expands from 15 to 25 members next year. It would give Europe a more stable leadership and greater clout on the world stage, said the chairman of the Convention which drafted the agreement, former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing. Such praise was too good to last. As the product of a unique 16-month public debate, the draft has become a battleground. Less than four months after it was delivered, the same leaders who accepted it opened the second round of talks on its content this week by trading veiled threats to block agreement or cut off funds if they don't get their way. The tone was polite, but unyielding. In a bland joint statement issued when the talks opened on October 4, the leaders stressed the constitution, "represents a vital step in the process aimed at making Europe more cohesive, more democratic and closer to its citizens. "Sharp differences remain, though, between member countries of the EU over voting rights, the size and composition of the executive European Commission, defense co-operation and the role of religion in the new constitution. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's hopes of wrapping up a deal on the constitution by Christmas seem far from being realized. While the six founding members of the EU--Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg--plus Britain and Denmark, want as little change as possible to the draft, the 10 mainly central European countries due to join the 15-nation bloc next year want to alter the institution's balance. Such small states are afraid their views will be ignored under the constitution and are determined to defend the disproportionate voting rights they won at the 2000 Nice Summit. EU experts fear such sharp differences will create exactly the paralysis in the EU the Convention was established to avoid.

单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} Six years later, in an about-face, the FBI admits that federal agents fired tear gas canisters capable of causing a fire at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas in 1993. But the official said the firing came several hours before the structure burst into flames, killing 80 people including the Davidians' leader, David Koresh. "In looking into this, we've come across information that shows some canisters that can be deemed pyrotechnic in nature were fired--hours before the fire started," the official said. "Devices were fired at the bunker, not at the main structure where the Davidians were camped out." The Federal Bureau of Investigation maintains it did not start what turned to be a series of fiery bursts of flames that ended a 51-day standoff between branch members and the federal government. "This doesn't change the bottom line that David Koresh started the fire and the government did not," the official said. "It simply Shows that devices that could probably be flammable were used in the early morning hours." The law enforcement official said the canisters were fired not at the main structure where the Davidian members were camped out but at the nearby underground bunker. They bounced off the bunker's concrete roof and landed in an open field well, the official said. The canisters were fired at around 6 a.m. , and the fire that destroyed the wooden compound started around noon, the official said. The official also added that other tear gas canisters used by agent that day were not flammable or potentially explosive. While Coulson denied the grenades played a role in starting the fire, his statement marked the first time that any U.S. government official has publicly contradicted the government's position that federal agents used nothing on the final day of the siege at Waco that could have sparked the fire that engulfed the compound. The cause of the fiery end is a major focus of an ongoing inquiry by the Texas Rangers into the Waco siege.

单选题Sometimes geopolitical lessons come from the strangest places. With Eric Schmidt stepping down as CEO of Google and replaced by founder Larry Page, I can't help but wonder if world leaders are taking note. Google perfected the horizontal business model. To the delight of enthusiasts of David Ricardo, the comparative economist, the company does one thing really well search and has built an ecosystem for others to flourish using it as a platform. Contrast this with IBM and AT＆T, long past their expiration dates as successful vertical companies. It's no coincidence that the Soviet Union and IBM, two raging, top-down, command-and-control systems, collapsed at about the same time. What do I mean by vertical? In its heyday, IBM did everything from soup to nuts. Designed chips, wrapped plastic around them, wrote operating systems and applications, and then sold and serviced mainframes. The giant captured half of computer-industry sales and 80 percent of profits until horizontal companies Intel and Microsoft knocked it out at its knees. AT＆T owned phones and switches and long-distance lines until a very horizontal Internet and companies like Skype changed the economics of the phone call. These same dynamics are now driving the world economy into a productive horizontal enterprise. And it's about time. Economies are about increasing the standard of living of their participants. If you don't have an economic system to create productivity, you end up stealing it from your neighbors. Think Roman Empire. Or the British who colonized large parts of the world to lock up natural resources to plug into their manufactories. Both very vertical. As of 1989, the United States of America became the world's sole superpower. But what is America going to do with this status? Unlike past empires, there's no incentive to take over the rest of the world. Why take over a country and deal with the headaches of a welfare system, and have to fix the plumbing in Uzbekistan, when you can buy its output on the cheap, even ordering its goods over the Web? Despite all the protests, globalization instills peace. Trade now represents 26 percent of world GDP, up from 18 percent in 1990. Globalization has linked the free world in a smart horizontal alliance. Computers, cell phones, and fiber optics are not made in any single country to be exported worldwide, but instead have components and labor from more than 30 inseparable countries, including China and Vietnam. Horizontal rules! Without much forethought or planning, the world has structured itself into a horizontal wealth-creating and peace-maintaining system—a productive system that actually increases the standard of living of all the participants, not just those in the United States. America still sits on top of the heap, sure, but wealth has increased for every country, company, and person that contributes. And they get rich not by stealing from the rest of the world, but by adding value to the food chain. Just ask Google.

单选题FOR the past two years in Silicon Valley, the centre of America's technology industry, conference-goers have entertained themselves playing a guessing game: how many times will a speaker mention the phrase "long tail"? It is usually a high number, thanks to the influence of the long tail theory, which was first developed by Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired magazine, in an article in 2004. Though technologists and bloggers chuckle at how every business presentation now has to have its long-tail section, most are envious of Mr Anderson, whose brainwave quickly became the most fashionable business idea around. Whether a blockbuster film, a bestselling novel, or a chart-topping rap song, popular culture idolizes the hit. Companies devote themselves to creating them because the cost of distribution and the limits of shelf space in physical shops mean that profitability depends on a high volume of sales. But around the beginning of this century a group of internet companies realized that with endless shelves and a national or even international audience online they could offer a huge range of products—and make money at the same time. The niche, the obscure and the specialist, Mr Anderson argues, will gain ground at the expense of the hit. As evidence, he points to a drop in the number of companies that traditionally calculate their revenue/sales ratio according to the 80/20 rule—where the top fifth of products contribute four-fifths of revenues. Ecast, a San Francisco digital jukebox company, found that 98% of its 10,000 albums sold at least one track every three months. Expressed in the language of statistics, the experiences of Ecast and other companies such as Amazon, an online bookseller, suggest that products down in the long tail of a statistical distribution, added together, can be highly profitable. The internet helps people find their way to relatively obscure material with recommendations and reviews by other people and (for those willing to have their artistic tastes predicted by a piece of software) computer programs which analyze past selections. Long-tail enthusiasts argue that the whole of culture will benefit, not just commercial enterprises. Television, film and music are such bewitching media in their own right that many people are quite happy to watch and listen to what the mainstream provides. But if individuals have the opportunity to pick better, more ideally suited entertainment from a far wider selection, they will take it, according to the theory of the long tail. Some analysts reckon that entire populations might become happier and wiser once they have access to thousands of documentaries, independent films and sub-genres of every kind of music, instead of being subjected to what Mr Anderson calls the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare. That might be taking things a bit far. But the long tail is certainly one of the internet's better gifts to humanity.

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单选题It can be inferred from the text that the synthesizing DNA technology should be used

单选题 Two of the most common rumors about immigrant families are that they don't really want to become American and that they're a drag on the rest of us. But a fascinating new Pew report gives lie to both fears. In the process, it reminds us why immigration matters. The study shows first of all that Americanization is proceeding as inevitably now as during previous great waves of migration. Yes, today's immigrants are Hispanic and Asian rather than European. But that has not made a difference. Today's 20 million adult sons and daughters of immigrants have learned English, advanced economically, and intermarried far more than their parents did and no more slowly than the Italians or Irish or Poles did a century ago. Nearly six in ten-almost double the percentage of their parents-consider themselves "typical Americans." As for whether immigrant families are a drag on society, the facts are clear. Second-generation Americans-the children of immigrants-are not just doing better than their parents. Their educational attainment and income are actually above the national average. They are contributors. If anything, as other research has shown, it is America that can be harmful to immigrant families: obesity and criminality increase from the first to the second generation. So the question should not be how to keep newcomers from diluting America but how to keep America from diluting the newcomers. This presents a challenge to both native-born Americans and today's immigrants. The Pew report notes that Americans who are of foreign birth or parentage, so-called "immigrant stock," will constitute a record 37% of the population by 2050. This frightens many white Americans to the core, especially those who are older and live in communities only recently touched by immigration. But for today's "immigrant stock," this moment creates an opportunity. Immigrants of earlier centuries proved that every kind of European could become simply white; today's immigrants prove that every kind of human can become simply American. But this means encouraging them to strive not only for their own families but also for the nation, through service and civic participation. We should bear in mind that whether we are native-born or newcomer, our task now, then, is to apply an immigrant's ingenuity, optimism, and perseverance to the systematic expansion of opportunity in America. To do that, as history shows and recent studies confirm, it'll help to have more immigrants around.

单选题For health insurance, the United States has taken the road less traveled. The United States is the only rich country without universal health insurance. People in the United States spend the most, rely heavily on the private sector, and obtain care from the world"s most complicated delivery system. While some supporters have expressed satisfaction, if not pride, in these remarkable qualities, others contend that the United States faces unique limitations in reforming health care. In her exceptional book,Parting at the Crossroads, Antonia Maioni compares the formation of the U.S. and Canadian health-care systems for the years 1930—1960. The United States and Canada are often considered the most similar of Western democracies. They share a common border, are wealthy, and have federal government. Their trade unions are only moderately powerful, and their populations are diverse and young. Nevertheless, their heath-insurance systems are nearly opposite. The United States relies on a mix of government plans. Targeted to the elderly and indigent, and employment based plans, which the government indirectly supports, Canada offers public health insurance to all qualified resident, with the private sector providing supplementary services in some provinces. Labor organizations became strong advocates for health-insurance reform in both countries. Their impact partially depended on political institutions and how other actors, particularly organized medicine, wielded them. Canada"s governmental and electoral systems allowed labor to cooperate with a social democratic party in the Saskatchewan province, which established a universal program. The Saskatchewan program demonstrated universal insurance feasibility, spurring the dominant Liberals to introduce a national universal program. In contrast, the U. S. electoral system effectively precluded third-party formation, forcing organized labor to dilute its health-insurance goals because it was one of many interests represented by the Democratic Party. Maioni suggests that economic vitality is important for the future of both countries" systems, but the prognosis is uncertain. Despite recent concerns about the Canadian government"s budgetary health, Maioni contends that widespread support protects universal insurance. Conversely, Maioni seems pessimistic about options for U.S. universal health insurance. Despite economic buoyancy, dissension will likely prevent reforms. Although a devastating econmnic downturn would make health finance difficult in either country, the U.S. system seems especially vulnerable. Employment-based insurance and Medicare both rely on labor market attachment. High, chronic unemployment could result in coverage loss and financial difficulties for employer insurance and Medicare, swelling the uninsured pool. Such a crisis could provide an opening for universal health insurance. In any case, whether the United States relies on the public or private sector, escalating health expenditures figure into budget of government, corporations, and families, the U. S. health care system"s future may depend on Americans" willingness to devote more of their national income to health care.