单选题Remember Second Life, the virtual world that was supposed to become almost as important as the first one? Now populated by no more than 84,000 avatars at a time, it has turned out to be a prime example of how short-lived Internet fads can be. Yet if many adults seem to have given up on virtual worlds, those that cater to children and teenagers are thriving. Several have even found a way to make money. In America, nearly 10 million children and teenagers visit virtual worlds regularly, estimates eMarketer, a market researcher-a number the firm expects to increase to 15 million by 2013．As in January, there were 112 virtual worlds designed for under-18s with another 81 in development, according to Engage Digital Media, a market research firm. All cater to different age groups and tastes. In Club Penguin, the market leader, which was bought by Disney in 2007 for a whopping $ 700 million, primary-school children can take on a penguin persona, fit out their own igloo and play games. Habbo Hotel, a service run from Finland, is a global hangout for teenagers who want to customise their own rooms and meet in public places to attend events. Gala Online, based in Silicon Valley, offers similar activities, but is visited mostly by older teens who are into Manga comics. Not a hit with advertisers, these online worlds earn most of their money from the sale of virtual goods, such as items to spruce up an avatar or a private room. They are paid for in a private currency, which members earn by participating in various activities, trading items or buying them with real dollars. This sort of stealth tax seems to work. At Gala Online, users spend more than $1 million per month on virtual items, says Craig Sherman, the firm's chief executive. Running such a virtual economy is not easy, which is why Gaia has hired a full-time economist to grapple with problems that are well known in the real world, such as inflation and an unequal distribution of wealth. There are other barriers that could limit the growth of virtual worlds for the young, but the main one is parents. Many do not want their offspring roaming virtual worlds, either because they are too commercial or are thought to be too dangerous. Keeping them safe is one of the biggest running costs, because their sponsors have to employ real people to police their realms. Youngsters are also a fickle bunch, says Simon Levene of Accel Partners, a venture- capital firm. Just as children move from one toy to another, they readily switch worlds or social networks, often without saying goodbye. Even so, Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at eMarketer, believes "these worlds are a training ground for the three-dimensional web". If virtual worlds for adults, which so far have been able to retain only hardcore users, manage to hang on for a few years, they may yet have a second life.

单选题According to the author, it would be more reasonable to think that the patients who exhibit dissatisfaction with the treatment are

单选题If you are what you eat, then you are also what you buy to eat. And mostly what people buy is scrawled onto a grocery list, those ethereal scraps of paper that record the shorthand of where we shop and how we feed ourselves. Most grocery lists end up in the garbage. But if you live in St. Louis, they might have a half-life you never imagined: as a cultural document, posted on the Internet. For the past decade, Bill Keaggy, 33, the features photo editor at The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has been collecting grocery lists and since 1999 has been posting them online at www. grocerylists, org. The collection, which now numbers more than 500 lists, is strangely addictive. The lists elicit twofold curiosity-about the kind of meal the person was planning and the kind of person who would make such a meal. What was the shopper with vodka, lighters, milk and ice cream on his list planning to do with them? In what order would they be consumed? Was it a he or a she? Who had written "Tootie food, kitten chow, bird food stick, toaster scrambles, coffee drinks"? Some shoppers organize their lists by aisle; others start with dairy, go to cleaning supplies and then back to dairy before veering off to Home Depot. A few meticulous ones note the price of every item. One shopper had written in large letters on an envelope, simply, "Milk." The thin lines of ink and pencil jutting and looping across crinkled and torn pieces of paper have a purely graphic beauty. One of life's most banal duties, viewed through the curatorial lens, can somehow seem pregnant with possibility. It can even appear poetic, as in the list that reads "meat, cigs, buns, treats." One thing Keaggy discovered is that Dan Quayle is not alone-few people can spell bananas and bagels, let alone potato. One list calls for "suchi" and "strimp." "Some people pass judgment on the things they buy," Keaggy says. At the end of one list, the shopper wrote "Bud Light" and then "good beer." Another scribbled "good loaf of white bread." Some pass judgment on themselves, like the shopper who wrote "read, stay home or go somewhere, I act like my mom, go to Kentucky, underwear, lemon." People send messages to one another, too. Buried in one list is this statement: "If you buy more rice, I'll punch you." And plenty of shoppers, like the one with both ice cream and diet pills on the list, reveal their vices.

单选题It's the part of the job that stock analyst Hiroshi Naya dislikes the most: phoning investor managers on a Saturday or Sunday when he's working on a report and facing a deadline. In Japan, placing a work call to someone on the weekend "feels like entering someone's house with your shoes on, " says Naya, chief analyst at Ichiyoshi Research Institute in Tokyo. So last year, Naya started asking his questions via messages on Facebook. While a telephone call seems intrusive, he says, a Facebook message "feels more relaxed. " Many Japanese have become fans of Mark Zuckerberg's company in the past year. It's taken a while: Even as Facebook took off in India, Indonesia, and other parts of Asia, it's been a laggard in Japan since its local-language version debuted in 2008. The site faced cultural obstacles in a country where people historically haven't been comfortable sharing personal information, or even their names, on the Internet. Homegrown rivals such as community website operator Mixi and online game portals such as DeNA allow their users to adopt pseudonyms. The Japanese are overcoming their shyness, though. In February, Facebook had 13.5 million unique users, up from 6 million a year earlier. That puts Facebook in the No. 1 position in Japan for the first time, ahead of Twitter and onetime leader Mixi. "Facebook didn't have a lot of traction in Japan for the longest time, " says Arvind Rajan, Asia-Pacific managing director for Linkedln, which entered the Japanese market last October and hopes to emulate Face book's recent success. " They really did turn the corner, " he says. Rajan attributes the change in attitude to the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami. During the crisis and its aftermath, sites such as Facebook helped parents and children locate each other and allowed people post and find reliable information. " The real-name case has been answered, " says Rajan. "People are getting it now. " Japanese see Facebook as a powerful business tool. The real-name policy makes the site a good place to cultivate relationships with would-be partners. As more companies such as retailers Uniqlo and Muji turn to Facebook to reach Japanese consumers, the Silicon Valley company is benefiting from a viruous cycle, says Koki Shiraishi, an analyst in Tokyo with Daiwa Securities Capital Markets. "It's a chicken-and-egg thing: If everyone starts using it, then more people start using it. " As a result of Facebook's rise, investors have soured on some of its rivals : DeNA's stock price has dropped 24 percent in the past year, and Mixi's has fallen 38 percent. Growth at Twitter—which also entered Japan in 2008—has stagnated, and the San Francisco company has partnered with Mixi to do joint marketing. Twitter Japan country manager James Kondo says there's no reason to worry. Japan's social networking scene "is a developing thing, " he says. "We're not in a flat market where everyone is competing for a share of a fixed pie. /

单选题On a five to three vote, the Supreme Court knocked out much of Arizona"s immigration law Monday—a modest policy victory for the Obama Administration. But on the more important matter of the Constitution, the decision was an 8-0 defeat for the Administration"s effort to upset the balance of power between the federal government and the states. In Arizona v. United States, the majority overturned three of the four contested provisions of Arizona"s controversial plan to have state and local police enforce federal immigration law. The Constitutional principles that Washington alone has the power to "establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization" and that federal laws precede state laws are noncontroversial. Arizona had attempted to fashion state policies that ran parallel to the existing federal ones. Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the Court"s liberals, ruled that the state flew too close to the federal sun. On the overturned provisions the majority held the congress had deliberately "occupied the field" and Arizona had thus intruded on the federal"s privileged powers. However, the Justices said that Arizona police would be allowed to verify the legal status of people who come in contact with law enforcement. That"s because Congress has always envisioned joint federal-state immigration enforcement and explicitly encourages state officers to share information and cooperate with federal colleagues. Two of the three objecting Justice—Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas—agreed with this Constitutional logic but disagreed about which Arizona rules conflicted with the federal statute. The only major objection came from Justice Antonin Scalia, who offered an even more robust defense of state privileges going back to the Alien and Sedition Acts. The 8-0 objection to President Obama turns on what Justice Samuel Alito describes in his objection as "a shocking assertion of federal executive power". The White House argued that Arizona"s laws conflicted with its enforcement priorities, even if state laws complied with federal statutes to the letter. In effect, the White House claimed that it could invalidate any otherwise legitimate state law that it disagrees with. Some powers do belong exclusively to the federal government, and control of citizenship and the borders is among them. But if Congress wanted to prevent states from using their own resources to check immigration status, it could. It never did so. The administration was in essence asserting that because it didn"t want to carry out Congress"s immigration wishes, no state should be allowed to do so either. Every Justice rightly rejected this remarkable claim.

单选题The author's primary purpose in writing this passage is to ______.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} When I was in high school, I had almost no individual identity left. I was a Hillcrest Husky and all other high schools were enemies. I was a wrestler and all the other sports were gor wimps. I was on the debate team and everyone else was dumb. At my high school, everyone had a group; no one was an individual. Wait. I take that back. There were a few individuals, but they were completely outcast from our social order. Never in my life can I remember stronger feelings of hate tian in high school. But we never called it hate. We called it loyalty. As adults, most of us are better at being an individual than we were in high school, but the influences of group identity continue to promote competition and prejudice in our world. If you are like me, you want to avoid teaching rivalry, conflict and prejudice to your children. One possible strategy for stopping the negative influences of group identity would be: recognize and replay. Look for the prejudice in your life and replace it with charity. Treat every person as an individual and ignore the social classifications created by a group-dependent world. A good friend and I once discussed our differing religions beliefs. He identified with a certain group and I with another. Because of our dependence on group identity, our conversations revolved around the beliefs of the groups. Our individual beliefs, which were quite similar, took a back seat while we discussed topics we knew little about. We defended our groups even when we did not understand or know the official group position on many issues. The resulting rivalry has damaged our friendship ever since. My behavior in this situation is exactly what scripture and wisdom teach us to avoid. How stupid I was to judge my friend by a group standard! How stupid I was to defend my own group even in areas I knew nothing about! I hope I can teach my children to behave differently. Here, I have used religious beliefs to point only one area in which the influence of group identity can create problems. There are many others to consider also. Some of these are marriage, race, culture, language, geographic origin, education, and behavior. We should treat all people as individuals regardless of these conditions. Finally, loyalty and group identity are not always bad. At times, they can help a lonely person to feel loved or a broken soul to feel success. Group identity can also help us to live a higher standard. But positive peer pressure should never replace individual, one-to-one acts of service and love.

单选题The outcry over internet firms, habit of surreptitiously tracking web surfers, activities has clearly resonated inside the White House. The Obama administration announced that it intends to work with Congress to produce "a privacy bill of rights" giving American consumers greater control over how their information is collected and used by digital marketers. Those who have been lobbying for change agree with, but are unsympathetic to, internet firms' worries that such a law could dent their advertising-driven business models, which rely on tracking and targeting consumers to maximize revenues. "This is dimming the prospects of Google, Facebook and other digital ad companies," says Jeffrey Chester of the Centre for Digital Democracy. Quite how dark things get for them will depend on the details of the bill. It will seek to lay down the basic principles of internet privacy rights, broadly following recommendations published last December by the Department of Commerce. The department's report said consumers should be told more about why data are being collected about them and how they are used; and it called for stricter limits on what companies can do with information they collect. Whatever legislation finally emerges is likely to give a broader role to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which will almost certainly be charged with deciding how those principles are translated into practice and with policing their implementation. Among other things, the FTC is known to be keen on a formal "do not track" system, which would allow users to block certain sites from monitoring their online activities. Keen to avoid this, the online-advertising industry has been working overtime to convince policymakers that it can police itself using systems such as icons on web pages that show surfers when they are being tracked. And it is telling anyone who will listen that consumers will suffer if tough do-not-track rules hit ad revenues, forcing web firms to charge for more content. With Mr. Obama throwing his weight behind internet privacy, this rearguard action is less likely to be successful. Some ad firms have started talking of creating a do-not-track system of their own that would limit the damage to their digital activities. Although all this may dent their revenues, America's internet giants could also benefit from the legislation if it helps them in their dealings with the European Union. The EU's already fairly strict rules on privacy—which it considers a fundamental human right—are being tightened further. The time-consuming and expensive legal hoops the EU makes American internet firms jump through, to be allowed to handle Europeans' online data, will become more demanding. If by passing its own online-privacy "bill of rights", America can convince the EU to ease this legal burden, then it will be an important win for American companies, says Joel Reidenberg, a professor at Fordham University's law school. Google, Facebook and others will no doubt be tracking—both online and offline—the progress of EU-American talks on this matter very closely.

单选题The strong tone of US economic recovery is manifested in

单选题Overall, belief in climate change has declined in the American public from roughly 75 percent to 55 percent between 2008 and 2011, with a recent rebound to 62 percent in the fall of 2011, the Brookings Institution survey finds. One noted reason for the rebound was personal experiences with warmer fall and winter temperatures. Though this kind of weather disruption is what climate scientists predict, they hesitate to place too much emphasis on one or two unusual seasons as a trend that changes public opinion. If next winter is more normal, the public may get the wrong impression about the dangers of climate change. Better for science to be more convincing. But there's the rub. The American public is generally illiterate when it comes to science. And when American scientists complain about public illiteracy and lethargy on the vitally important subject of climate change, they also have themselves to blame. Generally, those who know the most about climate—and other important scientific fields—are locked up in their university ivory towers and conference rooms, speaking a language only they can understand. And they speak mostly to each other, not to the general public, policymakers, or business people—not to those who can actually make things happen. This is dangerous. We live in an age when scientific issues permeate our social, economic, and political culture. People must be educated about science and the scientific process if we are to make rational and informed decisions that affect our future. But instead, the relative absence of academics and academic scholarship in the public discourse creates a vacuum into which uninformed, wrong, and downright destructive viewpoints get voiced and take hold. Here's a typical example. After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh argued that "The ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone... " In fact, the spill created extensive damage to wide ranging marine habitats as well as the Gulf Coast's fishing and tourism industries. Long-term impacts are still unclear as scientists continue to monitor underwater plumes of dissolved oil that lie along the bottom. The fact is that today's scientists are indeed lost to the academy. The failure begins with training in doctoral programs and continues through professional development where the constant immersion in academic seminars and journals serves to weaken scientists' literacy in the language of public, economic, and political discourse. Scientists limit involvement in such "outside activities" because tenure and promotion are based primarily on publication in top-tier academic journals. "In my view, few contemporary issues warrant critical analysis by problem-focused researchers more than environmental sustainability, and particularly climate change. Universities need to train emerging and seasoned scholars in the skills of communicating science to the public and policy makers. We need to develop a new generation of scholars for whom the role of public intellectual is not an anachronism. Without such changes, the climate change debate devolves into a " logic schism" where the ideological extremes dominate the conversation and the space for solutions disappears into a rhetorical shouting match.

单选题 For those who regard the al-Jazeera TV channel as a biased, anti-western mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden, the announcement that it will start broadcasting 24 hours a day in English next year will be unwelcome. Its likeliest audience is Muslims{{U}} (1) {{/U}}the Middle East who do not speak Arabic. Will al-Jazeera's reports of suffering and rage in Iraq and beyond inspire anger{{U}} (2) {{/U}}America and its{{U}} (3) {{/U}}at home, too? The new service may prove a bit less{{U}} (4) {{/U}}than its Arabic sibling. Nigel Parsons, its managing editor, says that al-Jazeera has been too strident on{{U}} (5) {{/U}}in the past, and that the English channel will{{U}} (6) {{/U}}to redress that. It will strive{{U}} (7) {{/U}}balance, credibility and authority, he says, and it will signal a new maturity for al-Jazeera, which was started by the emir of Qatar in 1996. It will broadcast its own original content—news, documentaries and talk shows—{{U}} (8) {{/U}}studios in Doha, London and Washington,{{U}} (9) {{/U}}international news beyond the Middle East. especially the developing countries often{{U}} (10) {{/U}}by existing English-language channels. A1-Jazeera is already enjoying a fresh burst of{{U}} (11) {{/U}}outside the Middle East. Around the same time that the interim government in Iraq ordered it to shut its bureau in Baghdad, westerners started watching "Control Room," a film sympathetic{{U}} (12) {{/U}}the station directed by Jehane Noujaim. At a screening in London last week an audience of local journalists laughed along{{U}} (13) {{/U}}al-Jazeera's reporters and editors{{U}} (14) {{/U}}the{{U}} (15) {{/U}}of the American military. The biggest mystery about al-Jazeera surround its funding, which "Control Room" sadly did not{{U}} (16) {{/U}}. Qatar has a new{{U}} (17) {{/U}}in the world{{U}} (18) {{/U}}to the station. That may be why the emir is willing to spend{{U}} (19) {{/U}}an English-language channel even{{U}} (20) {{/U}}the original Arabic one is probably losing money.

单选题Attendance of the Church has declined because

单选题For Tony Blair, home is a messy sort of place, where the prime minister's job is not to uphold eternal values but to force through some unpopular changes that may make the country work a bit better. The area where this is most obvious, and where it matters most, is the public services. Mr Blair faces a difficulty here which is partly of his own making. By focusing his last election campaign on the need to improve hospitals, schools, transport and policing, he built up expectations. Mr Blair has said many times that reforms in the way the public services work need to go alongside increases in cash. Mr Blair has made his task harder by committing a classic negotiating error. Instead of extracting concessions from the other side before promising his own, he has pledged himself to higher spending on public services without getting a commitment to change from the unions. Why, given that this pledge has been made, should the health unions give ground in return? In a speech on March 20th, Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer, said that "the something-for-nothing days are over in our public services and there can be no blank cheques." But the government already seems to have given health workers a blank cheque. Nor are other ministries conveying quite the same message as the treasury. On March 19th, John Hutton, a health minister, announced that cleaners and catering staff in new privately-funded hospitals working for the National Health service will still be government employees, entitled to the same pay and conditions as other health-service workers. Since one of the main ways in which the government hopes to reform the public sector is by using private providers, and since one of the main ways in which private providers are likely to be able to save money is by cutting labor costs, this move seems to undermine the government's strategy. Now the government faces its hardest fight. The police need reforming more than any other public service. Half of them, for instance, retire early, at a cost of ￡1 billion ($ 1.4% billion) a year to the taxpayer. The police have voted 10-1 against proposals from the home secretary, David Blunkett, to reform their working practices. This is a fight the government has to win. If the police get away with it, other public service workers will reckon they can too. And, if they all get away it, Mr Blair's domestic policy--which is what voters are most likely to judge him on a the next election--will be a failure.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} A study released a little over a week ago, which found that eldest children end up, on average, with slightly higher IQ's than younger siblings, was a reminder that the fight for serlfdefinition starts much earlier than freshman year. Families, whatever the relative intelligence of their members, often treat the firstborn as if he or she were the most academic, and the younger siblings fill in other niches: the wild one, the flirt. These imposed caricatures, in combination with the other labels that accumulate from the sandbox through adolescence, can seem over time like a miserable cat. entourage of identities that can be silenced only with hours of therapy. But there's another way to see these alternate identities: as challenges that can sharpen psychological skills. In a country where reinvention is considered a birthright, many people seem to treat old identities the way Houdini treated padlocked boxes: something to wriggle free from, before being dragged down. And psychological research suggests that this ability can be a sign of mental resilience, of taking control of your own story rather than being trapped by it. The late-night bull sessions in college or at backyard barbecues are at some level like out-of-body experiences, allowing a re-coloring of past experience to connect with new acquaintances. A more obvious outlet to expand identity--and one that's available to those who have not or cannot escape the family and community where they're known and labeled —is the Internet. Admittedly, a lot of the role-playing on the Internet can have a deviant quality. But researchers have found that many people who play life-simulation games, for example, set up the kind of families they would like to have had, even script alternate versions of their own role in the family or in a peer group. Decades ago the psychologist Erik Erickson conceived of middle age as a stage of life defined by a tension between stagnation and generativity-a healthy sense of guiding and nourishing the next generation, of helping the community. Ina series of studies, the Northwestern psychologist Dan P. McAdams has found that adults in their 40s and 50s whose lives show this generous quality - who often volunteer, who have a sense of accomplishment - tell very similar stories about how they came to be who they are. Whether they grew up in rural poverty or with views of Central Park, they told their life stories as series of redemptive lessons. When they failed a grade, they found a wonderful tutor, and later made the honor roll; when fired from a good job, they were forced to start their own business. This similarity in narrative constructions most likely reflects some agency, a willful reshaping and re-imagining of the past that informs the present. These are people who, whether pegged as nerds or rebels or plodders, have taken control of the stories that form their identities. In conversation, people are often willing to hand out thumbnail descriptions of themselves: "I'm kind of a hermit." Or a talker, a practical joker, a striver, a snob, a morning person. But they are more likely to wince when someone else describes them so authoritatively. Maybe that's because they have come too far, shaken off enough old labels already. Like escape artists with a lifetime's experience slipping through chains, they don't want or need any additional work. Because while most people can leave their family niches, schoolyard nicknames and high school reputations behind, they don't ever entirely forget them.

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}} In most people's mind, growth is associated with prosperity. We judge how well the economy is doing by the size of the Gross National Product (GNP), a measure, supposedly, of growth. Equally axiomatic, however, is the notion that increased pressure on declining natural resources must inevitably lead to a decline in prosperity, especially when accompanied by a growth in population. So, which is correct? What growth advocates mean, primarily, when they say growth is necessary for prosperity is that growth is necessary for the smooth functioning of the economic system. In one field the argument in favor of growth is particularly compelling and that is with regard to the Third World. To argue against growth in light of Third World poverty and degradation seems unsympathetic. But is it? Could it be that growth, especially the growth of the wealthier countries, has contributed to the impoverishment, not the advancement, of Third World countries? If not, how do we account for the desperate straits these countries find themselves in today after a century of dedication to growth? To see how this might be the case we must look at the impact of growth on Third World countries—the reality, not the abstract stages-of-economic-growth theory advocated through rose colored glasses by academicians of the developed world. What good is growth to the people of the Third World if it means the conversion of peasant farms into mechanized agri-businesses producing commodities not for local consumption but for export, if it means the stripping of their land of its mineral and other natural treasures to the benefit of foreign investors and a handful of their local collaborators, if it means the assumption of a crushing foreign indebtedness? Admittedly, this is an oversimplification. But the point, I believe, remains valid: that growth in underdeveloped countries cannot simply be judged in the abstract; it must be judged based on the true nature of growth in these societies, on who benefits and who is harmed, on where growth is leading these people and where it has left them. When considered in this way, it just might be that in the present context growth is more detrimental to the well-being of the wretched of the earth than beneficial. So, do we need growth for prosperity? Only the adoption of zero growth can provide the answer. But that is a test not easily undertaken. Modem economies are incredibly complex phenomena, a tribute to man's ability to organize and a challenge to his ability to understand. Anything that affects their functioning, such as a policy of zero growth, should not be proposed without a wary carefulness and self-doubting humility. But if the prospect of leaping into the economic unknown is fear-inspiring, equally so is the prospect of letting that fear prevent us from acting when the failure to act could mean untold misery for future generations and perhaps environmental disaster which threaten our very existence.