单选题The word" arbiters" (Line 6,Paragraph 4) most probably refers to those______.A. who work as coordinators B. who function as JudgesC. who supervise transactions D. who determine the price

单选题 Do patents help or hinder innovation? Instinctively, they would seem a blessing. Patenting an idea gives its inventor a 20-year monopoly to exploit the fruit of his labor in the marketplace, in exchange for publishing a full account of how the new product, process or material works for everyone to see. For the inventor, that may be a reasonable trade-off. For society, however, the loss of competition through the granting sole tights to an individual or organization is justified only if it stimulates the economy and delivers goods that change people's lives for the better. Invention, though, is not innovation. It may take a couple of enthusiasts working evenings and weekends for a year or two-not to mention tens of thousands of dollars of their savings-to get a pet idea to the patenting stage. But that is just the beginning. Innovations based on patented inventions or discoveries can take teams of researchers, engineers and marketing experts a decade or more, and tens of millions of dollars, to transfer to the marketplace. And for every bright idea that goes on to become a commercial winner, literally thousands {{U}}fall by the wayside{{/U}}. Most economists would argue that, without a patent system, even fewer inventions would lead to successful innovations, and those that did would be kept secret for far longer in order to maximize returns. But what if patents actually discourage the combining and recombining of inventions to yield new products and processes-as has happened in biotechnology, genetics and other disciplines? Or what about those ridiculous business-process patents, like Amazon.com's "one-click" patent or the "name-your-price" auction patent assigned to Priceline.com? Instead of stimulating innovation, such patents seem more about extracting "rents" from innocent bystanders going about their business. One thing has become clear since business-process patents took off in America during the 1990s: the quality of patents has deteriorated markedly. And with sloppier patenting standards, litigation has increased. The result is higher transaction costs all ronnd. It is not simply a failure of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to examine applications more rigorously. The Federal Circuit has been responsible for a number of bizarre rulings. Because of its diverse responsibilities, the Federal Circuit-unlike its counterparts in Europe and Japan-has never really acquired adequate expertise in patent law. To be eligible for a patent, an invention must not just be novel, but also useful and non-obvious. Anything that relies on natural phenomena, abstract ideas or the laws of nature does not qualify. The USPTO has taken to requiring a working prototype of anything that supposedly breaches the laws of physics. So, no more perpetual-motion machines, please.

单选题The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that, on average, each person in the United States throws out about 328 pounds of edible food each year. Food bought with the best (1) sits for weeks on end as busy consumers (2) it in the refrigerator and forget about it. And when it seems time to either eat it or (3) it, most people (4) the freshness dates (a.k.a. 'use by', 'sell by', and 'best if used by') printed on the packages. But, these dates don't really (5) food safety, nor do they mean (6) food is always bad. Poultry, seafood, and ground meats such as hamburger, have the shortest (7) lives. They should be (8) within two days of (9) if stored in the refrigerator. They last (10) six months in the freezer. Steak, beef, (11) , and other fresh-cut meats last a little longer—three to five days in the refrigerator and six months in the freezer. The date (12) on milk products is set by the dairy. Most of the dates on dairy products are totally driven by (13) —not necessarily spoilage. In general, milk lasts five to seven days after the (14) date. Eggs generally have long shelf lives—three to five weeks from the time you take them home. Don't (15) your eggs just because they're past the expiration date; (16) one open first. If it still smells and looks good, (17) . When you cook them, make sure you do so thoroughly. About (18) every 10, 000 eggs contains salmonella bacteria. Thorough cooking (19) salmonella. Once cooked, a boiled, (20) egg will last a week.

单选题 Forget Iraq and budget deficits. The most serious political problem on both sides of the Atlantic is none of these. It is a difficulty that has dogged the ruling classes for millennia. It is the servant problem. In Britain David Blunkett, the home secretary, has resigned over an embarrassment ( or one of many embarrassments, in a story involving his ex-girlfriend, her husband, two pregnancies and some DNA) concerning a visa for a Filipina nanny employed by his mistress. His office speeded it through for reasons unconnected to the national shortage of un skilled labour. Mr Blunkett resigned ahead of a report by Sir Alan Budd, an economist who is investigating the matter at the government' s request. In America Bernard Kerik, the president' s nominee for the Department of Homeland Security, withdrew last week because he had carelessly employed a Mexican nanny whose Play-Doh skills were in better order than her paperwork. Mr Kerik also remembered that he hadn' t paid her taxes. The nominee has one or two other "issues" ( an arrest warrant in 1998, and allegations of dodgy business dealings and extra-marital affairs). But employing an illegal nanny would probably have been enough to undo him, as it has several other cabinet and judicial appointees in recent years. There is an easy answer to the servant problem--obvious to economists, if not to the less clear-sighted. Perhaps Sir Alan, a dismal scientist of impeccable rationality, will be thoughtful enough to point it out in his report. Parents are not the only people who have difficulty getting visas for workers. All employers face restrictive immigration policies which raise labour costs. Some may respond by trying to fiddle the immigration system, but most deal with the matter by exporting jobs. In the age of the global economy, the solution to the servant problem is simple: rather than importing the nanny, offshore the children.

单选题It is generally believed that in applied investigation

单选题Britain no longer dominates Anglophone education. Students want more, and the old empire is happy to give it to them. A good name and a British campus are no longer enough to pull in high-paying overseas recruits. The competition within the world of English-language higher education is growing increasingly intense. Today's international students don’t automatically head to the United States or the United Kingdom; they consider a slew of factors before making their pick. Already, Britain is starting to suffer as it finds itself in a fierce three-way contest for market share. On the one hand, U.S. colleges are recovering fast in overseas recruitment. On the other, a batch of commonwealth countries is coming on strong and eating into Britain's market share. Consider Singapore, which four years ago set out to lure branches of foreign colleges. The number of overseas students there has since climbed 46 percent. And in the first three years of the decade, the number of foreign students in New Zealand almost quadrupled. Then there’s Australia. Foreigners now make up about a quarter of its entire student body. Australia shows that the secret to success often has as much to do with government policy as with academic philosophy. Lavish grants can offset the Brits’ and the Americans’ edge in prestige. Foreign students at state-run schools in Singapore now get an 80 percent discount. An engineering degree that costs about $30,000 a year at Harvard runs just $2,000 at the University of Malaya, thanks to heavy subsidies. The biggest factor today seems to be the prospect of employment. A degree from an Australian university now puts graduates on the fast track to permanent residency. And London offers an automatic 12-month work permit to most overseas recruits. But Britain can’t do anything about its location. Why go all the way to the United Kingdom -- or to the United States -- when there’s now a good English- language college just a few hours’ flight from Shanghai or Mumbai? But few countries can match Australia's main selling point. Its sunny outdoors image works strongly to its advantage among international students. Yet no country can afford to throw in the towel. Cuts in government spending have forced colleges to look elsewhere for money. Overseas recruits have thus become an increasingly critical source of cash: in Britain the average university now looks to foreign students to provide at least 10 percent of its income. Other trends could soon make things even more desperate. Today China is one of the biggest sources of traveling students. But for how much longer? The country is now busy developing its own elite institution and ordinary colleges. If this trend continues, the developed world is going to lose its largest client. The scramble for business in the Anglo world is already ferocious(激烈的), while the market is expanding. Just wait till it starts to contract.

单选题However important we may regard school life to be, there is no denying the fact that children spend more time at home than in the classroom. Therefore, the great influence of parents cannot be ignored or discounted by the teacher. They can become strong allies of the school personnel or they can consciously or unconsciously hinder and frustrate curricular objectives. Administrators have been aware of the need to keep parents informed of the newer methods used in schools. Many principals have conducted workshops explaining such matters as the reading readiness program, manuscript writing and developmental mathematics. Moreover, the classroom teacher, with the permission of the supervisors, can also play an important role in enlightening parents. The informal tea and the many interviews carried on during the year, as well as new ways of reporting pupils' progress, can significantly aid in achieving a harmonious interplay between school and home. To illustrate, suppose that a father has been drilling Junior in arithmetic processes night after night. In a friendly interview, the teacher can help (he parent sublimate his natural paternal interest into productive channels. He might be persuaded to let Junior participate in discussing the family budget, buying the food, using a yardstick or measuring cup at home, setting the clock, calculating mileage on a trip and engaging in scores of other activities that have a mathematical basis. If the father follows the advice, it is reasonable to assume that he will soon realize his son is making satisfactory progress in mathematics, and at the same time, enjoying the work. Too often, however, teachers' conferences with parents are devoted to petty accounts of children's misdemeanors, complaints about laziness and poor work habits, and suggestion for penalties and rewards at home. What is needed is a more creative approach in which the teacher, as a professional adviser, plants ideas in parents' minds for the best utilization of the many hours that the child spends out of the classroom. In this way, the school and the home join forces in fostering the fullest development of youngsters' capacities.

单选题Home prices slid in November, raising questions about whether the housing recovery is robust enough to maintain a sustained turnaround. From October to November, home prices fell 0.2% after (1) 0.1% in October, according to a report Tuesday by Standard Poor's/Case-Shiller's home price index. (2) five of the 20 metro areas (3) by the index saw price increases for the month. On a(n) (4) basis, prices were 5.3% lower in November than in November 2008. Prices were the same as in late 2003. "What we've seen (5) the past couple of months is that the pace of (6) has fallen down," says Maureen Maitland of Standard Poor's. "Some markets have (7) Is that because we haven't (8) the foreclosure (回赎权的取消) cycle? Because of unemployment? We're not seeing the (9) we were seeing in the last summer months. " Metro areas that have seen a retreat in home prices (10) Seattle, Charlotte, Las Vegas and Tampa. All four (11) gains they made in recent months (12) . (13) , for the 20-metro index, the annual rate of decline is improving. That (14) , with other recent housing reports that show prices (15) or accelerating, could point to (16) the housing market is starting to (17) its footing, some economists say. Existing home sale prices were $178 300 in December, which is 1.5% higher than December 2008, according to a report this week by the National Association of Realtors. That was the first year-over-year (18) in median price since August 2007. "The most (19) thing we can say is not only the market is stabilizing, but we've seen that housing demand is strong," says Bernard Baumohl, with the Economic Outlook Group. "Housing probably will continue to climb upwards through the summer, (20) it could slip a little as the tax credit expires. /

单选题An industrial society, especially one as centralized and concentrated as that of Britain, is heavily dependent on certain essential services- for instance, electricity supply, water, rail and road transport, and harbors. The area of dependency has widened to include removing rubbish, hospital and ambulance services, and, as the economy develops, central computer and information services as well. If any of these services ceases to operate, the whole economic system is in danger. It is this economic interdependency of the economic system which makes the power of trade unions such an important issue. Single trade unions have the ability to cut off many countries' economic blood supply. This can happen more easily in Britain than in some other countries, in part because the labor force is highly organized. About 55 percent of British workers belong to unions, compared to under a quarter in the United States. For historical reasons, Britain's unions have tended to develop along trade and occupational lines, rather than on an industry-by-industry basis, which makes a wages policy, democracy in industry and the improvement of procedure for fixing wage levels difficult to achieve. There are considerable strains and tensions in the trade union movement, some of them arising from their outdated and inefficient structure. Some unions have lost many members because of their industrial changes. Others are involved in arguments about who should represent workers in new trades. Unions for skilled trades are separate from general unions, which means that different levels of wages for certain jobs are often a source of bad feeling between unions. In traditional trades which are being pushed out of existence by advancing technologies, unions can fight for their members' disappointing jobs to the point where the jobs of other union members are threatened or destroyed. The printing of newspapers both in the United States and in Britain has frequently been halted by the efforts of printers to hold on to their traditional highly-paid jobs. Trade unions have problems of internal communication just as managers in companies do, problems which multiply in very large unions or in those which bring workers in very different industries together into a single general union. Some trade union officials have to be re-elected regularly; others are elected, or even appointed, for life. Trade union officials have to work with a system of "shop stewards" in many unions, "shop stewards" being workers elected by other workers as their representatives at factory or works level.

单选题The example mentioned in paragraph 3 shows that

单选题 Americans no longer expect public figures, whether in speech or in writing, to command the English language with skill and gift. Nor do they aspire to such command themselves. In his latest book, Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of language and Music and Why We Should Like, Care, John McWhorter, a linguist and controversialist of mixed liberal and conservative views, sees the triumph of 1960s counter—culture as responsible for the decline of formal English. Blaming the permissive 1960s is nothing new, but this is not yet another criticism against the decline in education. Mr. McWhorter's academic specialty is language history and change, and he sees the gradual disappearance of "whom", for example, to be natural and no more regrettable than the loss of the case-endings of Old English. But the cult of the authentic and the personal, "doing our own thing", has spelt the death of formal speech, writing, poetry and music. While even the modestly educated sought an elevated tone when they put pen to paper before the 1960s, even the most well regarded writing since then has sought to capture spoken English on the page. Equally, in poetry, the highly personal, performative genre is the only form that could claim real liveliness. In both oral and written English, talking is triumphing over speaking, spontaneity over craft. Illustrated with an entertaining array of examples from both high and low culture, the trend that Mr. McWhorter documents is unmistakable. But it is less clear, to take the question of his subtitle, why we should, like, care. As a linguist, he acknowledges that all varieties of human language, including non-standard ones like Black English, can be powerfully expressive—there exists no language or dialect in the world that cannot convey complex ideas. He is not arguing, as many do, that we can no longer think straight because we do not talk proper. Russians have a deep love for their own language and carry large chunks of memorized poetry in their heads, while Italian politicians tend to elaborate speech that would seem old-fashioned to most English-speakers. Mr. McWhorter acknowledges that formal language is not strictly necessary, and proposes no radical education reforms—he is really grieving over the loss of something beautiful more than useful. We now take our English "on paper plates instead of china". A shame, perhaps, but probably an inevitable one.

单选题The Tuscan town of Vinci, birthplace of Leonardo and home to a museum of his machines, should fittingly put on a show of the television-robot sculptures of Nam Jun Paik. This Korean-born American artist and the Renaissance master are kindred spirits: Leonardo saw humanistic potential in his scientific experiments, Mr Paik endeavors to harness media technology for artistic purp9ses. A pioneer of video art in the late 1960s, he treats television as a space for art images and as material for robots and interactive sculptures. Mr Paik was not alone. He and fellow artists picked on the video cameras because they offered an easy way to record their performance art. Now, to mark video art's coming of age, New York's Museum of Modern Art is looking back at their efforts in a film series called "The First Decade". It celebrates the early days of video by screening the archives of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), one of the world's leading distributors of video and new media art, founded 30 years ago. One of EAI's most famous alumni is Bill Viola. Part of the second generation of video artists, who emerged in the 1970s, Mr Viola experimented with video’s expressive potential. His camera explores religious ritual and universal ideas. The Viola show at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin shows us moving-image frescoes that cover the gallery walls and envelop the viewer in all-embracing cycles of life and death. One new star is a Californian, Doug Aitken, who took over London's Serpentine Gallery last October with an installation called "New Ocean". Some say Mr Aitken is to video what Jackson Pollock was to painting. He drips his images from floor to ceiling, creating sequences of rooms in which the Space surrounds the viewer in hallucinatory images, of sound and light. At the Serpentine, Mr Aitken created a collage of moving images, on the theme of water's flow around the planet as a force of life. "I wanted to create a new topography in this work, a liquid image, to show a world that never stands still," he says. The boundary between the physical world and the world of images and information, he thinks, is blurring. The interplay of illusion and reality, sound and image, references to art history, politics, film and television in this art form that is barely 30 years old can make video art difficult to define. Many call it film-based or moving-image art to include artists who work with other cinematic media. At its best, the appeal of video art lies in its versatility, its power to capture the passing of time and on its ability to communicate both inside and outside gallery walls.

单选题Travelers can now demand hotels to match their own prices because

单选题Which of the following may be regarded as potential crises?