单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} "You are not here to tell me what to do. You are here to tell me why I have done what I have already decided to do," Montagu Norman, the Bank of England's longest-serving governor (1920-1944), is reputed to have once told his economic adviser. Today, thankfully, central banks aim to be more transparent in their decision making, as well as more rational. But achieving either of these things is not always easy. With the most laudable of intentions, the Federal Reserve, America's central bank, may be about to take a step that could backfire. Unlike the Fed, many other central banks have long declared explicit inflation targets and then set interest rates to try to meet these. Some economists have argued that the Fed should do the same. With Alan Greenspan, the Fed's much-respected chairman, due to retire next year-after a mere 18 years in the job-some Fed officials want to adopt a target, presumably to maintain the central bank's credibility in the scary new post-Greenspan era. The Fed discussed such a target at its February meeting, according to minutes published this week. This sounds encouraging. However, the Fed is considering the idea just when some other central banks are beginning to question whether strict inflation targeting really works. At present centra1 banks focus almost exclusively on consumer-price indices. On this measure Mr. Greenspan can boast that inflation remains under control. But some central bankers now argue that the prices of assets, such as houses and shares, should also somehow be taken into account. A broad price index for America which includes house prices is currently running at 5.5%, its fastest pace since 1982. Inflation has simply taken a different form. Should central banks also try to curb increases in such asset prices? Mr. Greenspan continues to insist that monetary policy should not be used to prick asset-price bubbles. Identifying bubbles is difficult, except in retrospect, he says, and interest rates are a blunt weapon: an increase big enough to halt rising prices could trigger a recession. It is better, he says, to wait for a housing or stockmarket bubble to burst and then to cushion the economy by cutting interest rates-as he did in 2001-2002. And yet the risk is not just that asset prices can go swiftly into reverse. As with traditional inflation, surging asset prices also distort price signals and so can cause a misallocation of resources-encouraging too little saving, for example, or too much investment in housing. Surging house prices may therefore argue for higher interest rates than conventional inflation would demand. In other words, strict inflation targeting-the fad of the 1990s-is too crude.

单选题How many members are there in Ruth' s family?

单选题Imagine browsing a website when an attractive ad for lingerie catches your eye. You don't click on it, merely smile and go to another page. Yet it follows you, putting up more racy pictures, perhaps even the offer of a discount. Finally, annoyed by its persistence, you frown. "Sorry for taking up your time," says the ad, and promptly stops further disturbance. Creepy. But making online ads that not only know you are looking at them but also respond to your emotions will soon be possible, thanks to the power of image-processing software and the common existence of tiny cameras in computers and mobile devices. Uses for this technology would not, of course, be confined to advertising. There is ample scope to apply it in areas like security, computer gaming, education and health care. But advertisers are among the first to embrace the idea in earnest. Advertising firms already film how people react to ads, usually in an artificial setting. The participants' faces are studied for positive or negative feelings. A lot of research has been done into ways of categorizing the emotions behind facial expressions. Some consumer-research companies also employ cameras to track eye movements so they can be sure what their subjects are looking at. This can help determine which ads attract the most attention and where they might be placed for the best effect on a web page. One of the companies doing such work, Realeyes, which is based in London, has been developing a system that combines eye-spying webcams with emotional analysis. Mihkel Jaatma, who founded the company in 2007, says that his system is able to detect a person's mood by plotting the position of facial features, such as eyebrows, mouth and nostrils, and employing clever programs to interpret changes in their alignment—as when eyebrows are raised in surprise, say. Add eye-movement tracking, hinting at which display ads were overlooked and which were studied for any period of time, and the approach offers precisely the sort of quantitative data brand managers yearn for. At present the system is being used on purpose-built websites with, for instance, online research groups testing the effect of various display ads. The next step is to make interactive ads. Because they can spot the visual attention given to them, as well as the emotional state of the viewer, these ads could change their responses. As similar technologies become widespread, privacy concerns will invariably increase. People would need to give consent to their webcams being used in this way, Mr. Jaatma admits. One way to persuade Internet users to grant access to their images would be to offer them discounts on goods or subscriptions to websites.

单选题Internet data shows that younger adults have become the primary audience obsessed with television programs about altering people"s appearance. Once the domain of the female in her fifties, plastic surgery has become the obsession of the younger Internet users. The recent tragic death of Stephanie Kuleba, an 18-year-old high school cheer-leader who died as a result of a plastic surgery, brought our attention to the pursuit of a more "ideal" body amongst teenagers. In fact, search data confirms this phenomenon. One of the most popular sites visited from the search term "plastic surgery" is the official site of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (www. plasticsurgery. org). Over 25% of visitors to the site fell within the 18-to-24-year-old—that"s up from 19.6% two years ago. Plastic surgery has become an American obsession. Checking other markets, such as the U.K. and Australia, the 18-to-24-year-old fascination with plastic surgery is a definitely U.S. phenomenon. Looking at other health related sites visited by 18-to-24- year-olds reveals just how obsessed this age group is with appearance. Unlike the older groups who visit sites related to diseases and keeping healthy, younger Internet users flock to sites that dwell on personal appearance, such as those focused on body-building, weight loss and skin-care. And definitely plastic surgery. While surgery-themed television may be driving the interest of a younger audience, one factor appears to be key in moderating teens from altering their bodies: the failing U.S. economy. If we track the trend in searches on topics such as "plastic surgery", there has been a sharp decline in all plastic surgery topics over the last year. It may very well be related to the noticeable income group of visitors—U.S. households that earn less than $30,000 per year. In fact, if we look at the search patterns around popular surgeries, over the last year the term "cost" appear most commonly. While older age groups continue to search for information on procedures such as face-lifts or liposuction, it"s the younger Internet users who in tough economic times are focusing on improving their outer beauty, though at a discount price.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} In the USA, 85% of the population over the age if 21 approve of the death penalty. In the many states whcih still have the death penalty, some use the electric chair, which can take up to 20 minutes to kill, while others use gas or lethal injection. The first of these was the case of Ruth Ellis who was hanged for shooting her lover in what was generally regarded as a crime of passion. The second was hanged for murders which, it was later proved, had been committed by someone else. The pro-hanging lobby uses four main arguments to support its call for the reintroduction of capital punishment. First there is the deterrence theory, which argues that potential murderers would think twice before committing the act if they knew that they might die if they were caught. The armed bank robber might, likewise, go back to being unarmed. The other two arguments are more suspect. The idea of retribution demands that criminals should get what they deserve: if a murderer intentionally set out to commit a crime, he should accept the consequences. Retribution, which is just another word for revenge, is supported by the religious doctrine of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The arguments against the death penalty are largely humanitarian. But there are also statistical reasons for opposing it: the deterrence figures do not add up. In Britain,1903 was the the record year for executions and yet in 1904 the number of murders actually rose. There was a similar occurrence in 1946 and 1947. If the deterrence theory were correct, the rate should have fallen. The other reasons to oppose the death penalty are largely a mather of individual conscience and belief. One is that murder is murder and that the state has no more right to take a lifer than the individual. The other is that Christianity advises forgiveness, not revenge.

单选题The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower it is becoming mature. A man reaches the mature (1) of his reasoning powers and mental faculties (2) before the age of twenty-eight; a woman at eighteen. And then, too, in the case of woman, it is the only reason of a sort--very mean in its (3) . That is why women remain children their whole life long; never seeing (4) but what is quite close to them, (5) fast to the present moment, taking appearance for (6) , and preferring (7) to matters of the first importance. For it is (8) his reasoning faculty that man does not live in the present only, (9) the brute, but looks about him and considers the past and the future; and this is the origin of (10) , as well as that of care and anxiety which so many people (11) Both the advantages and the disadvantages, which this (12) , are (13) in by the woman to a smaller extent because of her weaker power of reasoning. She may, in fact, be described as intellectually shortsighted, (14) , while she has an immediate understanding of what lies quite close to her, her field of (15) is narrow and does not reach to what is (16) ; so that things which are absent, or past, or to come, have much less effect upon women than upon men. This is the reason why women are inclined to be (17) and sometimes carry their desire to a (18) that borders upon madness. In their hearts, women think it is men's business to earn money and theirs to spend it--if possible during their husband's life, (19) , at any rate, after his death. The very fact that their husband hands them (20) his earnings for purposes of housekeeping strengthens them in this belief.

单选题We can learn from the beginning that the competition in the travel industry revolves chiefly around

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} In the two decades between 1910 and 1930, over ten percent of the Black population of the United States left the South, where most 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 factors: the collapse of the cotton industry, 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 thoroughly investigated. Although numerous investigations document an exodus (大批出走) 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 out-date. 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. During that period, urban black workers faced competition from the continuing arrival 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 sub-sequent economic problems in the North to their rural background comes into question.

单选题Artificial hearts have long been the stuff of science fiction. In "Robocop", snazzy cardiac devices are made by Yamaha and Jensen, and in "Star Trek", Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Enterprise, has one implanted in the year 2328. In the present day, however, their history has been more chequered. The first serious attempt to build one happened in the 1980s, when Jarvik-7, made by Robert Jarvik, a surgeon at the University of Utah, captured the world's attention. But Jarvik-7 was a complicated affair that needed to be connected' via tubes to machines outside the body. The patient could not go home, nor even turn around in bed. Various other designs have been tried since, but all were seen as temporary expedients intended to tide a patient over until the real thing became available from a human donor. That may be about to change. This week, America's Food and Drug Administration gave its approval to a new type of artificial heart made by Abiomed, a firm based near Boston. The agency granted a "humanitarian device exemption", a restricted form of approval that will allow doctors to implant the new device in people whose hearts are about to fail but who cannot, for reasons such as intolerance of the immunosuppressive drugs needed to stop rejection, receive a transplant. Such people have a life expectancy of less than a month, but a dozen similarly hopeless patients implanted with Abiomed's heart survived for about five months. Unlike Dr. Jarvik's device, this newfangled bundle of titanium and polyurethane alms to set the patient free. An electric motor revolving up to 10 000 times a minute pushes an incompressible fluid around the Abiomed heart, and that fluid, in turn, pushes the blood--first to the lungs to be oxygenated, and then around the body. Power is supplied by an electric current generated in a pack outside the body. This induces current in the motor inside the heart. All diagnostics are done remotely, using radio signals. There are no tubes or wires coming out of the patient. The charger is usually plugged into the mains, but if armed with a battery it can be carried around for hours in a vest or backpack, thus allowing the patient to roam freely. Most strikingly, the device's internal battery can last half an hour before it needs recharging. That allows someone time to take a shower or even go for a quick swim without having to wear the charger. Abiomed's chairman, Michael Minogue, does not claim that his firm's product will displace human transplants. Even so, the firm has big ambitions. It is already developing a new version that will be 30% smaller (meaning more women can use it) and will last for five years. That should be ready by 2008--320 years earlier than the writers of "Star Trek" predicted.

单选题European farm ministers have ended three weeks of negotiations with a deal which they claim represents genuine reform of the common agricultural policy(CAP). Will it be enough to kickstart the Doha world trade negotiations? On the face of it, the deal agreed in the early hours of Thursday June 26th looks promising. Most subsidies linked to specific farm products are, at last, to be broken--the idea is to replace these with a direct payment to farmers, unconnected to particular products. Support prices for several key products, including milk and butter, are to be cut--that should mean European prices eventually falling towards the world market level. Cutting the link between subsidy and production was the main objective of proposals put forward by Mr. Fischler, which had formed the starting point for the negotiations. The CAP is hugely unpopular around the world. It subsidises European farmers to such an extent that they can undercut farmers from poor countries, who also face trade barriers that largely exclude them from the potentially lucrative European market. Farm trade is also a key feature of the Doha round of trade talks, launched under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in November 2001. Developing countries have lined up alongside a number of industrial countries to demand an end to the massive subsidies Europe pays its farmers. Several Doha deadlines have already been missed because of the EU's intransigence, and the survival of the talks will be at risk if no progress is made by September, when the world's trade ministers meet in Cancun, Mexico. But now even the French seem to have gone along with the deal hammered out in Luxembourg. Up to a point, anyway. The package of measures gives the green light for the most eager reformers to move fast to implement the changes within their own countries. But there is an escape clause of sorts for the French and other reform-averse nations. They can delay implementation for up to two years. There is also a suggestion that the reforms might not apply where there is a chance that they would lead to a reduction in land under cultivation. These let-outs are potentially damaging for Europe's negotiators in the Doha round. They could significantly reduce the cost savings that the reforms might otherwise generate and, in turn, keep European expenditure on farm support unacceptably high by world standards. More generally, the escape clauses could undermine the reforms by encouraging the suspicion that the new package will not deliver the changes that its supporters claim. Close analysis of what is inevitably a very complicated package might confirm the sceptics' fears.

单选题Katherine Conger mentions "Siblings are with us for the whole journey" to show

单选题What happens to nitrogen in body tissues if a diver ascends too quickly?

单选题The case of Napster demonstrates that

单选题Dr. Gordon focused his attention on the Piraha's counting ability because ______.