单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Ask any employee at an level in any company what they dislike about their job and somewhere on the list you will find a complaint about the system of performance appraisals. It does seem strange that an idea which was supposed to benefit both individuals and the company should be so universally disliked, but the staff appraisal is now one of the biggest causes of dissatisfaction at work. In the United States there have even been cases of unhappy workers taking their employers to court over appraisal interviews. It is in a company's interest to combat this situation, but, before reversing the appraisal's negative associations, an organization needs to pinpoint the underlying reasons which have contributed to them. Problems with appraisals can fall into two main areas--those arising from the scheme itself and those arising from the implementation and understanding of that scheme. Naturally it is easier to tackle those in the former category; indeed, some companies have developed schemes following legal guidelines. These guidelines suggest that a successful scheme should have a clear appeal process, that any negative feedback should be accompanied by "evidence" such as dates, times and outcomes and that, most importantly, ratings should reflect specific measurable elements of the job requirements. It is not always necessary to resort to legal advice however. Some changes to current schemes are simply a matter of logic. For instance, if employees are constantly encouraged to work in teams and to assume joint responsibility for their successes and failures, it makes little sense for the appraisals to focus on individuals, as this may lead to resentments and create divisions within the group. It is possible, and in some cases more suitable, to arrange appraisals where performance is rated for the group. Staff also need to be educated about the best way to approach appraisals. Managers often find that they are uncomfortable being asked to take on a more supportive role than they are used to without having had any training. Those being appraised may see it as a chance to air their grievances and highlight the company's failings rather than consider their own role. Both parties view the process as a necessary evil, to be gone through once or twice a year, and then forgotten about. The importance given to the appraisal stems from the fact that, despite all the talk of the interview being a chance for management and employees to come together and exchange ideas, set joint targets and improve the way decisions are reached, the reality is that they are often nothing more than the pretext on which pay rises are given, or not given. Pay is, of course, a subject that always leads to problems. Given the problems associated with staff appraisals, why is it that, with no legal requirement, companies continue to run them? The answer is simple, it is impossible to manage something you know nothing about. As any Human Resources manager can tell you, the best way to learn about someone is to talk to them. Effective people management relies on knowledge and appraisals are still the best way to build up that bank of knowledge.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Do your children lie to you and their friends about their activities online? Do they feel empty, depressed and irritable when not at the computer? Do they have problems with school or work, yet they always seem to feel energized again when they are at the computers surfing the internet? If you answered "yes" to one or even more of the above questions, your children are suffering from internet addiction. The amount of time kids spend online is a source of headaches for many parents. At first, parents welcomed the Internet into their homes, believing they were opening up an exciting new world of educational opportunities for their children. But soon, to their disappointment, instead of using the Internet for homework or research, their kids were spending hours instant chatting with friends, playing online games or even talking to strangers in chat rooms, which is posing real dangers to the children. Maintaining a healthy balance between entertainment media and other activities in children's lives has always been a {{U}}challenge{{/U}} for parents. The Internet has made this challenge even more difficult. The engaging nature of Internet communications and interactive games means many children and teens have trouble controlling the time they spent online. Unfortunately, parents and teachers do not realize that there is a problem until it becomes serious. To make it worse, Internet addiction is not widely recognized by the medical community. (Mental health practitioners continue to debate whether this behavior is an "addiction," with some preferring to identify it as "behavior control problems. Children and young people can easily become "hooked" on online activities such as multi-user games, instant messaging with their pals and chat rooms. The children most easily influenced, according to the Computer-Addiction Services at Harvard Medical School, are those who are "lonely and bored or from families where nobody is at home to relate to after school." Children who are unpopular or shy with peers are often attracted to the opportunities for creating new identities in online communities. Boys, in particular, are frequent users of online role-playing games, where they have new identities and interact with other players. Although playing these games with thousands of other users may appear to be a social activity, for the troubled child or teen, too much playing can further separate them from friends and peers.

单选题An official report, addressing concerns about the many implications of genetic testing, outlined policy guidelines and legislative recommendations intended to avoid involuntary and/or ineffective testing, and to protect confidentiality. The report identified urgent concerns, such as quality control measures (including federal oversight for testing laboratories) and better genetics training for medical practitioners. It recommended voluntary screening, urged couples in high-risk populations to consider carrier screening, and advised caution in using and interpreting pre-symptomatic or predictive tests, because certain information could easily be misused or misinterpreted. About three in every 100 children are born with a severe disorder presumed to be genetic or partially genetic in origin. Genes, often in concert with environmental factors, are being linked to the causes of many common adult diseases such as heart disease, hypertension (high blood pressure), various cancers, Alzheimer's disease, etc. Tests to determine predisposition to a variety of conditions are under study, and some are beginning to be applied. The report recommended that all screening, including screening of newborns, be voluntary. Citing the results of two different voluntary newborn screening programs, the report said these programs can achieve compliance rates equal to or better than those of obligatory programs. State health departments could eventually require the offering of tests for diagnosing treatable conditions in newborns, however, careful pilot studies for conditions diagnosable at birth need to be done first. Although the report asserted that it would prefer that all screening be voluntary, it did note that if a state requires newborn screening for a particular condition, the state should do so only if there is strong evidence that a newborn would benefit from effective treatment at the earliest possible age. Newborn screening is the most common type of genetic screening today. More than four million newborns are tested annually so that effective treatment can be started in a few hundred infants. Prenatal (preceding birth) testing can pose the most difficult issues. The ability to diagnose genetic disorders in the fetus(胎儿)far exceeds any ability to treat or cure them. Parents must be fully informed about risks and benefits of testing procedures, the nature and variability of the disorders they would disclose, and the options available if test results are positive. Obtaining informed consent—a process that would include educating participants, not just processing documents—would enhance voluntary participation. When offered testing, parents should receive comprehensive counseling, which should be nondirective. Relevant medical advice, however, is recommended for treatable or preventable conditions. Genetics also can predict whether certain diseases might develop later in life. For single-gene diseases, population screening should only be considered for treatable or preventable conditions of relatively high frequency. Children should be tested only for disorders for which effective treatments or preventive measures could be applied early in life.

单选题By "alcohol is a dietary Jekyll and Hyde", the author means

单选题Despite decades of scientific research, no one yet knows how much damage human activity is doing to the environment. Humans are thought to be responsible for a whole host of environmental problems, ranging from global warning to ozone depletion. What is not in doubt, however, is the devastating effect humans are having on the animal and plant life of the planet. Currently, an estimated 50,000 species become extinct every year. If this carries on, the impact on all living creatures is likely to be profound, says Dr. Nick Middleton, a geographer at Oxford University. " All species depend in some way on each other to survive. And the danger is that, if you remove one species from this very complex web of interrelationships, you have very little idea about the knock-on effects of other extinctions. " Complicating matters is the fact that there are no obvious solutions to the problem. Unlike global warning and ozone depletion—which, if the political will was there, could be reduced by cutting gas emissions—preserving biodiversity remains an intractable problem. The latest idea is " sustainable management " , which is seen as a practical and economical way of protecting species from extinction. This means humans should be able to use any species of animal or plant for their benefit, provided enough individuals of that species are left alive to ensure its continued existence. For instance, instead of depending on largely ineffective laws against poaching, it gives local people a good economic reason to preserve plants and animals. In Zimbabwe, there is a sustainable management project elephants. Foreign tourists pay large sums of money to kill these animals for sport. This money is then given to the inhabitants of the area where the hunting takes place. In theory, locals will be encouraged to protect elephants, instead of poaching them—or allowing others to poach them—because of the economic benefit involved. This sounds like a sensible strategy, but it remains to be seen whether it will work. With corruption endemic in many developing countries, some observers are skeptical that the money will actually reach the people it is intended for．Others wonder how effective the locals will be at stopping poachers. There are also questions about whether sustainable management is practical when it comes to protecting areas of great-bio-diversity such as the world's tropical forests. In theory, the principle should be the same as with elephants—allow logging companies to cut down a certain number of trees, but not so many as to completely destroy the forest. Sustainable management of forests requires controls on the number of trees which are cut down, as well as investment in replacing them. But because almost all tropical forests are located in countries which desperately need revenue from logging, there are few regulations to do this. Moreover, unrestricted logging is so much more profitable that wood prices from managed forests would cost up to five times more—an increase that consumers, no matter how " green " , are unlikely to pay. For these reasons, sustainable management of tropical forests is unlikely to become widespread in the near future. This is disheartening news. It's estimated these forests contain anything from 50 to 90 percent of all animal and plant species on Earth. In one study of a five-square-kilometer area of rain forest in Peru, for instance, scientists counted 1,300 species of butterfly and 600 species of bird. In the entire continental United States, only 400 species of butterfly and 700 species of bird have been recorded. Scientist Professor Norman Myers sees this situation as a gigantic " experiment we're conducting with our planet " . " We don't know what the outcome will be. If we make a mess of it, we can't move to another planet…It's a case of one planet, one experiment. /

单选题A beautiful woman lowers her eyes shyly beneath a hat. In an earlier era, her gaze might have signaled a mysterious allure. But this is a 2003 advertisement for Zoloft, an inhibitory drug approved by the F.D.A. to treat social anxiety disorder. "Is she just shy? Or is it Social Anxiety Disorder?" reads the caption, suggesting that the young woman is not luring people at all. She is sick. This does us all grave harm, because shyness and timidness—or more precisely, the careful, sensitive temperament from which both often spring—are not just normal. Indeed, they are valuable. And they may be essential to the survival of our species. But shyness and introversion share an undervalued status in a world that prizes being sociable. Children's classroom desks are now often arranged in pods, because group participation supposedly leads to better learning. Many adults work for organizations that now assign work in teams, in offices without walls, for supervisors who value "people skills" above all. As a society, we prefer action to contemplation, risk-taking to heed-taking, certainty to doubt. As the psychologist William Hart points out, phrases like "get active," "get moving," "do something" and similar calls to action surface repeatedly in recent books. Yet shy and introverted people have been part of our species for a very long time, often in leadership positions. We find them in recent history, in figures like Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein, and, in contemporary times: think of Google's Larry Page. Sitters and strollers favor different survival strategies, which could be summed up as the sitter's "Look before you leap" versus the stroller's inclination to "Just do it!" Once you know about sitters and strollers, you see them everywhere, especially among young children. Drop in on your local Mommy and Me music class: there are the sitters, intently watching the action from their mothers' laps, while the strollers march around the room banging their drums and shaking their maracas. Relaxed and exploratory, the strollers have fun, make friends and will take risks, both rewarding and dangerous ones, as they grow. In contrast, sitter children are careful and shrewd, and tend to learn by observing instead of by acting. They notice scary things more than other children do, but they also notice more things in general. The psychologist Gregory Feist found that many of the most creative people in a range of fields are introverts who are comfortable working in solitary conditions in which they can f0CUS attention inward. Another advantage sitters bring to leadership is a willingness to listen to and implement other people's ideas. Now, it's time for the young woman in the Zoloft ad to rediscover her lure.

单选题These days, the computerised world presents spies across the globe with both a challenge and an opportunity. Unlike the paper kind, electronic data is weightless, and computers are riddled with security holes. That makes stealing secrets easier than ever. At the same time, computers are able to place the sort of cryptography with which Bletchley Park struggled in the Second World War into the hands of everyone—including criminals, foreign spies and terrorists. Balancing the risks and rewards can sometimes be difficult. Mr. Corera describes how Markus Wolf, the head of East Germany"s notorious Stasi, resisted the temptation to computerise his organisation"s miles of paper files. After all, pointed out Mr. Wolf, the very convenience of computerised data made a big leak more likely. That point was spectacularly illustrated in 2013, when Edward Snowden walked out of America"s National Security Agency with tens of thousands of pilfered documents, a feat that would have been impossible in the pre-computer age. Mr. Corera has been given plenty of access to Western intelligence agencies, and he describes their dilemmas with sympathy. Monitoring the internet for suspicious behaviour may help forestall a terrorist attack, they point out, and arguments about privacy can seem abstract and unreal after such attacks succeed. At the same time he does not shy away from the implications of granting the spies ever more power to surveil. Technology has made practical the kind of mass surveillance that would have turned Mr. Wolf green with envy. In the West, at least, such powers are held in check by laws governing how the agencies behave. But the temptation to go further, to trade a little more privacy for a little more security, is always present. At the same time, the ability to conduct such mass surveillance is no longer confined to nation-states. The Internet"s biggest companies—such as Facebook and Google—have put a corporate twist on mass surveillance. The price for their services is collecting up users" data: detailed lists of their preferences, habits, opinions and life histories, all packaged up and sold to advertisers to help them target commercial products. The main message of Mr. Corera"s book, though, is that computers have automated espionage, and made it cheap and easy. Spying on someone used to be hard, labour-intensive work. Tails had to be set, hidden microphones planted, post intercepted and steamed open. These days a person"s laptop and smart-phone broadcasts their life across the Internet, pre-packaged into a form that other computers can digest, analyse and correlate. Never mind all those cold-war thrillers set in 1970s Berlin. The true golden age of spying and surveillance—whether carried out by states or, increasingly, by companies—is now.

单选题Etiquette cultivated as art of gracious living

单选题The paper by Dr. Just and Dr. Minshew is meant to examine ______.

单选题The first paragraph uses several examples to convey the ideas that______.

单选题The "Nightline" case shows that________.

单选题It can be inferred from the para. 1 that ______.

单选题It can be inferred that voters in rich countries fail to realize