单选题 Since the Nov.4 election, investors have been abandoning stocks in a kind of slow-motion crash that experts say underlines just how anxious they are about what is likely to be a long and deep recession. Even after a late-day rally on Friday, the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index has plunged 20 percent since the election. That more than wiped out the index's 18 percent gain in the six trading days ahead of the balloting as optimism grew that Barack Obama would be elected president. Analysts aren't blaming Obama specifically for the post-election hangover. Rather, they peg it to growing fears that the Bush Administration and Congress are fumbling the $ 700 billion bailout plan and the weakened economy's impact on financial stocks—highlighted by the plunge in shares of Citigroup Inc. to below $ 4 a share. "You can almost hear people yelling, 'Get me out at any price, ' " said Al Goodman, chief market strategist at Wachovia Securities. "It's the highest level of fear and depression in my 45 years as a student of the market." Market experts define a crash as a decline of 20 percent over a single day or several days. Over seven trading days that ended Oct.9, the Dow lost 22 percent. This month, the S&P 500 skidded more than 25 percent in the 12 trading days after the election before a bounceback on Friday narrowed the loss to 20 percent. All told, stocks have lost a stunning $ 2.6 trillion since Nov.4, as measured by the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 index, which reflects the value of nearly all U.S. stocks. The Friday afternoon news that Obama is likely to choose Timothy Geithner, the president of the New York Federal Reserve, to be the next Treasury secretary helped spark a rally that sent the Dow Jones industrial average surging almost 500 points. Geithner has worked closely with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke this year as the government seized control of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and insurer American International Group Inc. But analysts say it would be a mistake to say Friday's market reversal marks an end to the carnage that has wiped out 45.8 percent of the value of the S&P 500 index since the start of the year. "I don't think anyone can say we've reached the bottom yet, " said Chuck Gabriel, managing director of Capital Alpha Partners in Washington. "It's going to be a very gloomy Christmas." Kim Caughey, equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh, said that "for investors to get more confidence, we need to know details" of the new administration's plans to handle the crisis." There's been a vacuum of leadership" she added, " and when that happens, you get fear and rumors, and then people sell."

单选题Almost exactly a year ago, in a small village in Northern India, Andrea Milliner was bitten on the leg by a dog. "It must have (1) your nice white flesh", joked the doctor (2) he dressed the wound. Andrea and her husband Nigel were determined not to let it (3) their holiday, and thought no more (4) the dog, which had meanwhile quietly disappeared (5) the village. "We didn't realize there was (6) wrong with it," says Nigel. "It was such a small, (7) dog that rabies didn't (8) my mind". But, six weeks later,23-year-old Andrea was dead. The dog had been rabid. No one had thought it necessary to (9) her anti-rabies treatment. When, back home in England, she began to show the classic (10) --unable to drink, catching her breath--her own doctor put it (11) to hysteria. Even when she was (12) into an ambulance, hallucinating, recoiling in (13) at the sight of water, she was directed (14) the nearest mental hospital. But if her symptoms (15) little attention in life, in death (16) achieved a publicity close to hysteria. Cases like Andrea are (17) , but rabies is still one of the most feared diseases known to man. The disease is (18) by a bite of a lick from an (19) animal. It can, in very exceptional circumstances, be inhaled--two scientists died of it after (20) bat dung in a cave in Texas.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Concrete is probably used more widely than any other substance except water, yet it remains largely unappreciated. “Some people view the 20th century as the atomic age, the space age, the computer age — but an argument can be made that it was the concrete age,” says cement specialist Hendrik Van Oss. “It’s a miracle material.” Indeed, more than a ton of concrete is produced each year for every man, woman and child on Earth. Yet concrete is generally ignored outside the engineering world, a victim of its own ubiquity and the industry’s conservative pace of development. Now, thanks to environmental pressures and entrepreneurial innovation, a new generation of concretes is emerging. This high-tech assortment of concrete confections promises to be stronger, lighter, and more environmentally friendly than ever before. Concrete is also a climate-change villain. It is made by mixing water with an aggregate, such as sand or gravel, and cement. Cement is usually made by heating limestone and clay to over 2,500 degrees F. The resulting chemical reaction, along with fuel burned to heat the kiln, produces between 7% and 10% of global carbon-dioxide emissions. “When we have to repeatedly regenerate these materials because they’re not durable, we release more emissions,” says Victor Li who has created a concrete suffused by synthetic fibers that make it stronger, more durable, and able to bend like a metal. Li’s creation does not require reinforcement, a property shared by other concretes that use chemical additives. Using less water makes concrete stronger, but until the development of plasticizers, it also made concrete sticky, dry, and hard to handle, says Christian Meyer, a civil engineering professor at Columbia University. Making stronger concretes, says Li, allows less to be used, reducing waste and giving architects more freedom. “You can have such futuristic designs if you don’t have to put rebar in there, or structural beams,” says Van Oss. A more directly “green” c6nerete has been developed by the Australian company TecEeo. They add magnesium to their cement, forming a porous concrete that actually scrubs carbon dioxide from the air. While experts agree that these new concrete will someday be widely used, the timetable is uncertain. Concrete companies are responsive to environmental concerns and are always looking to stretch the utility of their product, but the construction industry is slow to change. “When you start monkeying around with materials, the governing bodies, the building departments, are very cautious before they let you use an unproven material,” Meyer says. In the next few decades, says Van Oss, building codes will change, opening the way for innovative materials. But while new concretes may be stronger and more durable, they are also more expensive — and whether the tendency of developers and the public to focus on short-term rather than long-term costs will also change is another matter.

单选题Many countries have a tradition of inviting foreigners to rule them. The English called in William of Orange in 1688, and, depending on your interpretation of history, William of Normandy in 1066. Both did rather a good job. Returning the compliment, Albania asked a well-bred Englishman called Aubgrey Herbert to be their king in the 1920s. He refused-and they ended up with several coves called Zog. America, the country of immigrants, has no truck with imported foreign talent. Article two of the constitution says that "no person except a natural-born citizen.., shall be eligible to the office of the president". This is now being challenged by a particularly irresistible immigrant: Arnold Schwarzenegger. Barely a year has passed since the erstwhile cyborg swept to victory in California's recall election, yet there is already an Amend-for-Arnold campaign collecting signatures to let the Austrian-born governor have a go at the White House. George Bush senior has weighed in on his behalf. There are several "Arnold amendments" in Congress. one allows foreigners who have been naturalized citizens for 20 years to become president. (The Austrian became American in 1983.) It is easy to dismiss the hoopla as another regrettable example of loopy celebrity politics. Mr. Schwarzenegger has made a decent start as governor, but he has done little, as yet, to change the structure of his dysfunctional state. Indeed, even if the law were changed, he could well be elbowed aside by another incomer, this time from Canada. the Democratic governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm, who appears to have fewer skeletons in her closet than the hedonistic actor. Moreover, changing the American constitution is no doddle. It has happened only 17 times since 1791 (when the first ten amendments were codified as the bill of rights). To change the constitution, an amendment has to be approved by two-thirds of both houses of Congress, and then to be ratified by three-quarters of the 50 states. The Arnold amendment is hardly in the same category as abolishing slavery or giving women the vote. And, as some wags point out, Austrian imports have a pretty dodgy record of running military superpowers.

单选题What do you think ordinary citizens may do faster reading the different arguments?______.

单选题Which of the following may best describe the tone of the speech by the former U.S. President Carter?

单选题"It is an evil influence on the youth of our country. " A politician condemning video gaming? Actually, a clergyman denouncing rock and roll 50 years ago. But the sentiment could just as easily have been voiced by Hillary Clinton in the past few weeks, as she blamed video games for "a silent epidemic of media desensitisation" and "stealing the innocence of our children". The gaming furore centers on "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas", a popular and notoriously violent cops and robbers game that turned out to contain hidden sex scenes that could be unlocked using a patch downloaded from the internet. The resulting outcry (mostly from Democratic politicians playing to the centre) caused the game's rating in America to be changed from "mature", which means you have to be 17 to buy it, to "adults only", which means you have to be 18, but also means that big retailers such as Wal-Mart will not stock it. As a result the game has been banned in Australia; and, this autumn, America's Federal Trade Commission will investigate the complaints. That will give gaming's opponents an opportunity to vent their wrath on the industry. Skepticism of new media is a tradition with deep roots, going back at least as far as Socrates' objections to written texts, outlined in Plato's Phaedrus. Socrates worried that relying on written texts, rather than the oral tradition, would "create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves." (He also objected that a written version of a speech was no substitute for the ability to interrogate the speaker, since, when questioned, the text "always gives one unvarying answer". His objection, in short, was that books were not interactive. Perhaps Socrates would have thought more highly of video games.) Novels were once considered too low-brow for university literature courses, but eventually the disapproving professors retired. Waltz music and dancing were condemned in the 19th century; all that twirling was thought to be "intoxicating" and "depraved", and the music was outlawed in some places. Today it is hard to imagine what the fuss was about. And rock and roll was thought to encourage violence, promiscuity and Satanism; but today even grannies buy Coldplay albums.

单选题Which of the following is NOT the reason that breakfast is essential?

单选题Whoever said that victory has many fathers and defeat is an orphan, surely had never heard of the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the case of the hapless multilateral trade body and its long suffering representatives, the total failure of the opening meeting of the so called Millennium trade round has lots of people boasting of their roles in the violent physical struggle. Well. That's just brilliant. They are proud of being part of a movement that wants to wreck the most important engine of economic growth, prosperity and overall global rising living standards we have--the freedom of trade and movement of people and goods between nations. The 135-member WTO is composed of sovereign governments wishing to further this goal and ease the settlement of international trade disputes. From the sounds emanating from Seattle, though, it would now seem the WTO has now replaced the Trilateral Commission and the Freemasons as candidate No. 1 to take over the World. Everybody has his favorite Seattle story. The city's police chief will have plenty of time to think about his, having now resigned in disgrace over the loss of control of downtown Seattle. The Seattle business community may be more inclined to brood over theirs--the poor fools invested $ 9 million to attract the meeting to their fine city. What stands out more? I would nominate the union of steel workers who were marching in protest. It's an image that will boggle the mind for years to come. The debate now is over just how effective this anti-globalist coalition will turn out to be. In the heat of the moment, it always looks as though the world as we know it is coming to an end. But the overwhelming likelihood is that we have not actually seen a replay of the anti Vietnam War movement, which had much clearer focus, obviously, though its consequences were far-reaching. How long, after all, can you protest against cheap imports when those same imports are all over your house? No, the real reason for the disaster in Seattle is political, and reports coming out of the meeting point to President Clinton as a major culprit. Which may be both good and bad. Taking the long view, other trade rounds have had difficult beginnings, too. It took years to get the Uruguay Round under way, which finally happened in 1986. Thankfully, we will soon be electing another president, and it should be someone whose actions match his rhetoric. Still, it is a disgrace that the world's greatest trading nation, i.e. the United States, is currently led by a man whose motivations are so narrowly political and egocentric that he has now wrecked any chance of entering the history books as a champion of free trade.

单选题Current gym dogma holds that to build muscle size you need to lift heavy weights. (1) , a new study (2) at McMaster University has shown that a similar degree of muscle building can be achieved by using lighter weights. The secret is to pump air (3) you reach muscle fatigue. The (4) are published in PLoS ONE. " (5) grunting and straining to lift heavy weights, you can (6) something much lighter but you have to lift it until you can't lift it (7) ," says Stuart Phillips, associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster University. "We're convinced that (8) muscle means (9) your muscle to make new muscle proteins, a process in the body that over time (10) into bigger muscles. " Phillips praised lead author and senior Ph.D. student Nicholas Burd for masterminding the project that showed it's really not the weight that you lift but the fact that you get muscular fatigue that's the (11) point in building muscle. The study used light weights that (12) a percentage of what the (13) could lift. The heavier weights were set (14) 90% of a person's best lift and the light weights at a mere 30%o of what people could lift. "It's a very light weight," says Phillips noting that the 80% 90% (15) is usually something people can lift from 5～10 times before fatigue sets in. At 30%, Burd reported that subjects could lift that weight at least 24 times (16) they felt fatigue. "We're (17) to see where this new paradigm will lead," says Phillips, adding that these new data have (18) significance for gym enthusiasts but more importantly for people with compromised skeletal muscle mass, (19) the elderly, patients with cancer, or those who are (20) from trauma, surgery or even stroke.

单选题The Japanese government wants women like Taeko Mizuguchi to get married and start doing something about the nation's plunging birthrate. But she's not interested. At least, not if her prospective husband is Japanese. A growing number of Japanese women are giving up on their male counterparts, and taking a gamble that looking abroad for love will bring them the qualities in a partner that seem rare at home. "They treat you like equals, and they don't hesitate to express mutual feelings of respect -- I think Western men are more adept at such things than Japanese men," says the 36-year-old Ms. Miznguchi, who works at a top trading firm. "They don't act like women are maids -- I think they view women as individuals." Underscoring that Japanese women are losing hope with the local boys, dating agencies to help snag a Western husband have sprung up in Tokyo, some with branches in the US and Europe. Such companies rigorously vet their clients, screening for education, family background, occupation, and life goals. The kind of women who sign up for such services include doctors, lawyers, and other professionals -- women who have delayed marriage to concentrate on careers and who aren't keen to give up hard won gains to become a housewife, as many Japanese men expect. A generation of women who are now entering their 30s don't want to give up single life unless prospective partners are willing to break from traditional gender roles. Government polls conducted to find out why women have put off marriage until well after 25 years of age -- known as a woman's "'best before' date" -- show that economic independence is key to the change. As most Japanese women have their own income, marriage is no longer a financial necessity and women want to find companionship in a husband. Having ruled out an old-fashioned Japanese husband, many women here think the solution is a Western man. Indeed, some seem so enthralled with the idea that they are willing to spend thousands of dollars to inspect the wares personally. To be fair, not all the blame for female angst here can be laid on Japanese men. The government has been slow to enforce equal opportunity laws, and both pay and the glass ceiling in most Japanese corporations remain low for women. Recession has hampered longer maternity leave and other family-friendly policies. As Japan's fertility rate drops to new lows, the government is anxiously drawing up plans to make it easier for young couples to raise children, through such measures as the provision of cheap public housing.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} If you leave a loaded weapon lying around, it is bound to go off sooner or later. Snow- covered northern Europe heard the gunshot loud and clear when Russia cut supplies to Ukraine this week as part of a row about money and power, the two eternal battlegrounds of global energy. From central Europe right across to France on the Atlantic seaboard, gas supplies fell by more than one-third. For years Europeans had been telling themselves that a cold-war enemy which had supplied them without fail could still be depended on now it was an ally (of sorts). Suddenly, nobody was quite so sure. Fearing the threat to its reputation as a supplier, Russia rapidly restored the gas and settled its differences with Ukraine. But it was an uncomfortable glimpse of the dangers for a continent that imports roughly half its gas and that Gerard Mestrallet, boss of Suez, a French water and power company, expects to be importing 80% of its gas by 2030 much of it from Russia. It was scarcely more welcome for America, which condemned Russia's tactics. And no wonder: it consumes one-quarter of the world's oil, but produces only 3% of the stuff. Over the coming years, the world's dependence on oil looks likely to concentrate on the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia. Russian oil had seemed a useful alternative. Fear of the energy weapon has a long history. When producers had the upper hand in the oil embargo of 1973-74, Arab members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cut supply, sowing turmoil and a global recession. When consumers had the upper hand in the early 1990s, the embargo cut the other way. After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the world shut in 5m barrels a day (b/d) of production from the two countries in an attempt to force him out. With oil costing ＄60 a barrel, five times more than the nominal price in 1999, and spot prices for natural gas in some European and American markets at or near record levels, power has swung back to the producers for the first time since the early 1980s. Nobody knows how long today's tight markets will last. "It took us a long time to get there and it will take us a long time to get back," says Robin West, chairman of PFC Energy in Washington. A clutch of alarmist books with titles such as "The Death of Oil" predict that so little oil is left in the ground that producers will always have pricing power. The question is how worried consumers should be. What are the threats to energy security and what should the world do about them? The answers suggest a need for planning and a certain amount of grim realism, but not for outright panic.

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. To- day, 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 tar- gels 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 central 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 some- how 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Scores of workers from MTV Networks walked off the job yesterday afternoon, filling the sidewalk outside the headquarters of its corporate parent, Viacom, to protest recent changes in benefits. The walkout highlighted the concerns of a category of workers who are sometimes called permalancers: permanent freelancers who work like full-time employees but do not receive the same benefits. Waving signs that read "Shame on Viacom," the workers, most of them in their 20s, demanded that MTV Networks reverse a plan to reduce health and dental benefits for freelancers beginning On Jan. 1st. In a statement, MTV Networks noted that its benefits program for full-time employees had also undergone changes, and it emphasized that the plan for freelancers was still highly competitive within the industry. Many freelancers receive no corporate benefits. But some of the protesters asserted that corporations were competing to see which could provide the most mediocre health care coverage. Matthew Yonda, who works at Nickelodeon, held a sign that labeled the network "Sick-elodeon. " "I've worked here every day for three years-I'm not a freelancer," Mr. Yonda said. "They just call us freelancers in order to bar us from getting the same benefits as employees. " The changes to the benefits package were announced last Tuesday. Freelancers were told that they would become eligible for benefits after 160 days of work, beginning in January. While that eased previous eligibility rules, which required freelancers to work for 52 weeks before becoming eligible, it would have required all freelancers not yet eligible for benefits to start the waiting period over again on Jan. 1st. The 401 (k) plan was also removed. On Thursday, acknowledging the complaints, MTV Networks reinstated the 401 (k) plan and said freelancers who had worked consistently since March would be eligible. Fueled by a series of blog posts on the media Web site Gawker-the first post was headlined "The Viacom Permalance Slave System"-a loose cohort of freelancers created protest stickers and distributed walkout fliers last week. Caroline O'Hare, a unit manager who has worked for MTV for more than two years, said the new health care plan-with higher deductibles and a $ 2,000 cap on hospital expenses each year-had provoked outrage. "They think they can treat us like children that don't have families, mortgages or dreams of retirement," she said. Outside Viacom's headquarters, several workers held posters with the words, "There's too many of us to ignore. " It was unclear how many freelancers are on the company's payroll; an MTV Networks' spokeswoman said the figure was not known because it rises and falls throughout the year. The company has 5,500 full-time employees, excluding freelancers, around the world. Two freelancers and one full-time employee, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, estimated that the percentage of freelancers in some departments exceeded 75 percent. Another labor action is expected to take place outside Viacom later this week. Members of the Writers Guild of America, who have been on strike for five weeks, are expected to picket there on Thursday.