单选题If good intentions and good ideas were all it took to save the deteriorating atmosphere, the planet's fragile layer of air would be as good as fixed. The two great dangers threatening the blanket of gases that nurtures and protects life on earth--global warming and the thinning ozone layer--have been identified. Better yet, scientists and policymakers have come up with effective though expensive countermeasures. But that doesn't mean these problems are anywhere close to being solved. The stratospheric ozone layer, for example, is still getting thinner, despite the 1987 international agreement known as the Montreal Protocol, which calls for a phaseout of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-depleting chemicals by the year 2006. CFCs--first fingered as dangerous in the 1970s by Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina, two of this year's Nobel--prizewinning chemists—have been widely used for refrigeration and other purposes. If uncontrolled, the CFC assault on the ozone layer could increase the amount of hazardous solar ultraviolet light that reaches the earth's surface, which would, among other things, damage crops and cause cancer in humans. Thanks to a sense of urgency triggered by the 1985 detection of what has turned out to be an annual "hole" in the especially vulnerable ozone over Antarctica, the Montreal accords have spurred industry to replace CFCs with safer substances. Yet the CFCs already in the air are still doing their dirty work. The Antarctic ozone hole is more severe this year than ever before, and ozone levels over temperate regions are dipping as well. If the CFC phaseout proceeds on schedule, the atmosphere should start repairing itself by the year 2000, say scientists. Nonetheless, observes British Antarctic Survey meteorologist Jonathan Shanklin: "It will be the middle of the next century before things are back to where they were in the 1970s." Developing countries were given more time to comply with the Montreal Protocol and were promised that they would receive ＄ 250 million from richer nations to pay for the CFC phaseout. At the moment, though, only 60% of those funds has been forthcoming. Says Nelson Sabogal of the U. N. Environment Program: "If developed countries don't come up with the money, the ozone layer will not recuperate. This is a crucial time." It is also a critical time for warding off potentially catastrophic climate change. Waste gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and the same CFCs that wreck the ozone layer all tend to trap sunlight and warm the earth. The predicted results: an eventual melting of polar ice caps, rises in sea levels and shifts in climate patterns.

单选题The long year of food shortage in this country have suddenly given way to apparent abundance. Stores and shops are choked with food. Rationing (定量供应 ) is virtually suspended, and overseas suppliers have been asked to hold back deliveries. Yet, instead of joy, there is widespread uneasiness arid confusion. Why do food prices keep on rising, when there seems to be so much more food about? Is the abundance only temporary, or has it come to stay？Does it mean that we need to think less now about producing more food at home? No one knows what to expect. The recent growth of export-surpluses on the world food market has certainly been unexpectedly great, partly because a strange sequence of two successful grain harvests in North America is now being followed by a third. Most of Britain's overseas suppliers of meat, too, are offering more this and home production has also risen. But the effect of all this on the food situation in this country has been made worse by a simultaneous rise in food prices, due chiefly to the gradual cutting down of government support for food. The shops are overstocked with food not only because there is more food available, but also because people, frightened by high prices, are buying less of it. Moreover, the rise in domestic prices has come at a time when world prices have begun to fall, with the result that imported food, with the exception of grain, is often cheaper than the home -produced variety. And now grain prices, too are falling. Consumers are beginning to ask why they should not be enabled to benefit from this trend. The significance of these developments is not lost on farmers. The older generation have seen it all happen before. Despite the present price and market guarantees, farmers fear they are about to be squeezed between cheap food imports and a shrinking home market. Present production is running at 51 per cent above pre-war levels, and the government has called for an expansion to 60 per cent by 1956; but repeated ministerial advice is carrying little weight and the expansion program is not working very well.

单选题Large, multinational corporations may be the companies whose ups and downs seize headlines. But to a far greater extent than most Americans realize, the economy' s vitality depends on the fortunes of tiny shops and restaurants, neighborhood services and factories. Small businesses, defined as those with fewer than 100 workers, now employ nearly 60 percent of the work force and are expected to generate half of ail new jobs between now and the year 2000. Some 1.2 million small firms have opened their doors over the past six years of economic growth, and 1989 will see an additional 200,000 entrepreneurs striking off on their own. Too many of these pioneers, however, will blaze ahead unprepared. Idealists will overestimate the clamor for their products or fail to factor in the competition. Nearly everyone will underestimate, often fatally, the capital that success requires. Midcareer executives, forced by a takeover or a restructuring to quit the corporation and find another way to support themselves, may savor the idea of being their own boss but may forget that entrepreneurs must also, at least for a while, be bookkeeper and receptionist, too. According to Small Business Administration data,24 of every 100 businesses starting out today are likely to have disappeared in two years, and 27 more will have shut their doors four years from now. By 1995, more than 60 of those 100 start-ups will have folded. A new study of 3,000 small businesses, sponsored by American Express and the National Federation of Independent Business, suggests slightly better odds: Three years after start-up ,77 percent of the companies surveyed were still alive. Most credited their success in large part to having picked a business they already were comfortable in. Eighty percent had worked with the same product or service in their last jobs. Thinking through an enterprise before the launch is obviously critical. But many entrepreneurs forget that a firm' s health in its infancy may be little indication of how well it will age. You mast tenderly monitor its pulse. In their zeal to expand, small-business owners often ignore early warning signs of a stagnant market or of decaying profitability. They hopefully pour more and more money into the enterprise, preferring not to acknowledge eroding profit margins that mean the market for their ingenious service or product has evaporated, or that they must cut the payroll or vacate their lavish offices. Only when the financial well runs dry do they see the seriousness of the illness, and by then the patient is usually too far gone to save. Frequent checks of your firm's vital signs will also guide you to a sensible rate of growth. To snatch opportunity, you must spot the signals that it is time to conquer new markets, add products or perhaps franchise your hot idea.

单选题What would happen to the U. S. economy if all its commercial banks suddenly closed their doors? Throughout most of American history, the answer would have been a disaster of epic proportions, akin to the Depression wrought by the chain-reaction bank failures in the early 1930s. But in 1993 the startling answer is that a shutdown by banks might be far from cataclysmic. Consider this: though the economic recovery is now 27 months old, not a single net new dollar has been lent to business by banks in all that time. Last week the Federal Reserve reported that the amount of loans the nation's largest banks have made to businesses fell an additional $ 2. 4 billion in the week ending June 9, to $ 274. 8 billion. Fearful that the scarcity of bank credit might sabotage the fragile economy, the White House and federal agencies are working feverishly to encourage banks to open their lending windows. In the past two weeks, government regulators have introduced steps to make it easier for banks to lend. Is the government's concern fully justified? Who really needs banks these days? Hardly anyone, it turns out. While banks once dominated business lending, today nearly 80% of all such loans come from nonbank lenders like life insurers, brokerage firms and finance companies. Banks used to be the only source of money in town. Now businesses and individuals can write checks on their insurance companies, get a loan from a pension fund, and deposit paychecks in a money-market account with a brokerage firm. "It is possible for banks to die and still have a vibrant economy," says Edward Furash, a Washington bank consultant. The irony is that the accelerating slide into irrelevance comes just as the banks racked up record profits of $ 43 billion over the past 15 months, creating the illusion that the industry is staging a comeback. But that income was not the result of smart lending decisions. Instead of earning money by financing America's recovery, the banks mainly invested their funds--on which they were paying a bargain-basement 2% or so--in risk-free Treasury bonds that yielded 7%. That left bank officers with little to do except put their feet on their desks and watch the interest roll in. Those profits may have come at a price. Not only did bankers lose many loyal customers by withholding credit, they also inadvertently opened the door to a herd of nonbank competitors, who stampeded into the lending market. "The banking industry didn't see this threat," says Furash. "They are being fat, dumb and happy. They didn't realize that banking is essential to a modern economy, but banks are not./

单选题According to those who support the liberalization of Europe's energy markets, energy supply monopoly is unlikely on the grounds that

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Teach for America (TFA) was founded by Wendy Kopp in 1990. It is a non-profit organisation that recruits top-notch graduates from elite institutions and gets them to teach for two years in struggling state schools in poor areas. I had thought the programme was about getting more high-quality teachers — but that, it appears, is a secondary benefit. “This is about enlisting the energy of our country’s future leaders in its long-term educational needs, and eliminating inequity,” Wendy explains. It’s great if “corps members”, as TFA calls its active teachers, stay in the classroom — and many do, and rise quickly through the ranks. But the “alums”, as she calls those who have finished their two-year teaching, who don’t stay in schools often go on to lead in other fields, meaning that increasing numbers of influential people in all walks of life learn that it is possible to teach successfully in low-income communities, and just what it takes. “It means you realise that we can solve this problem.” As she continues to talk I realise that TFA is — in the best possible sense — a cult. It has its own language (“corps members”, “alums”), recruits are instilled (“We tell them that it can be done, that we know of hundreds, thousands, of teachers attaining tremendous success”), go through an ordeal (“Everyone hits the wall in week three in the classroom”), emerge transformed by privileged knowledge (“Once you know what we know — that kids in poor urban areas can excel — you can accomplish different things”) and can never leave (alumni form a growing, and influential, network). I have not seen the same zeal when talking to those on the equivalent programme in England, Teach First., in which the missionary-style language imported from America had to be toned down, because it just didn’t suit the restrained English style. But could that favour be necessary for its success? Chester, an alum, takes me to visit three TFA corps members at a middle school in the Bronx. They are impressive young people, and their zeal is evident. Two intend to stay in teaching; both want to open charter schools. One, a Hispanic woman, is working out with a friend how to educate migrant Hispanic labourers in Texas; the other would like to open a “green” charter, but in the meantime he has accepted a job with the KIPP charter group in Newark, New Jersey. All three are tired. Their classrooms are not much like the rest of the school where they work, and their heroic efforts are only supported by Chester and each other, not by their co-workers. “The first year was unbelievably bad,” one tells me. “So many years with low expectations meant a lot of resistance from the kids. Eventually they saw the power and the growth they were capable of.”

单选题The growth of cell-phone users declines because

单选题The basic function of money is the enable buying to be separated from selling, thus permitting trade to take place without the so-called double coincidence of barter. If a person has something to sell and wants something else (1) return, it is not necessary to search for someone able and (2) to make the desired exchange of items. The person can sell the (3) item for general purchasing power-that is, "money"-to anyone who wants to buy it and then use the proceeds to buy the desired item from anyone who wants to sell it. The importance of this function of money is (4) illustrated by the experience of Germany just after World War II, (5) paper money was (6) largely useless because, despite inflationary conditions, price controls were effectively (7) by the American, French, and British armies of occupation. People had to (8) to barter or to inefficient money substitutes. The result was to cut total output of the economy in half. The German "economic miracle" just after 1948 reflected partly a currency reform by the occupation authorities, (9) some economists hold that it stemmed primarily from the German government's (10) of all price controls, (11) . permitting a money economy to (12) a barter economy. (13) of the act of sale from the act of purchase (14) the existence of something that will be generally accepted in payment-this is the " (15) of exchange" function of money. But there must also be something that can serve as a (16) abode of purchasing power, in which the seller holds the proceeds in the interim (17) the first sale and the (18) purchase, or from which the buyer can (19) the general purchasing power with which to pay (20) what is bought. This is the "asset" function of money.

单选题When a disease of epidemic proportions threatens the public, scientists immediately get to work, trying to locate the source of affliction and find ways to combat. Vaccination is one of the effective ways to protect the (1) population of a region or country which may be (2) grave risk. The process of vaccination allows the patient's body to (3) immunity to the virus or disease so that, if it is encountered, one can fight it (4) naturally. To accomplish this, a small weak or dead (5) of the disease is actually injected into the patient in a controlled environment, (6) his body's immune system can learn to fight the invader (7) . Information (8) how to penetrate the disease's defenses is (9) to all elements of the patient's immune system in a process that occurs naturally, in which genetic information is passed from cell to cell. This makes sure that (10) the patient later come into contact with the real problem, his body is well equipped and trained to (11) with it, having already done so before.There are, however, dangers (12) in the process. (13) , even the weakened version of the disease contained in the vaccine proves (14) much for the body to handle, resulting in the immune system (15) , and, therefore, the patient's death. Such is the case of the smallpox vaccine, (16) to eradicate the smallpox epidemic that nearly (17) the whole Native American population and killed massive numbers of settlers. (18) 1 in 10,000 people who receive the vaccine (19) the smallpox disease from the vaccine itself and dies from it. Consequently, the process, which is truly a (20) , may indeed hide some hidden curses. Notes: proportions(pl.)规模；程度；大小。affliction(疾病)痛苦。vaccination n.接种疫苗。eradicate v.根除，消灭。

单选题When you are small, all ambitions fall into one grand category: when I' m grown up. When I' m grown up, you say, I' ll go up in space. I' m going to be an author. I' ll kill them all and then they' ll be sorry. I' ll be married in a cathedral with sixteen bridesmaids in pink lace. I' ll have a puppy of my own and no one will be able to take him away. None of it ever happens, of course--or darn little, but the fantasies give you the idea that there is something to grow up for. Indeed one of the saddest things about gilded adolescence is the feeling that from eighteen on, it' s all downhill; I read with horror of an American hip pie wedding where someone said to the groom( aged twenty) "you seem so kind a grown up somehow", and the lad had to go round seeking assurance that he wasn' t. No, really he wasn't. A determination to be better adults than the present incumbents is fine, but to refuse to grow up at all is just plain unrealism. When my children are grown up, I' ll learn to fly an airplane. I will career round the sky, knowing that if I do "go pop", there will be no little ones to suffer shock and maladjustment; that even if the worst does come to the worst, I will at least dodge the geriatric ward and all that look for your glasses in order to see where you' ve left your teeth. When my children are grown up, I' ll have fragile lovely things on low tables; I' ll have a white carpet; I' ll go to the pictures in the afternoons. When the children are grown up, I' ll actually be able to do a day' s work in a flay, instead of spreading over three, and go away for a weekend without planning as if for a trip to the Moon. When I' m grown up--I mean when they' re grown up--I' ll be free. Of course, I know it' s got to get worse before it gets better. Twelve - year - old, I' m told, don' t go to bed at seven, so you don' t even get your evening. Once they' re past ten you have to start worrying about their friends instead of simply shooting the intruders off the doorstep, and to settle down to a steady ten years of criticism of everything you' ve ever thought or done or won. Boys, it seems, may be less of a trial than girls, since they can' t get pregnant and they don' t borrow your clothes--if they do borrow your clothes, of course, you' ye got even more to worry about. The young don' t respect their parents any more. Goodness, how sad. Still, like eating snails, it might be all right once you' ve got over the idea; it might let us off having to bother quite so much with them when the time comes. But one is simply not going to be able to drone away one' s days, toothless by the fire, brooding on the past.

单选题According to this passage, ______may result in the imbalance of bacteria in your intestines.

单选题In the man's opinion something happened to the flying saucer when______

单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} People have good reason to care about the welfare of animals. Ever since the Enlightenment, their treatment has been seen as a measure of mankind's humanity. It is no coincidence that William Wilberforce and Sir Thomas Foxwell Buxton, two leaders of the movement to abolish the slave trade, helped found the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in the 1820s. An increasing number of people go further: mankind has a duty not to cause pain to animals that have the capacity to suffer. Both views have led people gradually to extend treatment once reserved for mankind to other species. But when everyday lives are measured against such principles, they are fraught with contradictions. Those who would never dream of caging their cats and dogs guzzle bacon and eggs from ghastly factory farms. The abattoir and the cattle truck are secret places safely hidden from the meat-eater's gaze and the child's story book. Plenty of people who denounce the fur-trade (much of which is from farmed animals) quite happily wear leather (also from farmed animals). Perhaps the inconsistency is understandable. After hundreds of years of thinking about it, people cannot agree on a system of rights for each other, so the ground is bound to get shakier still when animals are included. The trouble is that confusion and contradiction open the way to the extremist. And because scientific research is remote from most people's lives, it is particularly vulnerable to their campaigns. In fact, science should be the last target, wherever you draw the boundaries of animal welfare. For one thing, there is rarely an alternative to using animals in research. If there were, scientists would grasp it, because animal research is expensive and encircled by regulations. Animal research is also for a higher purpose than a full belly or an elegant outfit. The world needs new medicines and surgical procedures just as it needs the unknowable fruits of pure research. And science is, by and large, kind to its animals. The couple of million (mainly rats and mice) that die in Britain's laboratories are far better looked-after and far more humanely killed than the billion or so (mainly chickens) on Britain's farms. Indeed, if Darley Oaks makes up its loss of guinea pigs with turkeys or dairy cows, you can be fairly sure animal welfare in Britain has just taken a step backwards.

单选题Earlier this summer Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's governor, said that the state's penal system was "failing apart in front of our very eyes". Indeed so. Some 172,000 inmates are crowded into institutions--from the state's 33 prisons to its 12 "community correctional facilities"--that are meant to house fewer than 90,000. Drug abuse is rampant; so too are diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C. Race-based gangs pose the constant threat of violence, riot and even murder. And with more than 16,000 prisoners sleeping in prison gymnasiums and classrooms, rehabilitation programs are virtually non-existent--which helps to explain why two-thirds of California's convicts, the highest rate in the country, are back in prison within three years of being released. Will the governor's summons of a special session of the state legislature, beginning this week, bring a remedy? The reason for the session is to discuss Mr Schwarzenegger's request for almost $ 5.8 billion of public money to be pumped into the prison system. Bonds for $ 2 billion would finance ten 500-bed "re-entry facilities" for prisoners nearing the end of their sentences; another $ 2 billion would expand existing prisons; $1.2 billion would be earmarked for two new prisons; and $ 500m would go for new prison hospitals. Money alone will provide neither an immediate solution nor a lasting one. The first problem is that California simply puts too many offenders in prison. The imprisonment rate, which has risen almost eight-fold since 1970 and is way ahead of any European country, has consistently meant overcrowding despite the construction of 22 new prisons in the past 20 years. The 1994 "three-strikes" law, approved by voters in a referendum, means handing out 25-years-to-life sentences for often trivial third offences--and results in the growing presence in prison of elderly inmates who cost the taxpayer far more than the average of $ 34,000 a prisoner. Meanwhile, the practice of returning parole violators to prison, even for relatively trivial missteps such as missing a drugs test, also strains the system; some 11% of inmates are parole violators. Added to all these are more than 5,000 illegal immigrants being held on behalf of the federal government. The second problem is that any attempt to reform California's penal policy becomes hostage to politics. Two years ago, the governor was expressing optimism. He added the word "rehabilitation" to California's department of corrections, appointed Rod Hickman, a reform-minded former prison guard, to oversee the system and promised to lessen the power of the 31,000-strong prison guards' union, not least by breaking the "code of silence" that protects corrupt or violent guards. But that was then. The reality now is that Mr Hickman resigned in March. Evidence indicates that the governor's office may have given the code of silence in California's prisons a new lease on life. Many experts say that with no moderation in sentencing policies on the horizon, the prison population is expected to grow by another 21,000 over the next five years--enough to outpace any prison-building program. Thus, the dream of prison reforms will never touch the ground.

单选题Which of the following statements is NOT true according to the first two paragraphs of the passage?