单选题The underlined word "breached" in the last sentence of the text could best be replaced by

单选题"escape from"(Line 6, Para. 1) can be substituted for

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Feeling anxious? Your mood may actually change how your dinner tastes, making the bitter and salty flavors recede, according to new research. This link between the chemical balance in your brain and your sense of taste could one day help doctors to treat depression. There are currently no on-the-spot tests for deciding which medication will work best in individual patients with this condition. Researchers hope that a test based on flavor detection could help doctors to get more prescriptions right first time. It has long been known that people who are depressed have lower-than-usual levels of the brain chemicals serotonin or noradrenaline, or in some cases both. Many also have a blunted sense of taste, which is presumably caused by changes in brain chemistry. To unpick the relationship between the two, Lucy Donaldson and her colleagues at the University of Bristol, UK, gave 20 healthy volunteers two antidepressant drugs, and checked their sensitivity to different tastes. The drug that raised serotonin levels made people more sensitive to sweet and bitter tastes, the team reports in the Journal of Neuroscience. The other, which increased noradrenaline, enhanced recognition of bitter and sour tastes. In healthy people, volunteers whose anxiety levels were naturally higher were less sensitive to bitter and salty tastes. "What hasn't been done be{ore is to look precisely at which tastes are affected in depression," says Donaldson. Now the results are in, "we can discriminate between the chemicals and the tastes that seem to be altered," she says. Testing sensitivity to sweet and sour tastes could potentially help doctors to pick up on which chemicals are dipping, guiding them when choosing which drug to rectify the problem. Currently, doctors rely on physical and emotional symptoms to make a best guess at an individual's imbalance, prescribe a drug and wait about a month to check on any improvement. Good doctors have about a 60-80% success rate in selecting the right drug the first time, says psychiatrist Jan Melichar, a co-author on the paper. Are there any decent tests for prescribing drugs for depression? "No. We do a best guesstimate," says Melichar. "I'm excited by this finding because in 3, 5 or 7 years we could have a simple taste test. " Next, the team plans to perform similar tests in depressed people, and in healthy volunteers given another brain chemical called tryptophan. This chemical would lower the healthy subjects' levels of serotonin, as actually happens in depressed patients. The work has also generated interest from flavor houses--companies that develop chemicals for the food and drink industry--who are interested in making foods taste just as sweet with half the amount of sugar. "Theoretically there would be the possibility of enhancing your meal with drugs that affect brain chemicals so that things would taste better--you couid have a 'designer taste tablet'," Donaldson says.

单选题Over the last decade, demand for the most common cosmetic surgery procedures, like greatest enlargements and most jobs, has increased by more than 400 percent. According to Dr. Dai Davies, of the Plastic Surgery Partnership in Hammersmith, the majority of cosmetic surgery patients are not chasing physical perfection. Rather, they are driven to fantastic lengths to improve their appearance by a desire to look normal. "What we all crave is to look normal, and normal is what is prescribed by the advertising media and other external pressures. They give us a perception of what is physically acceptable and we feel we must look like that. " In America, the debate is no longer about whether surgery is normal; rather, it centers on what age people should be before going under the knife. New York surgeon Dr. Gerard Amber recommends "maintenance" work for people in their thirties. "The idea of waiting until one needs heroic transformation is silly, " he says, "By then, you"ve wasted 20 great years of your life and allowed things to get out of hand. " Dr. Imber draws the line at operation on people who are under 18, however. "It seems that someone we don"t consider old enough to order a drink shouldn"t be considering plastic surgery. " In the UK cosmetic surgery has long been seen as the exclusive domain of the very rich and famous. But the proportionate cost of treatment has fallen substantially, bringing all but the most advanced laser technology within the reach of most people. Dr. Davies, who claims to "eater for the average person", agrees. He says, "I treat a few of the rich and famous and an awful lot of secretaries. Of course, ￡ 3,000 for an operation is a lot of money. But it is also an investment for life which costs about half the price of a good family holiday. " Dr. Davies suspects that the increasing sophistication of the fat injecting and removal techniques that allow patients to be treated with a local anesthetic in an afternoon has also helped promote the popularity of cosmetic surgery. Yet, as one woman who, recently paid ￡ 2,500 for liposuction to remove fat from her thighs admitted, the slope to becoming a cosmetic surgery veteran is a deceptively gentle one. "I had my legs done because they"d been bugging me for years. But going into the clinic was so low key and effective it whetted my appetite. Now I don"t think there"s any operation that I would rule out having if I could afford it. "

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Women, according to Chairman Mao, hold up half the sky—but {{U}}in California some are better rewarded for this effort than others.{{/U}} According to a new study from the Public Policy Institute of California, Asian women born in the United States outstrip all their sisters in terms of earning power. The average hourly wage for American-born Asian ladies in 2001 (the latest year with reliable figures) was $19.30, with American-born whites coming next. On the bottom rungs of the ladder came Latinas: if born abroad, they earned a mere $10.40 an hour (though this was comfortably above California's then $6.25 minimum wage); if born in America, they managed $15.10 an hour. Education is the biggest reason for the ethnic disparities. Some 55% of California's American-born Asian women have at least a bachelor's degree, and an impressive 84% of them either have jobs or are looking for them. By contrast, only 14% of American-born Hispanic women have a bachelor's degree and only 74% of them are in the labour market. Meanwhile, Latinas born abroad are often condemned to low-paying jobs by an even inefficient education or a poor knowledge of English. Much the same can be said of Asian women born in South-East Asia, a category that includes refugees from Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. The institute calculates that they earned an average of $15.80, almost $1 less than other foreign-born Asians. But education is not the only factor in play for California's women. Larger families make it more difficult for Latinas to go out to work in the first place; blacks often live too far away to commute to well-paid jobs; and just as Asians may benefit from high expectations, so other groups may suffer from low ones. The institute makes an attempt, heroic or politically correct, to adjust for such factors, imagining, for example, that a foreign-born Latina has the same family structure, education and place of residence as the average Californian woman. That brings the average wage for foreign-born Latinas up to a more respectable $15.20; yet American-born Asians still {{U}}rule the roost{{/U}}. But before the golden girls get too happy, the institute reckons that Californian women of all sorts tend to earn roughly 20% less than their menfolk do.

单选题Millions of dollars often depend on the choice of which commercial to use in launching a new product. So you show the commercials to a 1 of typical consumers and ask their opinion. The answers you get can sometimes lead you into a big 2 . Respondents may lie just to be polite. Now some companies and major advertising 3 have been hiring voice detectives who test your normal voice and then record you on tape 4 commenting on a product. A computer analyzes the degree and direction of change 5 normal. One kind of divergence of pitch means the subject 6 . Another kind means he was really enthusiastic. In a testing of two commercials 7 children, they were, vocally, about equally 8 of both, but the computer reported their emotional 9 in the two was totally different. Most major commercials are sent for testing to theaters 10 with various electronic measuring devices. People regarded as 11 are brought in off the street. Viewers can push buttons to 12 whether they are interested or bored. Newspaper and magazine groups became intensely interested in testing their ads for a product 13 TV ads for the same product. They were interested because the main 14 of evidence shows that people 15 a lot more mental activity when they read 16 when they sit in front of the TV set. TV began to be 17 "a low-involvement" 18 . It is contended that low involvement means that there is less 19 that the ad message will be 20 .

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Yasuhisa Shizoki, a 51-year-old MP from Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), starts tapping his finger on the dismal economic chart on his coffee table. "Unless we change the decision-making process," he says bluntly, "we are not going to be able to solve this kind of problem." With the economy in such a mess, it may seem a bit of a diversion to be trying to sort out Japan's political structures as well as its economic problems. But Mr Shiozaki can hardly be accused of time-wasting. He has consistently prodded the government to take a firm hand to ailing banks, and has given warning against complacency after a recent rise in share prices. Far from being a distraction, his latest cause highlights how far Japan is from genuine economic reform. Since cowriting a report on political reform, which was released by an LDP panel last week, Mr Shiozaki has further upset the party's old guard. Its legionaries, flanked by columns of the bureaucracy, continue to hamper most attempts to overhaul the economy. Junichiro Koizumi was supposed to change all that, by going over their heads and appealing directly to the public. Yet nearly a year after becoming prime minister, Mr Koizumi has precious little to show for his efforts. His popularity is now flagging and his determination is increasingly in doubt. As hopes of immediate economic reform fade, optimists are focusing on another potential benefit of Mr Koizumi's tenure. They hope that his highly personalized style of leadership will pave the way for a permanent change in Japanese politics, towards more united and authoritative cabinets that are held directly accountable for their policies. As that happens, the thinking goes, real economic reforms will be able to follow. A leading candidate for change is the 40-year-old system--informal but religiously followed--through which the LDP machinery vets every bill before it ever gets to parliament. Most legislation starts in the LDP's party committees, which mirror the parliamentary committee structure. Proposals then go through two higher LDP bodies, which hammer out political deals to smooth their passage. Only then does the prime minister's cabinet get fully involved in approving the policy. Most issues have been decided by the LDP mandarins long before they reach this point, let alone the floor of parliament, leaving even the prime minister limited influence, and allowing precious little room for public debate and even less for accountability. As a result, progress will probably remain slow. Since they know that political reform leads to economic reform, and hence poses a threat to their interests, most of the LDP will resist any real changes. But at least a handful of insiders have now bought into one of Mr Koizumi's best slogans. "Change the LDP, change Japan."

单选题The main point of the text is that______.

单选题Google already has a window into our souls through our Internet searches and it now has insight into our ailing bodies too. The Internet giant is using its vast database of individual search terms to (1) the emergence of flu up to two weeks (2) government epidemiologists. Google Flu Trends uses the (3) of people to seek online help for their health problems. By tracking (4) for terms such as "cough", "fever" and "aches and pains", it claims to be able to (5) estimate where flu is (6) . Google tested the idea in nine regions of the US and found it could accurately predict flu (7) between 7 and 14 days earlier than the federal centres for disease control and prevention. Google hopes the idea could also be used to help (8) other diseases. Flu Trends is limited (9) the US. Jeremy Ginsberg and Matt Mohebb. Two software engineers (10) in the project, said that (11) in Google search queries can be very (12) . In a blog post on the project they wrote: "It turns (13) that traditional flu surveillance systems take 1 to 2 weeks to collect and (14) surveillance data but Google search queries can be (15) counted very quickly. By making our estimates (16) each day, Flu Trends may provide an early-warning system for outbreaks of influenza." They explained that (17) information health would be kept (18) . "Flu Trends can never be used to identify individual users (19) we rely on anonymised, aggregated counts of how of ten certain search queries (20) each week./

单选题The videos created by Dough Aitken is used to show a combination of

单选题Compared with those in small.towns, people in large cities have______

单选题Employees like on-line conversation during the business because

单选题Concerning literary realism as mentioned in the passage, which of the following would the author be most likely to agree with?

单选题On a weekday night this January, thousands of flag-waving youths packed Olaya Street, Riyadh's main shopping strip, to cheer a memorable Saudi victory in the GCC Cup football final. One car, rock music blaring from its stereo, squealed to a stop, blocking an intersection. The passengers leapt out, clambered on to the roof and danced wildly in front of the honking crowd. Having paralyzed the traffic across half the city, they sped off before the police could catch them. Such public occasion was once unthinkable in the rigid conformist kingdom, but now young people there and in other Gulf states are increasingly willing to challenge authority. That does not make them rebels: respect for elders, for religious duty and for maintaining family bonds remain pre-eminent values, and premarital sex is generally out of the question. Yet demography is beginning to put pressure on ultra-conservative norms. After all, 60% of the Gulf's native population is under the age of 25. With many more of its citizens in school than in the workforce, the region faces at least a generation of rocketing demand for employment. In every single GCC country the native workforce will double by 2020. In Saudi Arabia it will grow from 3.3m now to over 8m. The task of managing this surge would be daunting enough for any society, but is particularly forbidding in this region, for several reasons. The first is that the Gulf suffers from a lopsided labor structure. This goes back to the 1970s, when ballooning oil incomes allowed governments to import millions of foreign workers and to dispense cozy jobs to the locals. The result is a two-tier workforce, with outsiders working mostly in the private sector and natives monopolizing the state bureaucracy. Private firms are as productive as any. But within the government, claims one study, workers are worth only a quarter of what they get paid. Similarly, in the education sector, 30 years spent keeping pace with soaring student numbers has taken a heavy toll on standards. The Saudi school system, for instance, today has to cope with 5m students, eight times more than in 1970. And many Gulf countries adapted their curricula from Egyptian models that are now thoroughly discredited. They continue to favor rote learning of "facts" intended to instill patriotism or religious values. Even worse, the system as a whole discourages intellectual curiosity. It channels students into acquiring prestige degrees rather than gaining marketable skills. Of the 120, 000 graduates that Saudi universities produced between 1995 and 1999, only 10,000 had studied technical subjects such as architecture or engineering. They accounted for only 2% of the total number of Saudis entering the job market.

单选题Up until a few decades ago, our visions of the future were largely—though by no means uniformly—glowingly positive. Science and technology would cure all the ills of humanity, leading to lives of fulfillment and opportunity for all. Now utopia has grown unfashionable, as we have gained a deeper appreciation of the range of threats facing us, from asteroid strike to epidemic flu to climate change. You might even be tempted to assume that humanity has little future to look forward to. But such gloominess is misplaced. The fossil record shows that many species have endured for millions of years—so why shouldn"t we? Take a broader look at our species" place in the universe, and it becomes clear that we have an excellent chance of surviving for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years. Look up Homo sapiens in the "Red List" of threatened species of the International Union for the Conversation of Nature (IUCN) and you will read: "Listed as Least Concern as the species is very widely distributed, adaptable, currently increasing, and there are no major threats resulting in an overall population decline." So what does our deep future hold? A growing number of researchers and organizations are now thinking seriously about that question. For example, the Long Now Foundation has its flagship project a mechanical clock that is designed to still be marking time thousands of years hence. Perhaps willfully, it may be easier to think about such lengthy timescales than about the more immediate future. The potential evolution of today"s technology, and its social consequences, is dazzlingly complicated, and it"s perhaps best left to science fiction writers and futurologists to explore the many possibilities we can envisage. That"s one reason why we have launched Arc, a new publication dedicated to the near future. But take a longer view and there is a surprising amount that we can say with considerable assurance. As so often, the past holds the key to the future: we have now identified enough of the long-term patterns shaping the history of the planet, and our species, to make evidence-based forecasts about the situations in which our descendants will find themselves. This long perspective makes the pessimistic view of our prospects seem more likely to be a passing fad. To be sure, the future is not all rosy. But we are now knowledgeable enough to reduce many of the risks that threatened the existence of earlier humans, and to improve the lot of those to come.

单选题What does the word "think-tanks" (Line 5, Paragraph 2) mean?