单选题When a customer claimed to have found a severed finger in a bowl of chili served at a Wendy's fast food franchise in California, the chain's sales fell by half in the San Jos6 area where the incident was reported. Wendy's brand and reputation were at risk, until the claim was exposed as a hoax in late April and the company, operator of America's third biggest hamburger chain, was vindicated. Yet the share price of Wendy's International, the parent company, rose steadily through March and April, despite the finger furore and downgrades from analysts. One reason was heavy buying by hedge funds, led by Pershing Square Capital. This Week Pershing made its intentions public, saying that it was worried by market rumors that Wendy's might soon buy more fast food brands, and arguing that the firm should be selling assets instead. Pershing's approach indicates rising pressure on American restaurant companies to perform, at a time when the industry's growth prospects look increasingly tough. The hit on customers' wallets from higher petrol prices and rising interest rates will probably mean that year on year sales growth across the American restaurant industry slows to just 1% by the fourth quarter of 2005, down from a five year historic average of 5.6%, say UBS, an investment bank, and Global Insight, a forecasting group. Looking further ahead, says UBS's David Palmer, the industry may have to stop relying on most of the long term trends that were behind much of its recent growth. Three quarters of Americans already live within three miles of a McDonald's restaurant, leaving little scope for green-field growth. Obesity is a growing issue in America, and with it come the threat of liability lawsuits against big restaurant chains and, perhaps, legal limits on advertising. This week America's biggest food trade group, the Grocery Manufacturers' Association, was said to be preparing tougher guidelines on the marketing of food to children, in the hope of staving off statutory controls. Home cooking may also be making a comeback, helped by two factors. The percentage of women joining America's workforce may have peaked, and supermarket chains such as Wal-Mart have been forcing down retail food prices. Expansion overseas is one option for American restaurant chains. Burger King, the privately owned number two hamburger chain, opened its first outlet in China last month, apparently aiming to maintain strong growth ahead of an initial public offering next year. McDonald's has 600 outlets in China and plans 400 more. But at home, the future seems to hold only an even more competitive and cost-conscious restaurant industry. Fast food chains are trying to poach customers from "casual dining" chains (such as Applebee's Neighborhood Grill) , while those chains are squeezing out independent restaurants unable to compete on cost or in marketing clout. Business conditions, not severed fingers, are the real threat to the weaker firms in the restaurant business.

单选题Historically, the European Union has not bothered with funding much basic scientific research. Such activities have mainly remained the preserve of national governments, not least because giving scientists free rein can lead to discoveries that not only make money but ultimately enhance military might. That attitude is now changing. The European Commission proposes to establish a European Research Council(ERC) that would spend a maximum of 12 billion( $14 billion) over seven years on" blue skies" research. While the plans are being generally welcomed by Europe's member states, their details are problematic. The proposed ERC is intended to make Europe more competitive. Europe has some first-class universities, scientific institutions and research organisations, But, the ERC' s proponents argue, their activities are fragmented, so they are not reaching their full potential. In America, teams from across the country compete with each other for grants from the National Science Foundation. The proposed ERC is modelled on this scheme, It would award grants to individual research teams for a specific project, solely on the basis of scientific merit judged by peer review, If the ERC were created, scientists from across Europe would compete with each other for funds, rather than merely competing with their fellow countrymen, as hap pens at present. This compares with the limited funding for basic research that currently exists in the EU, which places its emphasis on collaboration between researchers. It is open only to researchers in a narrow range of disciplines chosen by the European Parliament and the commission. The ERC would be quite different, placing its emphasis on competition between researchers and leaving scientists themselves to decide which areas of science to pursue. Helga Nowotny, who chairs the European Research Advisory Board--an advisory body to the commission— says that winning a grant from the ERC could come to be seen as unmistakable recognition of research excellence. The quality of European research needs to be stepped up a notch. Between 1980 and 2003, Europe had 68 Nobel laureates in medicine, physics and chemistry compared with 154 in America. With competition from China and India, Europe' s share could fall further. One of the reasons for Europe' s relatively weak performance is thought to be a lack of genuine competition between Europe' s researchers. Another is its poor ability to attract young people into a research career. Recent estimates suggest that Europe needs an extra 700,000 researchers if it is to meet its overall target of raising spending (private, national and EU) on research and development to 3% of GDP by 2010. Many young scientists leave Europe for America once they have finished their training. Dr Nowotny says the ERC could help here too. It could establish a scheme to give young researchers the opportunity to follow their own ideas and become independent at an earlier stage in their careers, encouraging talent to stay in Europe. The crucial issue now is whether the ERC will be able to set its own research agenda, free from the interference and bureaucracy of the commission and influence of member states. Last month,22 leading European scientists charged with shaping the ERC's scientific strategy met for the first time to start hammering out a charter and constitution. Serious concerns remain over the legal structure of the body. The final decision on the ERC's legal form, on a date yet unspecified, rests with the European Parliament and member states in the European Council. If both are genuine in their support for the ERC and Europe' s aim of becoming more competitive ,then they must find a way of keeping the ERC free from political interference. Europe would benefit from a competition for its best researchers which rewards scientific excellence. A quasi-competition that recognizes how many votes each member state is allotted would be pointless.

单选题By 1350, when compared with three hundred years earlier, Europeans had, according to the passage,______

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} If national health insurance would not cure the problems of the American healthcare system, what, then, is responsible for them? Suspicion falls heavily on hospitals, which make up the largest component of the system. In 1988 hospitals accounted for 39% of all health expenditures-more than doctor, nursing homes, drugs, and home health care combined. Although U. S. hospitals provide outstanding research and frequently excellent care, they also exhibit the classic attributes of insufficient organizations: increasing costs and decreasing use. The average cost of a hospital stay in 1987—＄3,850—was more than double the 1980 cost. A careful government analysis published in 1987 revealed the inflation of hospital costs, over and above general price inflation, as a major factor in their growth, even after allowances were made for increases in the population and in intensity of care. While the rate of increase for hospital costs was 2796 greater than that for all medical care and 163% greater than that for all other goods and services, demand for hospital services fell by 34%. But hospitals seemed oblivious of the decline: during this period the number of hospital beds shrank only by about 396, and the number of full-time employees grew by more than 240, 000. After yet another unexpectedly high hospital-cost increase last year, one puzzled government analyst asked: "Where's the money going?" Much of the increase in hospital costs—amounting to ＄180 billion from 1965 to 1987—went to duplicating medical technology available in nearby hospitals and maintaining excess beds. Modern Healthcare, a leading journal in the field, recently noted that "anecdotes of hospitals' unnecessary spending on technology abound". Medical technology is very expensive. An operating room outfitted to perform open-heart surgery costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. From 1982 to 1989 the number of hospitals with open-heart-surgery facilities grew by 33%, and the most rapid growth occurred among smaller and moderate-sized hospitals. This growth was worrisome for reasons of both costs and quality. Underused technology almost inevitably decreases quality of care. In medicine, as in everything else, practice makes perfect. For example, most of the hospitals with the lowest ra6rtaiity rates for coronary-bypass surgery perform at least fifty to a hundred such procedures annually, and in some cases many more: the majority of those with the highest mortality rates perform fewer than fifty a year.

单选题Spirit failed to talk to its controllers probably because of______.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Washington, DC has traditionally been an unbalanced city when it comes to the life of the mind. It has great national monuments, from the Smithsonian museums to the Library of Congress. But day-to-day cultural life can be thin. It attracts some of the country's best brains. But far too much of the city's intellectual life is devoted to the minutiae of the political process. Dinner table conversation can all too easily turn to budget reconciliation or social security. This is changing. On October 1st the Shakespeare Theatre Company opened a 775-seat new theatre in the heart of downtown. Sidney Harman hall not only provides a new stage for a theatre company that has hitherto had to make do with the 450-seat Lansburgh Theatre around the corner. It will also provide a platform for many smaller arts companies. The fact that so many of these outfits are queuing up to perform is testimony to Washington's cultural vitality. The recently-expanded Kennedy Centre is by some measures the busiest performing arts complex. But it still has a growing number of arts groups which are desperate for mid-sized space down- town. Michael Kahn, the theatre company's artistic director, jokes that, despite Washington's aversion (厌恶) to keeping secrets, it has made a pretty good job of keeping quiet about its artistic life. The Harman Centre should act as a {{U}}whistle blower{{/U}}. Washington still bows the knee to New York and Chicago when it comes to culture. But it has a good claim to be America's intellectual capital. It has the greatest collection of think-tanks on the planet, and it regularly sucks in a giant share of the country's best brains. Washington is second only to San Francisco for the proportion of residents twenty-five years and older with a bachelor's degree or higher. Washington's intellectual life has been supercharged during the Bush years, despite the Decider's aversion to ideas. September 11th, 2001, put questions of global strategy at the center of the national debate. Most of America's intellectual centers are firmly in the grip of the left-liberal establishment. For all their talk of "diversity" American universities are allergic to a diversity of ideas. Washington is one of the few cities where conservatives regularly do battle with liberals. It is also the center of a fierce debate about the future direction of conservatism. The danger for Washington is that this intellectual and cultural renaissance will leave the majority of the citizens untouched. The capital remains a city deeply divided between over-educated white itinerants and under- educated black locals. Still, the new Shakespeare theatre is part of job-generating downtown revival. Twenty years ago downtown was a desert of dilapidated(破旧的) buildings and bag people. Today it is bustling with life. If Washington is struggling to fix the world, at least it is making a reasonable job of fixing itself.

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. {{B}}Text 1{{/B}} It's never too early or too late for a parent to become a teacher. In this age of teacher accountability, endless school testing, increased pressure and competition, and the proliferation of "educational" toys, too many people forget that success begins at home. Freeman A. Hrabowski Ⅲ, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and co-author of Beating the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Males and Overcoming the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Young Women, says that in the interviews he and his co-authors conducted, the overwhelming factor in their children's academic achievement was that parents inspired and envisioned their children's success. They thought and talked about what would be required to have a .successful child. "It just makes such a difference when there's someone in that house working to relate to that child and inspire that child," Hrabowski says. "These parents (of the high achievers discussed) are really inspirational in their commitment to their children." Professor Barbara T. Bowman, one of the faculty founders of Chicago's Erikson Institute, an independent institution of higher education that prepares child development professionals for leader- ship, says that Black children must learn in two different cultures-the African-American culture in which they live and the mainstream culture on which school and education are based. Bowman also says the relationship between children and their parents is critical. "It is the early responsive ness of the caregiver to the infant's behavior that creates a sense of well-being and optimism that affects the child's interest in learning," says Bowman, who served as president of the institute from 1994 to last year. "Children who like and want to please the adult learn better what the adult wants them to learn." In this day of highly competitive testing and the stress of getting high SAT or ACT scores, it's important also to avoid pressuring or overexposing your child. Your son or daughter is probably already facing stress at school and on the playground. Your role is to help him or her relieve and manage that stress. Help them to understand that life does not end or begin with a test. And while academic success is important, it's also important to keep everything in perspective. Failure is a relative term in the grand scheme of things. If your child did poorly on a test, but answered a particularly tough question correctly, stress the positive. On the other hand, if schoolwork comes too easily to your child, find other ways to challenge him or her so they understand that life won't always be that way.

单选题Imagine that you are in hospital, waiting to have an operation. It is time to go to the theatre; the anesthetist approaches you and speaks. But instead of the reassuring words" I'm just going to give you something to send you off to sleep", you hear: "Let me take you on a trip towards death". Terrifying? Maybe, but that is what having a general anesthetic is all about. "If you give a small amount of an anesthetic drug, it won' t have any effect. If you give more, it will put the patient off to sleep, but if you give more still it can kill the patient." In a modem hospital, before you are given an anesthetic, an anesthetist asks you a number of questions to decide which drugs to use. Most importantly, they check the state of your heart and lungs and ask if you have asthma, angina or have ever had a heart attack. They want to know about any drugs you are taking, so that they do not give you an anesthetic that reacts badly with them, and they will also find out if you have any allergies. As well as putting you to sleep, the anesthetist is also responsible for controlling your pain. Then how can the anesthetist tell that they have put their patients far enough under? Mostly, by experience. There is no such thing as an awareness monitor, though all the patient's body functions, such as heart rate, gases going in and out and oxygen levels in the blood, are monitored. If the anesthetic is not deep enough and the patient becomes "light', the monitors should tell the anesthetist that something is wrong long before the patient becomes aware. This is why the anesthetist watches the patient carefully throughout the operation. At the end of your operation, the anesthetic is mined off. It might seem surprising that the anesthetist is often the unsung hero of the operating thestre. Many people, including some nursing staff, do not realize that the anesthetist first has to qualify as a doctor. They then take three further examinations to qualify as anesthetists because of the number of things they have to take into account when carrying out their work They do not simply need to know about the drugs they use; they must also know about all the other drugs on the market so that they can avoid dangerous interactions. They have to keep abreast of any new surgical technique, to make sure they give an appropriate anesthetic for any operation. The "journey towards death" has come a long way. But one fascinating fact remains: whether it is ether or a complex cocktail being used to "put someone to sleep": no one yet knows exactly how anesthetics work.

单选题Insurance companies provide a service to the community by protecting it against expected and unexpected disasters. Before an insurance company will agree to (1) anything, it collects accurate figures about the (2) . It knows, for example, that the risk of a man being killed in a plane accident is less than the risk he (3) in crossing a busy road. This (4) it to quote low figures for travel insurance. Sometimes the risk may be high, as in motorracing or mountaineering. Then the company (5) a much higher price. (6) too many climbers have accidents, the price rises still further. If the majority of climbers fall off mountains, the company will (7) to insure them. An ordinary householder may wish to protect his home against fire or his (8) against burglary. A shop keeper may wish to insure against (9) . In (10) cases, the company will check its statistics and quote a premium. If it is (11) , it may refuse to quote. If it insures a shop and then receives a suspicious (12) , it will (13) the claim as a means of protecting itself against false claims. It is not unknown for a businessman in debt to burn down his own premises so that he can claim much money from his insurance company. He can be sure that the fire will be investigated most carefully. Insurance companies also (14) insurance against shipwreck or disaster in the air. Planes and ships are very expensive, so a large (15) is charged, but a (16) is given to companies with an accident-free record. Every week insurance companies receive premium (17) from customers. These payments can form a very large total (18) millions of dollars. The company does not leave the money in the bank. It (19) in property, shares, farms and even antique paintings and stamps. Its aim is to obtain the best possible return on its investment. This is not so greedy as it may seem, since this is one way by which it can deep its premiums down and continue to make a profit (20) being of service to the community.

单选题What does the author mean by saying "If people weren't so busy, would they be a poet, a painter" ?

单选题Female athletes keep playing in order to

单选题Could HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, be weakening? The results of a study conducted in Belgium, at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, seem to suggest that in one corner of the world it might be. The report, published in the latest issue of AIDS, a specialist journal, concludes that HIV's ability to replicate (known technically as its virulence) may have decreased since the start of the pandemic. Kevin Aden, the lead author of the paper, stresses that the study is based on a small set of samples and does not prove that HIV's virulence is attenuating around the world. However, it does offer new insights into the evolution of the disease. Dr. Arien looked at 24 blood samples collected from untreated patients attending an HIV/ AIDS clinic in Antwerp. A dozen of these samples were taken between 1986 and 1989; the other 12 were collected between 2002 and 2003. First, he analyzed the samples to find their viral load (the number of virus particles per cubic centimeter) and the subtype of virus involved. In Europe and North America, the predominant subtype is B; in sub-Saharan Africa, where the epidemic is at its worst, the predominant subtype is C. Most of Dr. Arien's samples were of subtype B. Having done this analysis, he paired the samples off for a series of replicative "duels". Each sample from the earlier series was matched with the most similar one from the later series, and they were placed in identical cell cultures to see which would multiply the most. The result was that 75% of the viruses from 2002-03 were less virulent than apparently similar counterparts from 1986-89 -- a statistically significant observation. Dr. Arien's caution is sensible, at least until someone replicates the work elsewhere. But his conclusion is not necessarily surprising. Such viral attenuation, as it is known, is one way that vaccines are produced. What causes attenuation in wild viruses, though, is a matter of speculation. Dr Arien believes that in this case the attenuation could be the result of what he calls "serial genetic bottlenecks" during transmission from host to host. These act to reduce the genetic diversity (and thus the replicative fitness) of the virus. Genetic diversity is known to be an important component of HIV's virulence. But what might cause the bottlenecks is still unclear. A second reason for caution besides the small size of the study is, as Geoffrey Garnett, a professor of microparasite epidemiology at Imperial College, London, points out, that the ability of a virus to infect cells in a test-tube is not the same as its ability to cause disease and death in a human host. Nevertheless, Dr Aden's result is intriguing, and surely worth following up in a larger piece of research.

单选题The title which best expresses the idea of the text would be

单选题This fall the Pew Research Center, in association with TIME, conducted a nationwide poll exploring the contours of modern marriage and the new American family. And of all the transformations our family structures have undergone in the past 50 years, perhaps the most profound is the marriage differential that has opened between the rich and the poor. In 1960 the median household income of married adults was 12% higher than that of single adults, after adjusting for household size. By 2008 this gap had grown to 41%. In other words, the richer and more educated you are, the more likely you are to marry, or to be married — or, conversely, if you"re married, you"re more likely to be well off. To begin the question of why the wealth disparity between the married and the unmarried has grown so much, it might be useful to take a look at the brief but illustrative marriage of golfer Greg Norman and tennis star Chris Evert, who married in June 2008 and divorced 15 months later. From all reports, their union had many of the classic hallmarks of modern partnerships. The bride and groom had roughly equal success in their careers. Being wealthy, sporty and blond, they had similar interests. This is typical of the way many marriages start. Americans are increasingly marrying people who are on the same socioeconomic and educational level. Since more women than men have graduated from college for several decades, it"s more likely than it used to be that a male college graduate will meet, fall in love with, wed and share the salary of a woman with a degree. Women"s advances in education have roughly paralleled the growth of the knowledge economy, so the slice of the family bacon she brings home will be substantial. On the face of it, this might explain why fewer people are married. They want to finish college first. In 2010 the median age of men getting hitched for the first time is 28.2, and for women it"s 26.1. It"s gone up about a year every decade since the "60s. But here"s the rub . In the past two decades, people with only a high school education started to get married even later than college graduates. In 1990 more high-school-educated couples than college graduates had made it to the altar by age 30. By 2007 it was the other way around. What has brought about the switch? It"s not any disparity in desire. According to the Pew survey, 46% of college graduates want to get married, and 44% of the less educated do. P romising publicly to be someone"s partner for life used to be something people did to lay the foundation of their independent life. It was the declaration of adulthood. Now it"s more of a finishing touch, the last brick in the edifice , sociologists believe. Marriage is the capstone for both the college-educated and the less well educated, " says Johns Hopkins" Cherlin. "The college-educated wait until they"re finished with their education and their careers are launched. The less educated wait until they feel comfortable financially. " But that comfort keeps getting more elusive. "The loss of decent-paying jobs that a high-school-educated man or woman could get makes it difficult for them to get and stay married, " says Cherlin. As the knowledge economy has overtaken the manufacturing economy, couples in which both partners" job opportunities are disappearing are doubly disadvantaged. So they wait to get married.