单选题The main idea of the text is to

单选题The government and Microsoft plan to sell around the world Britain"s new system for online transactions between citizens and government after its successful launch in the U.K. A key step in the government"s $1.4b e-government program has seen online payment for the Inland Revenue"s pay-as-you-earn scheme, some Customs and Excise value added tax procedures, and claims for European Union subsidies for farmers all go live in the past month. At a presentation in Seattle today, Bill Gates, Microsoft"s co-founder and chairman, will demonstrate the British system to 400 government officials from 80 countries to show how citizens and businesses can interact with government over the Internet. "Although some U.S. states are using leading edge technology, Europe in general, and the U.K. in particular, is well ahead in implementing e-government initiatives. It should put the citizen at the center of government," says David Vigano, general manager of public sector at the software group. "The projects have been implemented in just 15 weeks using Microsoft"s net technology," said Andrew Pinder, the government"s e-envoy. "This is a key piece of infrastructure, brought in on time and on budget," he said. The secure transaction technology is to be rolled out through about 200 central government departments and agencies and 482 local government institutions over the next five years in the drive to have all of the government online by 2005. The successful implementation is a coup for Microsoft which is trying to build up its enterprise software business and has targeted e-government. It has about 1,000 staff dedicated to government business. "This is a milestone for Microsoft," said Barry Goffe, group manager, net enterprise solutions at the Redwood, Washington state-based company. "Two years ago, when the technology for successful integration did not exist, we would have walked away." The hardware was supplied by Dell, and the servers are managed by Cable and Wireless. The technology is based on XML, a new language protocol, that allows information to be labeled and then easily exchanged between computers on different platforms. "People want to hang on to their legacy systems which have been massive investments, but integrating these has proven difficult and expensive in the past. It"s astonishing how the friction has been wiped out by XML, which reduces paperwork, reduces complexity and slashes costs," said Mr. Goffe.

单选题Who knows better than your customers where your operations can be improved? Today, progressive firms increasingly rely on advisory councils to suggest improvements, recommend action, and offer feedback on programs and policies. In fact, many companies feel that this form of communication is vital to the continuous improvement of their business operations. A council, among other things, improves communication and spurs improvement of operations. Remember that the secret to success is dialogue -- the .exchange of ideas and opinions. Focus on problems your customers have. Spell out your goals and objectives. Each meeting should have a specific objective to accomplish. Determine the meeting'sfrequency. If you want to implement a strategic plan, an annual meeting may be enough. If you want to focus on operational issues, more meetings may be needed. A good council will have no more than 12 people, with half of the members from your company and half your customers. It should also have diversity in its membership. Members should serve from one to three years-rotation of membership will ensure the council doesn't become stale. Find an approximate meeting site, whether it's in-house or off site, where there will be no interruptions. You should pay for all the expenses related to the meeting -- remember, the council members are providing your company with a service. Treat them as your guests and your experts. If you have a fixed beginning and ending time to your meeting, stick to it.. When structuring the meeting, remember the 80720 problem-solving rule. Structure the meeting so that 20 percent of the time is spent identifying or discussing a problem and 80 percent of the time is spent designing a solution. Often it is helpful to have a person act as timekeeper and announce when the agenda time for a particular item has expired. However, during the meeting, be flexible. The facilitator can allow . the group to decide whether to move on to the next item or extend the discussion. As you go along, look to narrow the differences among members and form a consensus. As the meeting closes, summarize what was accomplished, checking for agreement and commitment among the members. Make a detailed list of the follow-up items, who has responsibility for each item, and a timeline for completion. The results from really listening to and learning from your customers in a well-run advisory council can pay huge dividends.

单选题Old stereotypes die hard. Picture a video-game player and you will likely imagine a teenage boy, by himself, compulsively hammering away at a game involving ray guns and aliens that splatter when blasted. Ten years ago that might have borne some relation to reality. But today a gamer is as likely to be a middle-aged commuter playing "Angry Birds" on her smartphone. In America, the biggest market, the average game-player is 37 years old. Two-fifths are female. Over the past ten years the video-game industry has grown from a small business to a huge, mainstream one. With global sales of $56 billion in 2010, it is more than twice the size of the recorded-music industry. Despite the downturn, it is growing by almost 9% a year. Is this success due to luck or skill? The answer matters, because the rest of the entertainment industry has tended to treat gaming as being a lucky beneficiary of broader technological changes. Video gaming, unlike music, film or television, had the luck to be born digital. In fact, there is plenty for old media to learn. Video games have certainly been swept along by two forces: demography and technology. The first gaming generation—the children of the 1970s and early 1980s—is now over 30. Many still love gaming, and can afford to spend far more on it now. Meanwhile rapid improvements in computing power have allowed game designers to offer experiences that are now often more cinematic than the cinema. But even granted this good fortune, the game-makers have been clever. They have reached out to new customers with new methods. They have branched out into education, corporate training and even warfare, and have embraced digital downloads and mobile devices with enthusiasm. Though big-budget games are still popular, much of the growth now comes from "casual" games that are simple, cheap and playable in short bursts on mobile phones or in web browsers. The industry has excelled in a particular area—pricing. In an era when people are disinclined to pay for content on the web, games publishers were quick to develop "freemium" models, where you rely on non-paying customers to build an audience and then extract cash only from a fanatical few. As gaming comes to be seen as just another medium, its tech-savvy approach could provide a welcome shot in the arm for existing media groups.

单选题In the passage, the author introduces his topic by

单选题Music is a mystery. It is unique to the human race: no other species produces e- laborate sound for no particular reason. It has been, and remains, part of every known civilization on Earth. Lengths of bone fashioned into flutes were in use 40,000 years ago. And it engages people's attention more comprehensively than almost anything else: scans show that when people fisten to music, virtually every area of their brain be- comes more active. Yet it serves no obvious adaptive purpose. Charles Darwin, in "The Descent of Man", noted that "neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least direct use to man in reference to his ordinary habits of life." Then, what is the point of music. Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist, has called music "auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of at least six of our mental faculties." If it vanished from our species, he said, "the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged." Others have argued that, on the contrary, music, along with art and literature, is part of what makes people human; its absence would have a brutalising effect. Philip Ball, a British science writer and an avid music enthusiast, comes down somewhere in the middle. He says that music is ingrained in our auditory, cognitive and motor functions. We have a music instinct as much as a language instinct, and could not rid ourselves of it. He goes through each component of music to explain how and why it works, using plentiful examples drawn from a refreshingly wide range of different kinds of music, from Bach to the Beatles, and from nursery rhymes to jazz. His basic message is encouraging and uplifting: people know much more about music than they think. They start picking up the rules from the day they are born, perhaps even before, by heating it all around them. Very young children can tell if a tune or harmony is not quite right and most adults can differentiate between kinds of music even if they have had no training. Music is completely sui generis. It should not tell a non-musical story; the listener will decode it for himself. Many, perhaps most, people have experienced a sudden rush of emotion on heating a particular piece of music; a thrill or chill, a sense of excitement or exhilaration, a feeling of being swept away by it. They may even be moved to tears, without being able to tell why. Musical analysts have tried hard to find out how this happens, but with little success. Perhaps some mysteries are best preserved.

单选题Staring longingly into your empty refrigerator at 3 a. m. is about to become a whole lot cheaper. The U.S. Department of Energy recently released new efficiency standards for refrigerators and freezers manufactured after July 1, 2001. To meet these standards, next generation refrigerators must use 30% less energy. Manufacturers will achieve most of the energy savings through improvements in the compressor—lower-viscosity oil and tighter bearings, for example. Other changes will include thicker insulation, more efficient fans, and increased surface area of the condenser and evaporator coils. Manufacturers will also step up efforts to incorporate smart features, such as sensors that determine when defrosting is needed. "These are evolutionary, not revolutionary, changes," says Len Swatkowski, director of engineering for the Association of Home Appliance of Manufacturers in Chicago. The appliances will also likely employ a new blowing agent for foam insulation. The current agent—a hydrochlorofluorocarbo—will be banned as of January l, 2003, because of its ozone- depleting properties. Tests of a potential replacement—a hydrofluorocarbon—show that it conveys heat about as well as the old chemical, with less harm to Earth's ozone layer. If issues concerning efficiency, toxicity, and large-scale availability can be worked out, manufacturers will likely switch to the new blowing agent at the same time they incorporate the efficiency improvements. The bottom line: Consumers will reap energy savings of about $20 per year for a typical 20-cubicfoot refrigerator. And although the new refrigerators will cost approximately $80 more, consumers will see significant savings over a refrigerator's average 19-year life. The new fridges will have the same features and usable space as conventional units The DOE has now turned its attention to air conditioners, ranges and ovens, clothes washers, water heaters, and fluorescent light ballasts. Within a few years, all will be subject to new energy standards.

单选题The idea that music makes you smarter has received considerable attention from scholars and the media. Current interest in (1) between music and intelligence stems from two independent areas of research. One focuses on short-term effects of (2) listening to music. The other is on a seperate (3) of research, which examines whether music lessons have (4) benefits that extend to non-musical areas of cognition. Such (5) could be unique to children who take music lessons for long periods of time (6) their experiences differ substantially from those of other children. Music lessons (7) long periods of focused attention, memorization of (8) musical passages, learning about a variety of musical structures, and (9) mastery of technical skills and the conventions (10) the expression of emotions in performance. This (11) of experiences could have a positive impact on cognition, particularly during the childhood years, when brain devolopment is highly (12) and sensitive to environmental influence. Previous findings are (13) with the hypothesis that music lessons promote intellectual development. For example, natural musical gifts is associated with literacy. (14) , correlational and experimental studies (15) that music lessons have positive relations with verbal memory, reading ability, selective attention, and mathematics achievement. (16) , the simplest explanation of these (17) relations is that they come from a common component, such as general intelligence. Put simply, children (18) high IQs are more likely than other children to take music lessons. To conclude that music lessons have a casual relation with IQ that is (19) to music, one must rule (20) potentially confusing factors such as socioeconomic status, and education, and demonstrate that non-musical, extracurricular activities do not have comparable effects on IQ.

单选题According to the passage, which of the following eighteenth -century developments had a strong impact on silversmiths?

单选题The author's purpose in citing "repeated 12-month unemployed ment" is most probably to show that

单选题The proposed "alternative funding models" (Paragraph 2) might be more clearly based on

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}} Car makers have long used sex to sell their products. Recently, however, both BMW and Renault have based their latest European marketing campaigns around the icon of modern biology. BMW's campaign, which launches its new 3-series sports saloon in Britain and Ireland, shows the new creation and four of its earlier versions zigzagging around a landscape made up of giant DNA sequences, with a brief explanation that DNA is the molecule responsible for the inheritance of such features as strength, power and intelligence. The Renault offering, which promotes its existing Laguna model, employs evolutionary theory even more explicitly. The company's television commercials intersperse clips of the car with scenes from a lecture by Steve Jones, a professor of genetics at University of London. BMW's campaign is intended to convey the idea of development allied to heritage. The latest product, in other words, should be viewed as the new and improved scion of a long line of good cars. Renault's message is more subtle. It is that evolution works by gradual improvements rather than sudden leaps (in this, Renault is aligning itself with biological orthodoxy). So, although the new car in the advertisement may look like the old one, the external form conceals a number of significant changes to the engine. While these alterations are almost invisible to the average driver, Renault hopes they will improve the car's performance, and ultimately its survival in the marketplace. Whether they actually do so will depend, in part, on whether marketers have read the public mood correctly. For, even if genetics really does offer a useful metaphor for automobiles, employing it in advertising is not without its dangers. That is because DNA's public image is ambiguous. In one context, people may see it as the cornerstone of modern medical progress. In another, it will bring to mind such controversial issues as abortion, genetically modified foodstuffs, and the sinister subject of eugenics. Car makers are probably standing on safer ground than biologists. But even they call make mistakes. Though it would not be obvious to the casual observer, some of the DNA which features in BMW's ads for its nice, new car once belonged to a woolly mammoth—a beast that has been extinct for 10,000 years. Not, presumably, quite the message that the marketing department was trying to convey.

单选题According to the context, what does the underlined word "strain" in paragraph 4 mean?