单选题Like all quintessentially British things, gardening is a pastime that has long been in decline. From a high point of ￡5 billion in 2001, spending on plants, tools and garden furniture has fallen every year since then, to around ~3 billion in 2008．The arrival of economic recession only deepened the gloom: to credit-crunched consumers, shrubs and hanging baskets seemed obvious candidates for cuts. Yet the latest figures from the Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) suggest a bumper year for garden-related expenditure is in the making. Sales volumes were up by 21% in March and 28% in April compared with the same months a year earlier. This was not the result of deep discounting, a strategy that many other retailers have been adopting. The value of garden goods sold was 37% higher in March and 42% higher in April than a year earlier, whereas the value of all sales had increased by just 3% in April. Datamonitor, a market-research firm, reckons that gardening will continue to outperform the rest of retailing for at least the next two years. Much of the good news is due to the weather, admits Tim Briercliffe, the HTA's director of business development. Last year the vital spring months were damp and miserable; this year sunshine (and weathermen's prediction of a hot summer) has boosted custom. But the economic downturn itself has turned out to be as much a blessing as a curse. Gardening may be a luxury, argues Mr. Briercliffe, but it competes with other, more expensive luxuries. "People who might have otherwise booked a city break to Prague are staying at home and making the best of what they have," he maintains. According to Ipsos MORI, a pollster, three-quarters of people plan to spend at least as much on their garden this year as last. Economic hardship has created a new breed of gardener too. Partly, that reflects people making the most of their enforced leisure: "We get some unemployed city types who are just filling time while looking for another job," admits a garden-centre worker near the London commuter town of Guilford. But there are more positive developments. Much of the growth in garden spending has come from the under-35s, not traditionally a green-fingered demographic. One explanation is that environmentalism and thriftiness have made growing vegetables trendy, an idea that is supported by growing shortage of allotments. But there is more to it than pleasant weather and belt-tightening. The HTA detects deeper, and darker, changes in the national psyche. Citing research from the Future Foundation, a prognosticatory consultancy, it reckons that people are spending more time in their homes, fortifying them into havens from an unwelcoming world haunted by crime, bureaucracy and rising unemployment. The longer the downturn persists, the greener the grass may grow.

单选题According to the author, the notion that computers are to blame for the wage gap is

单选题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The case of Enron bankruptcy

单选题What does the author imply by "There is a silver lining. "(Para. 6)?

单选题By listing some products of Pepsi, the author wants to tell us that

单选题{{B}}Part B{{/B}}Directions: In the following article, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks. Fields across Europe are contaminated with dangerous levels of the antibiotics given to farm animals. The drugs, which are in manure sprayed onto fields as fertilizers, could be getting into our food and water, helping to create a new generation of antibiotic-resistant "superbugs". The warning comes from a researcher in Switzerland who looked at levels of the drugs in farm slurry. 41．______ Some 20,000 tons antibiotics are used in the European Union and the US each year. More than half are given to farm-animals to prevent disease and promote growth. But recent research has found a direct link between the increased use of these farmyard drugs and the appearance of antibiotic-resistant bugs that infect people. 42．______But far more of the drugs end up in manure than in meat products, says Stephen Mueller of the Swiss Federal Institute for Environmental Science and Technology in Dubendorf. And manure contains especially high levels of bugs that are resistant to antibiotics, he says. With millions of tons of animals manure spread onto fields of crops such as wheat and barley each year, this pathway seems an equally likely route for spreading resistance, he said. 43．______They could also be leaching into tap water pumped from rocks beneath fertilized fields. Mueller is particularly concerned about a group of antibiotics called sulphonamides. They do not easily degrade or dissolve in water. His analysis found that Swiss farm manure contains a high percentage of sulphonamides; each hectare of field could be contaminated with up to 1 kilogram of the drugs. 44．______But vets are not treating the issue seriously. There is growing concern at the extent to which drugs, including antibiotics, are polluting the environment. 45．______ [A] The drugs contaminate the crops, which are then eaten. [B] This concentration is high enough to trigger the development of resistance among bacteria. [C] Animal antibiotics is still an area to which insufficient attention has been paid. [D] Most researchers assumed that humans become infected with the resistant strains by eating contaminated meat. [E] There is no doubt that the food and drink is always important to the health. [F] Many drugs given to humans are also excreted unchanged and are not broken down by conventional sewage treatment. [G] His findings are particularly shocking because Switzerland is one of the few countries to have banned antibiotics as growth promoters in animal feed.

单选题Every culture attempts to create a “universe of discourse” for its members, a way in which people can interpret their experience and convey it to one another. Without a common system of codifying sensations, life would be absurd and all efforts to share meanings doomed to failure. This universe of discourse — one of the most precious of all cultural legacies — is transmitted to each generation in part consciously and in part unconsciously. Parents and teachers give explicit instruction in it by praising or criticizing certain ways of dressing, of thinking, of gesturing, of responding to the acts of others. But the most significant aspects of any cultural code may be conveyed implicitly, not by rule or lesson but through modeling behavior. A child is surrounded by others who, through the mere consistency of their actions as males and females, mothers and fathers, salesclerks and policemen, display what is appropriate behavior. Thus the grammar of any culture is sent and received largely unconsciously, making one’s own cultural assumptions and biases difficult to recognize. They seem so obviously right that they require no explanation. In The Open and Closed Mind, Milton Rokeach poses the problem of cultural understanding in its simplest form, but one that can readily demonstrate the complication of communication between cultures. It is called the “Denny Doodlebug Problem”. Readers are given all the rules that govern this culture: Denny is an animal that always faces North, and can move only by jumping; he can jump large distances or small distances, but can change direction only after jumping four times in any direction; he can jump North, South, East or West, but not diagonally. Upon concluding a jump his master places some food three feet directly west of him. Surveying the situation, Denny concludes he must jump four times to reach the food. No more or less. And he is right. All the reader has to do is to explain the circumstances that make his conclusion correct. The large majority of people who attempt this problem fail to solve it, despite the fact that they are given all the rules that control behavior in this culture. If there is difficulty in getting inside the simplistic world of Denny Doodlebug — where the cultural code has already been broken and handed to us — imagine the complexity of comprehending behavior in societies whose codes have not yet been deciphered, and where even those who obey these codes are only vaguely aware and can rarely describe the underlying sources of their own actions.

单选题There (1) not one type of reading but several according to your reasons for reading. To read carefully, you have to (2) your reading speed and technique (3) your aim (4) reading. Skimming is a technique necessary for quick and efficient reading. When skimming, you (5) the reading (6) quickly in order to get the (7) of it, to know how it is organized, (8) an idea of the tone or the intention of the writer. Skimming is (9) an activity which (10) an overall view of the text and (11) a definite reading competence. Skimming doesn't need reading all the material, but it doesn't mean that it is an (12) skill for the lazy, because it need a high degree of alertness and concentration. When you read, you usually start with (13) understanding and move towards detailed understanding rather than working the other way round. But (14) is also used after you have already carefully studied and you need to (15) the major ideas and concepts. In order to be able to skim quickly and (16) through a text, you should know where to look for what you want. In preview skimming you read the introductory information, the headings and subheadings, and the summary, if one is provided. (17) this skimming, decide whether to read the material more thoroughly, and select the appropriate speed (18) you read. The same procedure (19) for preview skimming could also be used to get an overview. Another method would be to read only key words. This is done by omitting the unnecessary words, phrases, and sentences. In order to skim efficiently and fulfill your purpose, (20) practice is necessary.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Niall FitzGerald would have liked to leave Unilever in a blaze of glory when he retires at the end of September. The co-chief executive of the Anglo-Dutch consumer-goods group was one of the godfathers of Unilever's "Path to Growth" strategy of focusing on its brands, which was launched five years ago. But the plan failed to deliver on many of its promises. On September 20th, Unilever warned that it would not report its promised double-digit growth in profits this year. It is a tough time for producers of branded consumer goods. Unilever and its competitors have to cope with pressure on prices and stiff competition from supermarkets' own brands. Colgate-Palmolive warned of lower profits on the same day. Nestle recently disappointed investors with its latest results. Even so, Unilever admits the bulk of its troubles are self-inflicted. The "Path to Growth" strategy aimed to make the firm more efficient. Unilever saved about 4 billion euro ( $ 4.9 billion) in costs over the past five years and reduced its portfolio of brands from 1,600 to some 450. But it still failed to meet its targets for profit and sales, reporting a sales decline of 0.7% for the second quarter of this year. Andrew Wood at Sanford Bernstein, an investment-research firm, thinks the main problem is under-investment in advertising and marketing, an infatuation with brands and unrealistic performance targets. Unilever cut its ad and marketing expenditure at the worst moment, says Mr. Wood. Com- moditised products are especially: vulnerable to the onslaught of retailers' own brands. In margarine, for instance, retailers' own brands now capture as much as one-fifth of the market. Unilever also over-extended some successful brands, for instance Bertolli's olive oils and pasta sauces. According to Mr. Wood, Unilever can sustainably grow its business about 3% a year; it was shooting for 5-6%. Unilever's chief financial officer (CFO) counters that consumers look for a product and then buy a brand, so his firm needs to focus on brands. Unilever intends to step up its marketing efforts, although ad spending is supposed to remain at current levels. At present, Unilever spends 14.5% of sales on ads. But even the CFO admits the company has "issues of competitiveness". After seven quarters of disappointing performance, it needs to regain credibility with investors. Over the next few months, management will rethink its strategy for the next five-year plan. Patrick Cescau, a Frenchman who will take over from Mr. FitzGerald, is inheriting a tricky legacy.

单选题As used in the text, "hybrid networks" are best related to

单选题One of the enduring myths of American folklore is that Jesse James was a home-grown Robin Hood who "stole from the rich and gave to the poor" That legend enjoyed a revived popularity in the 1960s. Supported by movies, pulp fiction, and even serious scholarship, this image has dominated our understanding of the post-Civil War James gang and other western outlaws. Historians have described James as a "primitive rebel" who championed "a special type of peasant protest and rebellion" against modernizing forces by robbing banks and railroads. But James himself would have considered this notion a great joke. In fact, James"s robbers went after the express company safes just because that"s where the money was. As for the Robin Hood theme, there is no evidence the James gang did anything with the cash they stole except to spend it on fine horseflesh and gambling. The key to understanding the motives of the James gang—besides greed—is the Civil War, especially the vicious guerrilla combat within the larger war that plagued Missouri. Support for the Confederacy was strong in the Little Dixie counties that flanked the Missouri River just east of the Kansas border. In these counties lived most of the men and boys who went into the bush as Confederate guerrillas, including Frank and Jesse James. They learned their trade under the tutelage of such psychopathic killers as " Bloody Bill" Anderson and William Clarke Quantrill, who murdered scores of Missouri Unionists and fought it out with Union soldiers during four years of internecine warfare. These guerrillas were anything but the poor farmers of folklore. Many of them (like James) came from families that were three times more likely to own slaves and possessed twice as much wealth as the average Missouri family. James fought during the war against emancipation and after the war against the Republican Party that freed and enfranchised the slaves. Many of the banks and express companies struck by the James gang were owned by individuals or groups associated with the Republican Party. Like the Ku Klux Klan in former Confederate states, the James gang did its best to undermine the new order ushered in by Northern victory in the Civil War. When Democrats regained control of Missouri in the 1870s, the James gang looked for greener pastures outside the state. In August 1876, they rode all the way to Northfield, Minn. , with the aim of robbing a bank there in which a Union general was reported to have deposited large funds. When the bank cashier—also a Union veteran—refused to open the vault, James shot him in cold blood. The citizens of Northfield fought back, killing two of the bandits before they could flee the town. Jesse and Frank James got away, but this affair was the beginning of the end for Jesse"s career as the self-described "Napoleon of crime. "

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} When Marine Lt. Alan Zarracina finally did the splits after months of struggling with the difficult pose in yoga class, the limber women around him applauded. Zarracina, a 24-year-old Naval Academy graduate and flight student, admits he would have a hard time explaining the scene to other Marines. Each class ends with a chant for peace. Then, instructor Nancy La Nasa hands students incense sticks as a gift for their 90 minutes of back bends, shoulder stands and other challenging positions. Zarracina has tried to drag some of his military friends to class, but they make fun of hint. "It's not necessarily considered masculine,' he said. Still, the popular classes, based on ancient Hindu practices of meditation through controlled breathing, balancing and stretching, are catching on in military circles as a way to improve flexibility, balance and concentration. A former Navy SEAL told Zarracina about the class. The August edition of Fit Yoga, the nation's second-largest yoga magazine with a circulation of 100,000, features a photo of two Naval aviators doing yoga poses in full combat gear aboard an aircraft carrier. "At first it seemed a little shocking--soldiers practicing such a peaceful art," writes editor Rita Trieger. Upon closer inspection, she said, she noticed "a sense of inner calm' on the aviators' faces. "War is hell, and if yoga can help them find a little solace, that's good,' said Trieger, a longtime New York yoga instructor. Retired Adm. Tom Steffens, who spent34 years as a Navy SEAL and served as the director of the elite corps' training, regularly practices yoga at his home in Norfolk, Va. "Once in a while I'll sit in class, and everyone is a 20-something young lady with a 10-inch waist and here I am this old guy, ' he joked. Steffens, who said the stretching helped him eliminate the stiffness of a biceps injury after surgery, said the benefits of regular practice can be enormous. "The yoga cured all kinds of back pains," he said. "Being a SEAL, you beat up your body." Yoga breathing exercises can help SEALs with their diving, and learning to control the body by remaining in unusual positions can help members stay in confined spaces for long periods, he said. "The ability to stay focused on something, whether on breathing or on the yoga practice, and not be drawn off course, that has a lot of connection to the military," he said. "In our SEAL basic training, there are many things that are yoga-like in nature.

单选题White people tend to be nervous of raising the subject of race and education, but are often voluble on the issue if a black person brings it up. So when Trevor Phillips, chair man of Britain' s Commission for Racial Equality, said that there was a particular problem with black boys' performance at school, and that it might be a good idea to educate them apart from other pupils, there was a torrent of comment. Some of it commended his proposal, and some criticized it, but none of it questioned its premise. Everybody accepts that black boys are a problem. On the face of it, it looks as though Mr Phillips is right. Only 27% of Afro-Caribbean boys get five A-C grades at GCSE, the exams taken by 16-year-olds, compared with 47% of boys as a Whole and 44% of Afro-Caribbean girls. Since, in some subjects, candidates who score less than 50% get Cs, those who don' t reach this threshold have picked up pretty little at school. Mr Phillips' s suggestion that black boys should be taught separately implies that ethnicity and gender explain their underachievement. Certainly, maleness seems to be a disadvantage at school. That' s true for all ethnic groups: 57% of girls as a whole get five A-Cs, compared with 47% of boys. But it' s not so clear that blackness is at the root of the problem. Among children as a whole, Afro-Caribbeans do indeed perform badly. But Afro Caribbeans tend to be poor. So to get a better idea of whether race, rather than poverty, is the problem, one must control for economic status. The only way to do that, given the limits of British educational statistics, is to separate out the exam results of children who get free school meals: only the poor get free grub. Poor children' s results tell a rather different story. Afro-Caribbeans still do remark ably badly, but whites are at the bottom of the pile. All ethnic minority groups do better than them. Even Bangladeshis, a pretty deprived lot, do twice as well as the natives in their exams; Indians do better still. And absolute numbers of underperforming whites dwarf those of underperforming Afro-Caribbeans: last year, 131,393 of white boys failed to hit the government's benchmark, compared with 3,151 Afro-Caribbean boys. These figures suggest that, at school at least, black people' s problem is not so much race as poverty. And they undermine the idea of teaching black boys separately, for if poor whites are doing worse than poor blacks, there' s not much argument for singling out blacks for special measures: whites need help just as badly.

单选题When it comes to the slowing economy, Ellen Spero isn't biting her nails just yet. But the 47-year-old manicurist isn't cutting, filling or polishing as many nails as she'd like to, either. Most of her clients spend $12 to $50 weekly, but last month two longtime customers suddenly stopped showing up. Spero blames the softening economy. "I'm a good economic indicator," she says. "I provide a service that people can do without when they're concerned about saving some dollars. " So Spero is downscaling, shopping at middle-brow Dillard's department store near her suburban Cleveland home, instead of Neiman Marcus. "I don't know if other clients are going to abandon me, too" she says. Even before Alan Greenspan's admission that America's red-hot economy is cooling, lots of working folks had already seen signs of the slowdown themselves. From car dealerships to Gap outlets, sales have been lagging for months as shoppers temper their spending. For retailers, who last year took in 24 percent of their revenue between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the cautious approach is coming at a crucial time. Already, experts say, holiday sales are off 7 percent from last year's pace. But don't sound any alarms just yet. Consumers seem only mildly concerned, not panicked, and many say they remain optimistic about the economy's long-term prospects, even as they do some modest belt-tightening. Consumers say they're not in despair because, despite the dreadful headlines, their own fortunes still feel pretty good. Home prices are holding steady in most regions. In Manhattan, "there's a new gold rush happening in the $4 million to $10 million range, predominantly fed by Wall Street bonuses," says broker Barbara Corcoran. In San Francisco, prices are still rising even as frenzied overbidding quiets. "Instead of 20 to 30 offers, now maybe you only get two or three," says John Tealdi, a Bay Area real-estate broker. And most folks still feel pretty comfortable about their ability to find and keep a job. Many folks see silver linings to this slowdown. Potential home buyers would cheer for lower interest rates. Employers wouldn't mind a little fewer bubbles in the job market. Many consumers seem to have been influenced by stock-market swings, which investors now view as a necessary ingredient to a sustained boom. Diners might see an upside, too. Getting a table at Manhattan's hot new Alain Ducasse restaurant used to be impossible. Not anymore. For that, Greenspan ＆ Co. may still be worth toasting.