单选题Which of the following statements is NOT TRUE according to the passage?______.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Tuning in round the clock, via satellite or internet blog, to any bout of mayhem anywhere, you might not think the world was becoming a more peaceable place. But in some ways it is, and measurably so. A recent Human Security Report released by the Liu Institute at the University of British Columbia registers a 40% drop in the number of armed conflicts between 1992 and 2003, with the worst wars, those claiming more than a thousand lives in battle, down by 80%. While 28 armed struggles for self-determination ignited or reignited between 1991 and 2004, an encouraging 43 others were contained or doused. Yet measured in a different way, from the point of view of the half of the world's population that is female, argues the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of the Armed Forces, the world is an awfully violent place, and not just in its war zones. Men still fill most of the bodybags in wartime, including in civil wars, even on DCAF's figures, but their sisters, mothers, wives and daughters, it argues in a new report entitled "Women in an Insecure World", face nothing short of a "hidden gendercide". Violence against women is nothing new. DCAF's contribution is to collate the many figures and estimates--not all of them easily verifiable, it has to be said—on everything from infanticide to rape (in both war and peace), dowry deaths, sex trafficking and domestic violence (in richer countries as well as poorer ones). According to one UN estimate cited by DCAF, between 113m and 200m women are now demographically "missing". This gender gap is a result of the aborting of girl foetuses and infanticide in countries where boys are preferred; lack of food and medical attention that goes instead to brothers, fathers, husbands and sons, so-called "honour killings" and dowry deaths; and other sorts of domestic violence. It implies that each year between 1.5m and 3m women and girls are lost to gender based violence. In other words, every two to four years the world looks away from a victim count on the scale of Hitler's Holocaust. Women between the ages of 15 and 44 are more likely to be maimed or die from violence inflicted one way or another by their menfolk than through cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war combined. Poor health care means that 600 000 women are lost each year to childbirth (a toll roughly equal annually to that of the Rwandan genocide). The World Health Organisation estimates that 6 000 girls a day (more than 2m a year), mostly in the poor world, undergo genital mutilation. Other WHO figures suggest that, around the world, one woman in five is likely to be a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} We know today that the traditions of tribal art are more complex and less "primitive" than its discoverers believed; we have even seen that the imitation of nature is by no means excluded from its aims. But the style of these ritualistic objects could still serve as a common focus for that search for expressiveness, structure, and simplicity that the new movements had inherited from the experiments of the three lonely rebels: Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Gauguin. The experiments of Expressionism are, perhaps, the easiest to explain in words. The term itself may not be happily chosen, for we know that we are all expressing ourselves in everything we do or leave undone, but the word became a convenient label because of its easily remembered contrast to Impressionism, and as a label it is quite useful. In one of his letters, Van Gogh had explained how he set about painting the portrait of a friend who was very dear to him, The conventional likeness was only the first stage. Having painted a "correct" portrait, he proceeded to change the colors and the setting. Van Gogh was right in saying that the method he had chosen could be compared to that of the cartoonist. Cartoon had always been "expressionist", for the cartoonist plays with the likeness of his victim, and distorts it to express just what he feels about his fellow man. As long as these distortions of nature sailed under the flag of humor nobody seemed to find them difficult to understand. Humorous art was a field in which everything was permitted, because people did not approach it with prejudices. Yet there is nothing inconsistent about it. It is true that our feelings about things do color the way in which we see them and, even more, the forms which we remember. Everyone must have experienced how different the same place may look when we are happy and when we are sad. What upset the public about the Expressionist art was, perhaps, not so much the fact that nature had been distorted as that the result led away from beauty. For the Expressionists felt so strongly about human suffering, poverty, violence and passion, that they were inclined to think that the insistence on harmony and beauty were only born out of a refusal to be honest. The art of the classical masters, of a Raphael or Correggio, seemed to them insincere and hypocritical. They wanted to face the bare facts of our existence, and to express their compassion fur the disinherited and the ugly.

单选题Information technologists have dreamt for decades of making an electronic display that is as good as paper: cheap enough to be pasted on to wails and billboards, clear enough to be read in broad daylight, and thin and flexible enough to be bound as hundreds of flippable leaves to make a book. Over the past few years they have got close. In particular, they have worked out how to produce the display itself, by sandwiching tiny spheres that change colour in response to an electric charge inside thin sheets of flexible, transparent plastic. What they have not yet found is a way to mass-produce flexible electronic circuitry with which to create that charge. But a paper just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that this, too, may be done soon. The process described by John Rogers and his colleagues from Bell Laboratories, an arm of Lucent Technologies, in New Jersey, and E Ink Corporation, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, starts with E Ink's established half-way house towards true electronic paper. This is based on spheres containing black, liquid dye and particles of white, solid pigment. The pigment particles are negatively charged, so they can be pushed and pulled around by electrodes located above and below the sheet. The electrodes, in turn, are controlled by transistors under the sheet. Each transistor manipulates a single picture element (pixel), making it black or white. The pattern of pixels, in turn, makes up the picture or text on the page. The problem lies in making the transistors and connections. Established ways of doing this, such as photolithography, use silicon as the semiconductor in the transistors. That is all right for applications suck as pesters. It is too fragile and too expensive, though, for genuine electronic paper—which is why cheap and flexible electronic components are needed. For flexibility, Dr Rogers and his colleagues chose pentacene as their semiconductor, and gold as their wiring. Pentacene is a polymer whose semiconducting properties were discovered only recently. Gold is the most malleable metal known, and one of the best electrical conductors. Although it is pricey, so little is needed that the cost per article is tiny. To make their electronic paper the researchers started with a thin sheet of Mylar, a tough plastic, that was coated with indium-tin oxide (ITO), a transparent electrical conductor. To carve this conductor into a suitable electric circuit, they used an innovation called microcontact printing lithography. This trick involves printing the pattern of the circuit on to the ITO using a rubber stamp. The "ink" in the process is a solvent-resistant chemical that protects this part of the ITO while allowing the rest to be dissolved.

单选题Artists routinely mock businesspeople as money-obsessed bores. Or worse, many business people, for their part, assume that artists are a bunch of pretentious wasters. Bosses may stick a few modernist paintings on their boardroom walls. But they seldom take the arts seriously as a source of inspiration. The bias starts at business school, where "hard" things such as numbers and case studies rule. It is reinforced by everyday experience. Bosses constantly remind their underlings that if you can't count it, it doesn't count. Manager's reading; habits often reflect this no nonsense attitude. Few read deeply about art. The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump does not count; nor does Sun Tzu's The Art of War, Some popular business books rejoice in their vulgarism: consider Wess Robert's Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun. But lately there are welcome signs of a thaw on the business side of the great cultural divide. Business presses are publishing a series of books such as The Fine Art of Success, by Jamie Anderson. Business schools such as the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto are trying to learn from the arts. Mr. Anderson points out that many artists have also been superb entrepreneurs. Damien Hirst was even more enterprising. He not only realised that nouveau-fiche collectors would pay extraordinary sums for dead cows and jewel-encrusted skulls. He upturned the art world by selling his work directly through Sotheby's, an auction house. Whatever they think of his work, businesspeople cannot help admiring a man who parted art-lovers from ~ 75.5m on the day that Lehman Brothers collapsed. Studying the arts can help businesspeople communicate more eloquently. Most bosses spend a huge amount of time "messaging" and "reaching out", yet few are much good at it. Their prose is larded with cliches and garbled with gobbledegook. Half an hour with George Orwell's Why I Write would work wonders. Studying the arts can also help companies learn how to manage bright people. Rob Goffee of the London Business School points out that today's most productive companies are dominated by what they call "clevers", who are the devil to manage. They hate being told what to do by managers, whom they regard as dullards. They refuse to submit to performance reviews. In short, they are prima donnas. The arts world has centuries of experience in managing such difficult people. Publishers coax books out of authors. Directors persuade actresses to cooperate with actors they hate. Their tips might be worth hearing. Studying the art world might even hold out the biggest prize of all-helping business become more innovative. Companies are scouring the world for new ideas. In their quest for creativity, they surely have something to learn from the creative industries. Look at how modem artists adapted to the arrival of photography, a technology that could have made them redundant, or how J.K. Rowling (the creator of Harry Potter) kept trying even when publishers rejected her novel.

单选题The fact that blind people can "see" things using other parts of their bodies apart from their eyes may help us to understand our feelings about color. If they can (1) color differences, then perhaps we, too, are affected by (2) unconsciously. Manufacturers have discovered by (3) that sugar sells badly in green wrappings, (4) blue foods are considered unpleasant, and the cosmetics should never be packaged (5) brown. These discoveries have grown (6) a whole discipline of color psychology that now finds (7) in everything from fashion to interior decoration. Some of our (8) are clearly psychological. Dark blue is the color of the night sky and (9) associated with passivity and calm, while yellow is a day color with (10) of energy and incentive. For primitive man, activity during the day (11) hunting and attacking, while he soon saw as red, the color of blood and rage and the heat that came (12) effort. And green is associated with passive (13) and self preservation. Experiments have (14) that green, partly bemuse of its physiological associations, also has a direct psychological (15) , it is a calming color. (16) its exciting connotations, red was chosen as the signal for changer, (17) closer analysis shows that a vivid yellow can produce a (18) basic state of alertness and (19) , so fire engines and ambulances in some advanced communities are now (20) around in bright yellow colors that stop the traffic dead.

单选题The expression "the LDP mandarins" (Paragraph 4) most probably means ______.

单选题Modern liberal opinion is sensitive to problems of restriction of freedom and abuse of power. (1) , many hold that a man can be injured only by violating his will, but this view is much too (2) . It fails to (3) the great dangers we shall face in the (4) of biomedical technology that stems from an excess of freedom, from the unrestrained (5) of will. In my view, our greatest problems will be voluntary self-degradation, or willing dehumanization, as is the unintended yet often inescapable consequence of sternly and successfully pursuing our humanization (6) . Certain (7) and perfected medical technologies have already had some dehumanizing consequences. Improved methods of resuscitation have made (8) heroic efforts to "save" the severely ill and injured. Yet these efforts are sometimes only partly successful: They may succeed in (9) individuals, but these individuals may have sever brain damage and be capable of only a less-than-human, vegetating (10) . Such patients have been (11) a death with dignity. Families are forced to bear the burden of a (12) "death watch". (13) the ordinary methods of treating disease and prolonging life have changed the (14) in which men die. Fewer and fewer people die in the familiar surroundings of home or in the (15) of family and friends. This loneliness, (16) , is not confined to the dying patient in the hospital bed. As a group, the elderly are the most alienated members of our society: Not yet (17) the world of the dead, not deemed fit for the world of the living, they are shunted (18) . We have learned how to increase their years, (19) we have not learned how to help them enjoy their days. Yet we continue to bravely and feverishly push back the frontiers (20) death.

单选题The phrase "global cuisine" (Line 6, Paragraph 4) probably means

单选题"I was a lover, before this war." Those are the fast words sung on TV on the Radio's "Return to Cookie Mountain," one of the most widely praised albums of 2006. Whatever the line means within the band's cryptic lyrics, it could also apply to the past year's popular music. Thoughts of romance, vice and comfort still dominated the charts and the airwaves. But amid the entertainment, songwriters— including some aiming for the Top 10—were also grappling with a war that wouldn't go away. Pop's political consciousness rises in every election year, and much as it became clear in November that voters are tired of war, music in 2006 also reflected battle fatigue. Beyond typical wartime attitudes of belligerence, protest and yearning for peace, in 2006 pop moved toward something different: a mood somewhere between resignation and a siege mentality. Songs that touched on the war in 2006 were suffused with the mournful and resentful knowledge that—s Nell Young titled the album he made and rush-released in the spring—we are "Living With War," and will be for some time. Awareness of the war throbs like a chronic headache behind more pleasant distractions. The cultural response to war in Iraq and the war on terrorism—one protracted, the other possibly endless—doesn't have an exact historical parallel. Unlike World War Ⅱ, the current situation has brought little national unity; unlike the Vietnam era, ours has no appreciable domestic support for America's opponents. Iraq may be mining into a quagmire and civil war like Vietnam, but the current war has not inspired talk of generation wide rebellion (,perhaps because there's no draft m pit young against old) or any colorful, psychedelically defiant counterculture. The war songs of the 21st century have been sober and earnest, pragmatic rather than fanciful. Immediate responses to 9/11 and to the invasion of Iraq arrived along familiar lines. There was anger and saber-rattling at first, particularly in country music: the Dixie Chicks' career was upended in 2003 when Natalie Maines disparaged the president on the eve of the Iraq invasion. There were folky protest songs about weapons and oil profiteering, like "The Price of Oil" by Billy Bragg; in a 21st-century touch, there were denunciations of news media complicity from songwriters as varied as Merle Haggard, Nellie McKay and the punk-rock band Anti-Flag. Rappers, who were already slinging war metaphors for everything from rhyme battles to tales of drag-dealing crime soldiers, soon exploited the multitude of rhymes for Iraq. while some. like Eminem and OutKast, also bluntly attacked the president and the war. In 2006 songwriters who Usually stick to love songs found themselves paying attention to the war as well. "A new year, a new enemy/another soldier gone to war," John Legend sings in "Coming Home," the song that ends his 2006 album, "Once Again." it's a soldier's letter home, wondering if his gtrlfriend still cares. "It seems the wars will never end. but we'll make it home again," Mr. Legend croons, more wishful than confident.

单选题It can be inferred from the text that many employers

单选题After yuppies and dinkies, a new creature from adland stalks the block. The NYLON. an acronym linking New York and London, is a refinement of those more familiar categories such as jet-setters and cosmocrats (cosmopolitan aristocrats...do keep up). Marketing professionals have noted that (1) the demise of Concorde, a new class of high-earner increasingly (2) his or her time shuttling (3) the twin capitals of globalisation And NYLONS prefer their home comforts (4) tap in both cities. Despite the impressive (5) of air miles, they are not adventurous people. As (6) from Tom Wolfe's Masters of the Universe of the 1980s. NYLONS have done more than well (7) the long boom and new economy of the last ten years. They are DJs. chefs, games designers. Internet entrepreneurs, fashionistas, publishers and even a (8) band of journalists and writers. They are self-consciously trendy and some are even able to (9) houses in both cities. Others will put up. (10) a house in one. and a view (11) a room m the (12) . Of course, their horizons do (13) beyond just New York and London. For many. Los Angeles is an important shopping mall. More significantly for adland, NYLONS provide some useful marketing savings. Campaigns no longer have to differ very much in the two Cities, (14) NYLONS bring them ever closer together. The restaurants are the same, with Nobu now in London and Conran in New York. Many plays (15) in both cities at the same time. and DJs shuttle between the two. (16) the same garage to the same people in (17) clubs. Time Out and Wallpaper are the magazines of (18) . All this is fine for NYLONS. But not so much (19) for everybody else watching Notting Hill turn (20) a pale imitation of Greenwich Village.

单选题Credibility about messages is high, because they are reported in independent media. A newspaper review of a movie has more believability than an ad in the same paper, because the reader associates independence with objectivity. Similarly, people are more likely to pay attention to news reports than ads. Readers spend time reading the stories, but they flip through the ads. Furthermore, there may be 10 commercials during a half-hour television program or hundreds of ads in a magazine. Feature stories are much fewer in number and stand out clearly. Publicity also has some significant limitations. A firm has little control over messages, their timing, their placement, or their coverage by a given medium. It may issue detailed news releases and find only portions cited by the media; and media have the ability to be much more critical than a company would like. For example, in 1982, Proctrer Gamble faced a substantial publicity problem over the meaning of its 123-year-old company logo. A few ministers and other private citizens believed that the symbol was sacrilegious. These beliefs were covered extensively by the media and resulted in the firm receiving 15,000 phone calls about the rumor in June alone. To combat this negative publicity, the firm issued news releases featuring prominent clergy that refuted the rumors, threatened to sue those people spreading the stories, and had a spokesperson appear on Good Morning America. The media cooperated with the company and the false rumor were temporarily put to rest. However, in 1985, negative publicity became so disruptive that Procter Gamble decided to remove the logo from its products. A firm may want publicity during certain periods, such as when a new product is introduced or new store opened, but the media may not cover the introduction or opening until after the time it would aid the firm. Similarly, media determine the placement of a story; it may follow a report on crime or sports. Finally, the media ascertain whether to cover a story at all and the amount of coverage to be devoted to it. A company-sponsored jobs program might go unreported or receive three-sentence coverage in a local newspaper.

单选题"The essential qualities of a true Pan-Americanism", remarked Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, "must be the same as those which constitute a good neighbour, namely mutual understanding and... a sympathetic appreciation of the other's point of view." That is advice which the United States would do well to heed in its relations with its immediate neighbours, Canada and Mexico. Most Americans may not be aware of it, but frustrations and resentments are building just across their borders to both south and north. Of course, neighbourly ties in North America are closer than in Roosevelt's day. Under the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA), trade among the three countries has more than doubled since 1994 and cross-border investment climbed even faster. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, the United States moved quickly to sign "smart border" agreements with both Canada and Mexico, to try to ensure that the demands of security did not interrupt trade. By the standards of much of the 20th century, political ties between the United States and Mexico are warm. Yet go to either border and you wouldn't know all this. Fed up with the flow of illegal migrants from thc south, the governors of Arizona and New Mexico this month declared a state of emergency. Violence between drug gangs recently led the United States temporarily to close its consulate in Nuevo Laredo, the busiest border-crossing point. The American ambassador bluntly criticises Mexico for its failure to prevent drug-related violence along the border. That has prompted retaliatory verbal blasts from Mexican officials. Canada's mood is not much more cordial. Since September 11th, Canadians and Americans alike have become less keen on popping over what they liked to call "the world's longest undefended border" for shopping or recreation. Canadians increasingly disagree with Americans over matters as varied as the Iraq war and gay marriage. They are disillusioned with NAFTA, claiming it has failed to prevent the United States from unlawfully punishing their exports of, for example, lumber. So what? Friction is in the nature of international relations, and the problems on the northern border are different from those in the south. Yet there is a common denominator. Americans tend to see security, migration, drugs, even trade, as domestic political issues. But so they are for Canada and Mexico too. Like it or not, Americans rely on their neighbours for prosperity, energy and help with security. It behoves all three countries to show some "sympathetic understanding".