单选题The view from the top of the luxurious Morgan Centre down onto Beijing's Olympic Green is breath-taking, There, far below, lies the stunning" bird nest" Olympic Stadium. Right next to it is the equally mesmerizing National Aquatics Center, known as the Water Cube. The Aquatics Center poses one critical question: where will all the water to fill this bold but massive architectural masterpiece" and to supply the Games" come from? One can drive a hundred miles in any direction from Beijing and never cross a healthy river. Heading north to Shanxi province, one passes river after river that has dried up. And in 80 percent of those Shanxi rivers that ale still flowing, water quality is" unfit for human contact" or for agricultural or industrial use. As you drive south across Hebei and Henan provinces, the situation is no better. Reaching the famed Marco Polo Bridge over the Yongding River, we crossed our first parched(干裂的) riverbed. From there to the Yellow River, we traversed many legendary rivers that show as blue lines on the map; all of them are now almost bone dry. All that remains to memorialize these watercourses are highway bridges, left behind like vestigial organs. The Yellow River itself, once known as" China’s Sorrow" because of its natural tendency to flood, killing millions, has in Henan been reduced to a modest-size channel. At its lower reaches in Shandong, it is not uncommon for the river to cease flowing into the Bohai Sea altogether. What is the answer for the 250 million thirsty people who live on the North China Plain? Drought has forced farmers to turn to groundwater. But over extraction has caused water tables to fall by as much as 10 feet a year. Desperate officials have taken to making substantial investments in" precipitation-inducement (引导水分凝结) technologies," or cloud seeding. Using aircraft, meteorological balloons and even rockets and artillery shells, they’ve been attempting to shoot passing clouds full of rainmaking chemicals. The China Meteorological Administration reports that hundreds of aircraft and thousands of rockets and shells are used each year in the effort. Such campaigns have been only modestly successful and have created tensions between different localities, each claiming that clouds are being" intercepted" upwind by the other and their precious moisture stolen! Then there is the monumental South-North Water Transfer Project. But some environmentalists fear that shifting the increasingly polluted water of the Yangtze northward will also introduce a whole host of new toxic pollutants to the breadbasket of China. No one knows what the consequences of all these Promethean(独创的) efforts will be. In the truly magnificent facilities being built for the Olympics, one can see a dear manifestation of this understandable urge to restore Chinese greatness. The question is whether China’s limited natural-resource base can sustain the magnitude of such an ambition. With water, the country is confronting the edge of one very inflexible environmental envelope. Beijing's glorious Water Cube is a symbol both of China’s remarkable accomplishments, and its all-too-pressing limits.

单选题The views of Alan Milburn and David Culter on the reforms of health-care systems are

单选题We are often cheated by some words in that______

单选题From the 18th through the mid-19th century, whale oil provided light to much of the Western world. At its peak, whaling employed 70,000 people and was the United States' fifth-largest industry. The U. S. stood as the world's foremost whale slayer. Producing millions of gallons of oil each year, the industry was widely seen as unassailable, with advocates scoffing at would-be illumination substitutes like. lard oil and camphene. Without whale oil, so the thinking went, the world would slide backward toward darkness. By today's standard, of course, slaughtering whales is considered barbaric. Two hundred years ago there was no environmental movement to speak of. But one wonders if the whalers, finding that each year they needed to go farther afield from Nantucket Island to kill massive sea mammals, ever asked themselves: what will happen when we run out of whales? Such questions today constitute the cornerstone of the ever-louder logic of sustainability. Climate alarmists and campaigning environmentalists argue that the industrialized countries of the world have made sizable withdrawals on nature's fixed allowance, and unless we change our ways, and soon, we are doomed to an abrupt end. Take the recent proclamation from the United Nations Environment Program, which argued that governments should dramatically cut back on the use of resources. The mantra has become commonplace: our current way of living is selfish and unsustainable. We are wrecking the world. We are cutting down the rainforest. We are polluting the water. We are polluting the air. We are killing plants and animals, destroying the ozone layer, burning the world through our addiction to fossil fuels, and leaving a devastated planet for future generations. In other words, humanity is doomed. It is a compelling story, no doubt. It is also fundamentally wrong, and the consequences are severe. Tragically, exaggerated environmental worries—and the willingness of so many to believe them—could ultimately prevent us from finding smarter ways to actually help our planet and ensure the health of the environment for future generations. Because, our fears notwithstanding, we actually get smarter. Although Westerners were once reliant on whale oil for lighting, we never actually ran out of whales. Why? High demand and rising prices for whale oil spurred a search for and investment in the 19th-century version of alternative energy. First, kerosene from petroleum replaced whale oil. We didn't run out of kerosene, either: electricity supplanted, it because it was a superior way to light our planet. For generations, we have consistently underestimated our capacity for innovation. There was a time when we worried that all of London would be covered with horse manure because of the increasing use of horse-drawn carriages. Thanks to the invention of the car, London has 7 million inhabitants today. Dung disaster averted. In fact, would-be catastrophes have regularly been pushed aside throughout human history, and so often because of innovation and technological development. We never just continue to do the same old thing. We innovate and avoid the anticipated problems.

单选题Britain's undeclared general election campaign has already seen the politicians trading numbers as boxers trade punches. There is nothing new in such statistical slanging matches (相互谩骂). What is new is an underestimation of worry about what has been happening to official statistics under the Labour government. One of the most important figures for Gordon Brown when presenting his pre-election budget on March 16th was the current-budget balance. This is the gap between current revenues and current spending. It matters to the chancellor of the exchequer(财政部长) because he is committed to meeting his own "golden rule" of borrowing only to invest, so he has to ensure that the current budget is in balance or surplus over the economic cycle. Mr. Brown told MPs that he would meet the golden rule for the current cycle with & 6 billion ( $11.4 billion) to spare--a respectable-sounding margin, though much less than in the past. However, the margin would have been halved but for an obscure technical change announced in February by the Office for National Statistics to the figures for road maintenance of major highways. The ONS said that the revision was necessary because it had been double-counting this spending within the current budget. If this were an isolated incident, then it might be disregarded. But it is not the first time that the ONS has made decisions that appear rather convenient for the government. Mr. Brown aims to meet another fiscal rule, namely to keep pubic net debt below 40% of GDP, again over the economic cycle. At present he is meeting it but his comfort room would be reduced if the & 21 billion borrowings of Network Rail were included as part of public debt. They are not thanks to a controversial decision by the ONS to classify the rail-infrastructure corporation within the private sector, even though the National Audit Office, Parliament's watchdog, said its borrowings were in fact government liabilities. This makes it particularly worrying that the official figures can show one thing, whereas the public experiences another. One of the highest-profile targets for the NHS is that no patient should spend more than four hours in a hospital accident and emergency department. Government figures show that by mid-2004, the target was being met for 96% of patients. But according to a survey of 55,000 patients by the Healthcare Commission, an independent body, only 77% of patients said they stayed no more than four hours in A&E. One way to help restore public confidence in official statistics would be to make the ONS independent, as the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have suggested. Another would be for the National Audit Office to assess how the government has been performing against targets, as the Public Administration Committee has recommended.

单选题Here I want to try to give you an answer to the question: What personal qualities are desirable in a teacher? Probably no two people would (1) exactly similar lists, but I think the following would be generally (2) . First, the teacher's personality should be pleasantly (3) and attractive. This does not rule out people who are physically (4) , or even ugly, because many such have great personal (5) But it (6) rule out such types as the (7) , melancholy, frigid, sarcastic, frustrated, and overbearing: I would say too, that it (8) all of dull or purely negative personality. Secondly, it is not merely desirable (9) essential for a teacher to have a genuine (10) for sympathy—a capacity to tune (11) to the minds and feelings of other people, especially, to the minds and feelings of children. (12) related with this is the capacity to be (13) —not, indeed, of what is wrong, but of the frailty (意志薄弱) and immaturity of human nature which (14) people, and again especially children, to make mistakes. Thirdly, I (15) it essential for a teacher to be both intellectually and morally honest. This does not mean being a saint. It means that he will be aware of his intellectual strength, and (16) , and will have thought about and decided upon the moral principles by which his life shall be (17) There is no contradiction in my going on to say that a teacher should be a (18) of an actor. That is part of the technique of teaching, which demands that every now and then a teacher should be able to (19) an act—to enliven a lesson, correct a fault, or (20) praise. Children, especially young children, live in a world that is rather larger than life.

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}} Fortunately there are still a few tasty things for us gourmands to enjoy in relative security. Their numbers, however, are depleted almost daily. It seems, by ruthless proclamations from the ever-vigilant Food and Drug Administration and its allies, our doctors. The latest felon to face prosecution is the salt of life, sodium chloride. Ostensibly, overuse of salt muses high blood pressure and hypertension, the cause of half the deaths in the United States every year. A few years ago the anti-salt campaigners raised such a rumpus that salt was banned from baby food. Currently pressure is being applied to food manufacturers to oblige them to label their products to show sodium content. Bemuse doing so would cost mercenary manufacturers money, they argue that they have no idea how much salt remains on such things as potato chips and how much sticks to the bag. Furthermore, salt isn't the only harmful ingredient in food. If the manufacturer has to provide sodium content, why not require him to list every ingredient and specify which are detrimental to our health? Cigarettes have a warning printed on them. Shouldn't the same type of warning appear on canned foods that are notoriously over-salted? There are endless ifs and buts in the controversy, but the most telling of these is the questionable proof of salt' s diabolic effect upon blood pressure. True, people who cut their salt intake lowered their blood pressure, but where is the scientific proof that something other than salt didn't do the trick? The most common means of providing dubious proof that salt causes hyper tension is to compare societies that use little salt with those that use mountains of salt in their daily diets. Which group has the higher rate of hypertension? Whose blood pressure is lower? What happens when salt is introduced into a group where salt is a novelty? Does the blood pressure rise significantly? Studies of the Japanese indicate that as the world's greatest salters, they suffer the most from hypertension. On the other hand, the simple, salt-free cuisine of several tribes in the Solomon Islands has kept older tribesmen and women from developing hypertension and high blood pressure, ailments traditionally killing their peers in America. No account is taken of the effects of inflation, recession, pollution, crime, and sundry other ills to which Americans unlike people on primitive islands, are exposed. To salt or not to salt? That is the question. Now that the question has arisen, it must not be treated with levity but, rather, with searching scientific investigation so that those of us who are preoccupied with both savory food and longevity may decide which of the two is worth its salt.

单选题 Most young people enjoy some form of physical activity. It may be a game of some{{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}-football, hockey, golf, or tennis. It may be mountaineering. Those who have a(n){{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}for climbing mountains are often {{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}with astonishment. Why are men and women willing to {{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}cold and hardship, and to take risks in high mountains? This astonishment is caused, {{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}}, by the difference between mountaineering and other forms of activity. Mountaineering is a sport and not a game. There are no man-made rules, {{U}} {{U}} 6 {{/U}} {{/U}}there are for such games as golf and football. There are, {{U}} {{U}} 7 {{/U}} {{/U}}, rules of a different kind which it would be dangerous to {{U}} {{U}} 8 {{/U}} {{/U}}, but it is this freedom from man-made rules that makes mountaineering {{U}} {{U}} 9 {{/U}} {{/U}}to many people. Those who climb mountains are {{U}} {{U}} 10 {{/U}} {{/U}}to use their own methods. If we compare mountaineering and other more {{U}} {{U}} 11 {{/U}} {{/U}}sports, we might think that one big {{U}} {{U}} 12 {{/U}} {{/U}}is that mountaineering is not a "team game". We should be mistaken {{U}} {{U}} 13 {{/U}} {{/U}}this. There are, it is true, no "matches" between "teams" of climbers, but when climbers are on a rock face {{U}} {{U}} 14 {{/U}} {{/U}}by a rope on which their lives may depend, there is {{U}} {{U}} 15 {{/U}} {{/U}}teamwork. The mountain climber knows that he may have to {{U}} {{U}} 16 {{/U}} {{/U}}forces that are stronger and more powerful than man. His sport requires high mental and physical {{U}} {{U}} 17 {{/U}} {{/U}}. A skier is probably past his {{U}} {{U}} 18 {{/U}} {{/U}}by the age of thirty, and most international tennis champions are in their early twenties. But it is not {{U}} {{U}} 19 {{/U}} {{/U}}for men of fifty or sixty to climb the highest mountains in the Alps. They may take more time than younger men, but they probably climb with more skill and less {{U}} {{U}} 20 {{/U}} {{/U}}of effort, and they certainly experience equal enjoyment.

单选题It is incongruous that the number of British institutions offering MBA courses should have grown by 254 percent during a period when the economy has been sliding into deeper recession. Optimists, or those given to speed, assumptions, might think it marvelous to have such a resource of business school graduates ready for the recovery. Unfortunately, there is now much doubt about the value of the degree not least among MBA graduates themselves, suffering as they are from the effects of recession and facing the prospect of shrinking management structures. What was taken some years ago as a ticket of certain admission to success is now being exposed to the scrutiny of cost-conscious employers who seek "can-dos" rather than "might-dos", and who feel that academia bas not been sufficiently appreciative of the needs of industry or of the employers' possible contribution. It is curious, given the name of the degree, that there should be no league table for UK business schools; no unanimity about what the degree should encompass; and no agreed system of accreditation. Su rely there is something wrong. One wonders where all the tutors for this massive infusion of business expertise came from and why all this mushrooming took place. Perhaps companies that made large investments would have been wiser to invest in already existing managers, perched anxiously on their own internal ladders The Institute of Management's 1992 survey, which revealed that eighty-one per cent of managers thought they personally would be more effective if they received more training, suggests that this might be the case. There is, too, the fact that training alone does not make successful managers. They need the inherent qualifications. Of character; a degree of self-subjugation; and above all, the ability to communicate and lead; more so now, when empowerment is a buzzword that is at least generating genuflexions, if not total conviction. One can easily think of people, some comparatively unlettered, who are not lauded captains of industry. We may, therefore, not need to be too concerned about the fall in applications for business school places, or even the doubt about MBAs. The proliferation and subsequent questioning may have been an inevitable evolution. If the Management Charter Initiative, now exploring the introduction of a senior management qualification, is successful, there will be a powerful corrective. We believe now that management is all about change. One hopes there will be some of that in relationship between management and science within industry, currently causing concern and which is overdue for attention. No-one doubts that we need more scientists and innovation to give us an edge in an increasingly competitive world. If scientists feel themselves undervalued and under-used, working in industrial ghettos, that is not a promising augury for the future. It seems we have to resolve these misapprehensions between science and. industry. Above all, we have to make sure that management is not itself smug about its status and that it does not issue mission statements about communication without realizing that the essence of it is a dialogue. More empowerment is required and we should strive to achieve it.

单选题For college students and their parents, the steady high tuition prices in recent decades has been not only troubling but mysterious: why on earth is tuition inflation double the general inflation rate? What"s behind these huge tuition bills: Less public funding? The cost of acquiring real estate? Over the last two decades, colleges and universities doubled their full-time support staff while enrollment increased only 40 percent, according to a new analysis of government data by the Center for College Afford-ability and Productivity. During the same period, the staff of full-time instructors, or equivalent personnel, rose about 50 percent, while the number of managers increased slightly more than 50 percent. The data, based on United States Department of Education filings from more than 2,782 colleges, come from 1987 to 2007. Neither the report nor outside experts on college affordability went so far as to argue that the increase in support staff was directly responsible for spiraling tuition. Most experts say that the largest driver of tuition increases has been the decline in state financing for higher eduction. Still, the data findings raise concerns about administrative bloat (膨胀). "On a case-by-case basis, many of these hiring decisions might be good ones, but over all, it"s not a sustainable trend," said Pat Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. The growth in support staff included some jobs that did not exist 20 years ago, like environmental sustainability officers and a broad array of information technology workers. The support staff category includes many different jobs, like residential-life staff, admissions and recruitment officers, fund-raisers, loan counselors and all the back-office staff positions responsible for complying with the new regulations. "A lot of it is definitely trying to keep up with the Joneses," said Daniel Bennett, a labor economist, "Universities and colleges are catering more to students, trying to make college a lifestyle, not just people getting an education. There"s more social programs, more athletics, more trainers, more sustainable environmental programs." In the 20-year period, the report found, the greatest number of jobs added, more than 630,000, were instructors—but three-quarters of those were part-time. Converted to full-time equivalents, those resulted in a total of 939,000 teaching jobs, up from 641,000 in 1987. "Colleges have altered the composition of their work force by steadily increasing the number of managerial positions and support or service staff, while at the same time disproportionately increasing the number of part-time staff that provides instruction," the report said, "meanwhile, employee productivity relative to enrollment and degrees awarded has been relatively flat in the midst of rising compensation."