单选题With the usual flood of immigrants from non-English-speaking countries, there comes a multi-cultural work force. Along with this diversity comes resentment felt by natives in the marketplace. Feelings of antagonism surface when accents are strong and foreign languages are used that some workers cannot understand. There is now a clash of forces in the workplace; the battle is centered on English-only policies. A growing number of workers are alleging discrimination on the basis of language. The federal law prohibiting job discrimination comes under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title Ⅶ), which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. National-origin discrimination makes it illegal to discriminate against an individual because of birthplace, ancestry, and culture or linguistic characteristics common to a specific ethnic group. A rule requiring that employees speak only English on the job may violate Title VII unless an employer shows that the requirement is necessary for conducting the business. If the employer believes such a rule is necessary, employees must be informed of when English is required and the consequences for violating the rule. Donna Fernandez, language rights attorney at the Employment Law Center of San Francisco, finds that language discrimination is very prevalent in the workplace. Fernandez states that the biases may include "English-only policies when the employee"s primary language is other than English" or "some people may be treated differently because they speak with an accent." It is illegal for an employer to discriminate against an employee because of language. However, the increase in language discrimination suits indicates that employers are treating employees speaking with an accent or in a foreign language differently. "Many companies don"t know they are breaking the law with the English-only policies," says Fernandez. The law in this area is still developing and many courts consider these policies to be a form of discrimination on the basis of race or national origin. (National origin refers to the country that a person, or that person"s ancestors, came from.) Employees can challenge a speak-English-only policy if: the rule is applied to employees who speak no English; they have difficulty speaking English; or the policy creates, or is part of, a work environment that is hostile toward national origin minority employees. An employer must show some "business necessity" for the policy. Even if there is a business need, the policy is still illegal if there are less discriminatory alternative to the policy. Sibylle Gruber, assistant professor of English at Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Ariz., finds that employees may feel they are viewed as less intelligent if they cannot speak English perfectly. "Workers may miss out on promotions to positions of authority if they can"t express themselves or communicate clearly," says Gruber. Often, there are subtle prejudices against some accents more than others. Speaking with a French or British accent is less frowned upon than a Spanish or Vietnamese accent. By not promoting employees because of an accent or language bias, a ghetto effect is created in the work force, keeping certain accents and immigrants in low-level positions.

单选题One of the many pleasures of watching Mad Men, a television drama about the advertising industry in the early 1960s, is examining the ways in which office life has changed over the years. One obvious change makes people feel good about themselves: they no longer treat women as second-class citizens. But the other obvious change makes them feel a bit more uneasy: they have lost the art of enjoying themselves at work. The ad-men in those days enjoyed simple pleasures. They puffed away at their desks. They drank throughout the day. They had affairs with their colleagues. They socialised not in order to bond, but in order to get drunk. Nowadays many companies are obsessed with fun. Software firms in Silicon Valley have installed rock-climbing walls in their reception areas and put inflatable animals in their offices. Wal-Mart orders its cashiers to smile at all and sundry. The cult of fun has spread like some disgusting haemorrhagic disease. This cult of fun is driven by three of the most popular management fads of the moment: empowerment, engagement and creativity. Many companies pride themselves on devolving power to front-line workers. But surveys show that only 20% of workers are" fully engaged with their job ". Even fewer are creative. Managers hope that " fun" will magically make workers more engaged and creative. But the problem is that as soon as fun becomes part of a corporate strategy it ceases to be fun and becomes its opposite—at best an empty shell and at worst a tiresome imposition. The most unpleasant thing about the fashion for fun is that it is mixed with a large dose of pressure. Boston Pizza encourages workers to send" golden bananas" to colleagues who are "having fun while being the best". Behind the" fun" there often lurks some crude management thinking: a desire to brand the company as better than its rivals, or a plan to boost productivity through team-building. Twitter even boasts that it has" worked hard to create an environment that spawns productivity and happiness". While imposing fake fun on their employees, companies are battling against the real thing. Many force smokers to huddle outside like furtive criminals. Few allow their employees to drink at lunch time, let alone earlier in the day. A regiment of busybodies— from lawyers to human resources functionaries—is waging war on office romance, particularly between people of different ranks. The merchants of fake fun have met some resistance. When Wal-Mart tried to impose alien rules on its German staff—such as compulsory smiling and a ban on affairs with coworkers—it touched off a guerrilla war that ended only when the supermarket chain announced it was pulling out of Germany in 2006. But such victories are rare. For most wage slaves forced to pretend they are having fun at work, the only relief is to poke fun at their tormentors. Mad Men reminds people of a world they have lost—a world where bosses did not tbink that"fun" was a management tool and where employees could happily quaff Scotch at noon. Cheers to that.

单选题According to this introduction, the best way to use this book is______.

单选题According to the text, which of the following is true of wages in southern cities in 1910?

单选题The word "precedent" ( Line 1, Para 4) probably refers to ______.

单选题"My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas." Many American school children are taught this sentence to help them remember the order of the planets of the solar system. Soon though, this may change because, on July 29th, a team of astronomers announced the discovery of a very distant celestial body larger than Pluto. The researchers claim that the new body—which they are informally calling Xena—should be classified as a planet. The new body—temporarily named 2003UB313—orbits the Sun once every 560 years. It is currently over 14 billion kilometres away, about three times farther out than Pluto, making it the most distant object ever discovered in the solar system. The researchers think it is part of the Kuiper belt, a ring of rocky objects that extends beyond Neptune. Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology, Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory and David Rabino witz of Yale University discovered the object in data recorded at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego in October 2003, but its motion did not become apparent until they reanalysed the data in January 2005. The question of whether or not the new body should be considered a planet has rekindled the debate over what exactly counts as a planet. A handful of objects of similar size to, but smaller than, Pluto have been discovered in the Kuiper belt over the past few years. These have not been considered planets, mainly because they were smaller than Pluto. But 2003UB313 is larger than Pluto. If Pluto is a planet, shouldn't it be as well? The case is not so clear cut. Many astronomers argue that Pluto should not be considered a planet. It is more like a large asteroid, they hold. Meanwhile, Dr. Brown asserts that as Pluto has historically been considered a planet, anything larger should also be considered one. Ultimately, the International Astronomical Union, a group of professional astronomers, will end this existential anxiety. Dr. Brown expects the process to take months, and the team is not allowed to reveal its suggested name until then. Since most Greek and Roman names have already been used, he and his colleagues have previously drawn upon Native American and Inuit mythology for names. He will only hint that the new name comes from a different tradition altogether. Time will tell whether mother wilt be serving "nine polished xylophones", "nine pizzas" or just "noodles".

单选题Psychotherapy for as long as nine months is significantly more effective than short-term treatment for alleviating depression associated with bipolar disease, new research suggests. The drugs used to treat depression are of limited use in treating the repeating depressive episodes of bipolar illness, according to background information in the article, published last week in The Archives of General Psychiatry. The researchers studied 293 patients with bipolar disease at 15 medical centers nationwide. They randomly assigned one group of 163 people to one of three kinds of psychotherapy consisting of up to 30 50-minute sessions over nine months. A second group of 130 patients was assigned to "collaborative care," three sessions over six weeks designed to offer a brief version of the most common psychological and behavioral strategies shown to be beneficial in bipolar illness. The participants, whose average age was 40, were followed for one year, and all were also being treated with mood-stabilizing medicines. Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on challenging and controlling negative thoughts. In interpersonal and social rhythm therapy, patients concentrate on stabilizing daily routines and resolving interpersonal problems. Family therapy engages family members to help solve problems related to the illness, like failing to take medication properly, and to reduce the number of negative family interactions. Therapists at each of the 15 medical centers received brief training in the therapies they administered. "The study included real-world patients experiencing the early phases of a depressive episode," said David J. Miklowitz, the study's lead author. "And the therapists who delivered the treatment were trained by experts in the field with low-intensity training, which is typical of what's available in real-life practice." Recovery rates after one year were a combined average of 64 percent for the intensive therapy groups, but only 52 percent for those who had brief therapy. In any given month, a patient undergoing longer-term therapy was more than one and a half times as likely to be well as one who had short-term treatment. Family therapy was slightly more effective than interpersonal or cognitive behavioral therapy, but the differences among the types of intensive treatment were not statistically significant. "This is a monumental study," said a professor of psychiatry who was not involved in the work. "There are no pharmaceutical companies willing to pay for research in psychotherapy, so we don't have many clinical trials." But, she added: "Psychosocial treatment for bipolar illness is not an alternative to medication. It's a supplement." The cost of long-term therapy is high, and insurance companies are reluctant to cover it. But according to the professor, the cost of not covering it could be higher. "It isn't just the cost of the therapy. It's the long-term cost. Bipolar illness has devastating effects on families as well as on the patients themselves./

单选题Both Jeff and Tom agree that

单选题Which of the following tasks is not stated as having formed part of the research?

单选题Dr. Faurie takes traditional societies as the subject of investigation because in them

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} You could say on the court, these are the best days in the history of NBA. So why isn't the world is singing the praise of the NBA? Why isn't today's NBA outperforming the NFL, NASCAR, and Major League of Baseball (MLB), all of which have been rocked by scandals large and small over the last few years? Simple Because today's NBA scares the white people. The NBA stands at the dead-center intersection of two rampant social dynamics: the ascendancy of hip-hop culture and 21st-centrury marketing's sworn duty to easily definable demographic group. Break yourself into generalized demographic qualities: gender, age, race, economic class. There is full range of music, TV shows, movies, and website explicitly designed to keep you warm and toasty in your comfort zone, free from sharp edges. The NBA as it stands today has plenty of sharp edges and has a serious image problem; more than any other sports. For years, whites make up a majority of fan base, blacks make up a majority of players. And those players have benefited from ever-upward-spiraling paychecks, they've exercised their influence' to shape the sight of the game around them in their own image. But the NBA is still all about improvisation, artistry, jazz, poetry on the way to and above the rim. And while we appreciated the artistry in and of itself, the fact that we can't do it puts many fans at some kind small, but measurable emotional distance from the game. For the white audience, the skill divide one thing. There always been players that could do things the rest of us couldn't. What's freaking white Americans out is the way NBA is embracing every element' of hip-hop culture--the music, the fashion, the attitude, everything... Many events, stories hurt NBA, cementing its lawless-blacks image in observers' minds. Referring to the word "thug", that's operative in short-handing the new NBA culture, as many observers noted. "Thug" was so-opted by black culture sometime during the Tupac Era. When people slag NBA' players as "thug", it's good bet they're not taking about Adam Morris or J. J. Redic. It's absolutely a racial tag. The NBA, more than any other sports entity, has potential to be a bridge between cultures, a way to bring both sides together in cheering some best athletes of any color. It's already produced Jordan, the most widely known athlete in history, and it's gaining ground fast on soccer as the world's best known sport. But it's fragile indeed, with fans in colors viewing basketball as a zero-sum game, where every stereotypically black or white culture apparently forces out it's ethic opposite. But with serious image problems, another slat falls out of the bridge. And it's not hard to imagine a time when nobody will be interested in crossing over.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Even before canaries (特高频噪声) were brought into coal mines to alert workers to the presence of poisonous gas, birds were giving us early warning calls signaling the Earth's deteriorating environmental health. Global bird populations have shrunk by up to 25% since preagricultural (农业社会前的) times. Over the past 300 years, farmland has expanded from six percent of the Earth's surface to nearly 33%. Today, three quarters of threatened bird species depend on forests as their principal habitat; each year, however, some 13,000,000 hectares of forests are destroyed, an area the size of Greece. Nearly half the woodlands lost are relatively undisturbed primary forests that are home to a number of sensitive birds and other creatures. Direct exploitation, including hunting for food and capture for the pet trade, is the second greatest danger after habitat loss, while next is the intentional or accidental introduction of non-native species. As people travel to all parts of the globe, so too do the pests and pets that prey on, out-compete, or alter the habitat of native wildlife. Pollution poses an additional risk, affecting 12% of the threatened bird species. In addition to direct poisoning from fertilizer and pesticide applications, runoff of chemicals contaminates the wetlands that migrating waterfowl rely on. Persistent organic pollutants accumulate in the food chain and can lead to deformities, reproductive failure, and disease in birds. Worldwide, one-third of plant and animal species could become extinct by 2050 as a result of climate change, a relatively new threat. Global temperature spikes have brought severe alterations to the migration, breeding, and habitat ranges of some birds. In addition to these looming dangers, seven percent of threatened bird species are at risk from incidental mortality. A rapid decline in seabird populations over the last 15 years corresponds with the growth in commercial longline fisheries. In Europe, Central Asia, and Africa, electrocution on power lines has caused the mass mortality of raptors. Moreover, countless birds die each year from collisions with windows, the number-one cause of U.S. avian mortality. If birds disappear, so do the economically valuable services they provide. Preventing the extinction of additional bird populations depends largely on protecting the world's remaining wild spaces and preserving the health of our natural and altered ecosystems. Reports that the ivory-billed woodpecker, long thought to be extinct, is still with us thrilled bird watchers and others, but this sort of second chance seldom occurs in nature. Even with continued habitat protection, once wildlife populations drop dramatically, a rebound is far from guaranteed. Without stabilizing climate and human numbers, putting fences around all the parks in the world will not lie enough to protect threatened species.