单选题The U. S. intelligence community and the Clinton Administration think that______

单选题What equipment on a ship was made from hemp?

单选题According to the passage the cable network Home Box Office ______.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} In a new list of the most powerful gay men and women in the country, out magazine has lots of household names at the top. But high among the rich and famous is Tim Gill. Huh? Who is he, and why is he ranked as the fourth most powerful gay person in the country? Gill is a 53-year-old snowboarder, retired computer programmer and multimillionaire. He made his fortune by founding Quark, the pioneering desktop publishing software company. After selling the firm, he started the Gill Foundation, which has invested $110 million nationwide in gay causes over the past decade. The Gill Action Fund threw $15 million into a dozen states during the 2006 midterm elections, targeting 70 politicians regarded as unhelpful to gay causes: 50 went down. And the fund is helping transform the political face of Colorado. In 2004, Gill's money helped send Democrat Ken Salazar to the U.S. Senate. His dollars have also helped put Democrats in control of the Colorado legislature for the fast time in four decades. That could have an impact on the fate of the Two Parent Adoption Bill, currently being considered by Colorado legislators, which would allow gay couples to adopt. The proposal was rejected twice before, but that was before the statehouse switched from red to blue. Now Colorado Democrats have passed the bill in the House and expect it to pass the Senate. Impatient with the lack of gay rights progress this past decade, Gill is pushing hard to end injustice and inequality by the end of the next decade. And recognizing that most anti-gay initiatives are born at the state level, Gill has developed a national political strategy based on successes in Colorado. They've taken an in-state model and applied it to the entire country. Gill and his people are incredibly strategic. They put their funding where they can take control of legislatures. They're putting them brilliantly in legislative environments where a few seats changing will change the entire control of a state. While Gill has recently opened a Washington office, his representatives, in keeping with past strategy, insist that no individual political targets have yet been chosen for 2008. Another formidable element of Gill's power is his network of deep-pocketed allies in the mountain states. An hour south of Laramie, in Ft. Collins, lives medical equipment heiress Pat Stryker, who is, along with Gill (Actually Stryker is a billionaire; her brother Jon is gay and both give generously to gay causes.) What he has are extremely wealthy individuals who aren't personally interested in running for anything but have this tremendous passion. Tim Gill is actually changing the political landscape.

单选题For years Internet merchants have poured millions of dollars into new technologies to make their sites easier to use. So why aren't online customers happier? Customer satisfaction levels have remained almost flat through the last several years. The problem, according to Larry Freed, chief executive of a consulting and research firm called ForeSee Results, is not so much that consumers have ignored the many improvements made in recent years. Rather, he said, they still expect more from Internet shopping than it has delivered. "If we walk into a local store, we don't expect that experience to be better than it was a couple years ago," Mr. Freed said. "But we expect sites to be better. The bar goes up every year. " In ForeSee's latest survey, released last month, just five e-commerce sites registered scores higher than 80 out of 100, and no site scored higher than 85. It was much the same story a year ago, when just five scored higher than 80, with no site surpassing 85. "Scores have inched up over time for the best e-commerce companies, but the overall numbers haven't moved drastically," Mr. Freed said. "At the same time though, if you don't do anything you see your scores drop steadily. " That dynamic has been a challenge for online merchants and investors, who a decade ago envisioned Internet stores as relatively inexpensive (and therefore extremely profitable) operations. Now some observers predict a future where online retailers will essentially adopt something like the QVC model, with sales staff pitching the site's merchandise with polished video presentations, produced in a high-tech television studio. QVC.com is evolving in that direction. The Web site, which sold more than $1 billion in merchandise in 2006, has for the last five years let visitors watch a live feed of the network's broadcast. But in recent months, QVC.com has also given visitors the chance to watch archives of entire shows, and in the coming months visitors will be able to find more video segments from recent shows, featuring individual products that remain in stock. Bob Myers, senior vice president of QVC.com, said the Web site's video salesmanship is especially effective when combined with detailed product information, customer reviews and multiple photographs. About eight months ago, for instance, a customer said that she could not determine the size of a handbag from the photographs on the site because she could not tell the height of the model who was holding it. Within two weeks the site tested and introduced a new system, showing the bags with women of three different heights. The results were immediate: women who saw the new photographs bought the bags at least 10 percent more frequently than those who had not. Still, Mr. Myers said, video is a critically important element to sales. "E-commerce started with television commerce," he said. "The sites who engage and entertain customers will be winning here in the near future. " Such a prospect is not necessarily daunting to other e-commerce executives. Gordon Magee, head of Internet marketing for Drs. Foster & Smith, based in a Rhinelander, Wis. , said a transition to video "will be seamless for us. " The company, Mr. Magee said, has in recent weeks discussed putting some of its product on video "so customers could see a 360-degree view they don't have to manipulate themselves. /

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} In a science-fiction movie called "Species", a mysterious signal from outer space turns out to describe the genome of an unknown organism. When the inevitable mad scientist synthesizes the DNA described by the instructions, the creature he breeds from it turns out to resemble Natasha Henstridge, an athletic actress. Unfortunately, the alien harbors within her delicate form the destructive powers of a Panzer division, and it all ends badly for the rash geneticist and his laboratory. Glen Evans, chief executive of Egea Biosciences in San Diego, California, acknowledges regretfully that despite seeking his expert opinion--in return for which he was presented with the poster of the striking Mr Henstridge that hangs on his office wall--the producers of "Species" did not {{U}}hew very closely to{{/U}} his suggestions about the feasibility of their script ideas. Still, they had come to the right man. Dr Evans believes that his firm will soon be able to create, if not an alien succubus, at least a tiny biological machine made of artificial proteins that could mimic the behavior of a living cell. Making such proteins will require the ability to synthesize long stretches of DNA. Existing technology for synthesizing DNA can manage to make genes that encode a few dozen amino acids, but this is too short to produce any interesting proteins. Egea's technology, by contrast, would allow biologists to manufacture genes wholesale. The firm's scientists can make genes long enough to encode 6,000 amino acids. They aim to synthesize a gene for 30,000 amino acids within two years. Using a library of the roughly 1,500 possible "motifs" or folds that a protein can adopt, Egea's scientists employ computers to design new proteins that are likely to have desirable shapes and properties. To synthesize the DNA that encodes these proteins, Egea uses a machine it has dubbed the "genewriter". Dr Evans likens this device to a word-processor for DNA, on which you can type in the sequence of letters defining a piece of DNA and get that molecule out. As Egea extends the length of DNA it can synthesize, Dr Evans envisages encoding not just proteins, but entire biochemical pathways, which are teams of proteins that conduct metabolic processes. A collection of such molecules could conceivably function as a miniature machine that would operate in the body and attack disease, just as the body's own defensive cells do. Perhaps Dr Evans and his colleagues ought to get in touch with their friends in Hollywood.

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/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}} In most parts of the world, climate change is a worrying subject. Not so in California. At a recent gathering of green LUMINARIES—in a film star' s house, naturally, for that is how seriousness is often established in Los Angeles—the dominant note was self-satisfaction, at what the state has already achieved. And perhaps nobody is more complacent than Arnold Schwarzenegger Unlike Al Gore, a presidential candidate turned prophet of environmental doom, California' s governor sounds cheerful when talking about climate change. As well he might: it has made his political career. Although California has long been an environmentally-conscious state, until recently greens were concerned above all with smog and redwood trees. "Coast of Dreams", Kevin Starr' s authoritative history of contemporary. California, published in 2004, does not mention climate change. In that year, though, the newly-elected Mr. Schwarzenegger made his first tentative call for western states to seek alternatives to fossil fuels. Gradually he noticed that his efforts to tackle climate change met with less resistance, and more acclaim, than just about all his other policies. These days it can seem as though he works on nothing else. Mr. Schwarzenegger' s transformation from screen warrior to eco-warrior was completed last year when he signed a bill imposing legally-enforceable limits on greenhouse—gas emissions—a first for America. Thanks mostly to its lack of c0al and heavy industry, California is a relatively clean state. If it were a country it would be the world' s eighth-biggest economy, but only its 16th-biggest polluter. Its big problem is transport—meaning, mostly, cars and trucks, which account for more than 40% of its greenhouse-gas emissions compared with 32% in America as a whole. The state wants to ratchet down emissions limits on new vehicles, beginning in 2009. Mr. Schwarzenegger has also ordered that, by 2020, vehicle fuel must produce 10% less carbon: in the production as well as the burning, so a simple switch to com-based ethanol is probably out. Thanks in part to California' s example, most of the western states have adopted climate action plans. When it comes to setting emission targets, the scene can resemble a posedown at a Mr. Olympia contest. Arizona' s climate-change scholars decided to set a target of cutting the state' s emissions to 2000 levels by 2020. But Janet Napolitano, the governor, was determined not to be out-muscled by California. She has declared that Arizona will try to return to 2000 emission levels by 2012. California has not just inspired other states; it has created a vanguard that ought to be able to prod the federal government into stronger national standards than it would otherwise consider. But California is finding it easier to export its policies than to put them into practice at home. In one way, California' s serf-confidence is fully justified. It has done more than any other state—let alone the federal government—to fix America' s attention on climate change. It has also made it seem as though the problem can be solved. Which is why failure would be such bad news. At the moment California is a beacon to other states. If it fails, It will become an excuse for inaction.

单选题The decline of PC market last year was triggered by______.

单选题For most companies today, getting into new markets with better, cheaper products, whether through an expansion or a new facility, is the sole objective. But (1) that, and doing it profitably means (2) and foremost knowing you will find the workforce. The current nearly eight-year-long economic (3) has sent unemployment levels in the U.S. to (4) lows. Indeed, according to a recent study, some 80 percent of metropolitan areas today have unemployment rates (5) 6 percent; communities with highly skilled workers are hovering in the 2 to 4 percent range. Also (6) for that labor are foreign companies that have been operating here and want to expand. (7) so many companies chasing the workforce, the (8) are high. The most important issue facing corporations is the (9) of qualified, entry-level labor at (10) wage rates. But getting large groups of existing employees to (11) to a new facility—50 or more people at a time—is (12) these days. There are so many other jobs to be had without moving. (13) , the newgeneration of 20-something workers is more interested in staying (14) to maintain lifestyle standard and roots. Finally, with so many more dual-income (15) , people are unwilling to (16) the family financial arrangement with a move. That means you're probably going to be (17) with the existing labor pool in your chosen location. (18) the number of people needed, the (19) of thumb is that for every one position you have to (20) , there should be 5 to 10 workers already in the area.

单选题Conservatism, George Will told me when I interviewed him many years ago, was rooted in reality. It started not from an imagined society but from the world as it actually exists. But conservatives now champion ideas drawn from abstract principles with little regard to the realities of America's present or past. This is a tragedy, because conservatism has an important role to play in modernizing the U. S. Consider the debates over the economy. The Republican prescription is to cut taxes and slash government spending, but what is the evidence that tax cuts are the best path to revive the U. S. economy? Taxes as a percentage of GDP are at their lowest level since 1950. The U. S. is among the lowest taxed of the big industrial economies. So the case that America is grinding to a halt because of high taxation is not based on facts but is simply a theoretical assertion. The rich countries that are in the best shape right now, with strong growth and low unemployment, are ones like Germany and Denmark, neither one characterized by low taxes. In fact, right now any discussion of government involvement in the economy—even to build vital infrastructure—is impossible because it is a cardinal tenet of the new conservatism that such involvement is always and forever bad. Meanwhile, across the globe, from Singapore to South Korea to Germany to Canada, evidence abounds that some strategic actions by the government can act as catalysts for free-market growth. Of course, American history suggests that as well. In the 1950s, '60s and '70s, the U.S. government made massive investments in science and technology, in state universities and in infant industries. Those investments triggered two generations of economic growth and put the U. S. on top of the world of technology and innovation. But that history has been forgotten. When considering health care, for example, Republicans confidently assert that their ideas will lower costs, when we simply do not have much evidence for this. What we do know is that of the world's richest countries, the U.S. has by far the greatest involvement of free markets and the private sector in health care. It also consumes the largest share of GDP, with no significant gains in health on any measurable outcome. We need more market mechanisms to cut medical costs, but Republicans don't bother to study existing health care systems anywhere else in the world. "I know it works in practice," the old saw goes, "but does it work in theory?" Conservatives used to be the ones with heads firmly based in reality. Their reforms were powerful because they used the market, streamlined government and empowered individuals. We need conservative ideas to modernize the U. S. economy and reform American government. But what we have instead are policies that don't reform but just cut and starve government—a strategy that pays little attention to history or best practices from around the world and is based instead on a theory.