单选题There is growing interest in East Japan Railway Co. , one of the six companies, created out of the (1) national railway system. In an industry lacking exciting growth (2) , its plan to use real-estate assets in and around train stations (3) is drawing interest. In a plan dubbed "Station Renaissance" that it (4) in November, JR East said that it would (5) using its commercial spaces for shops and restaurants, extending them to (6) more suitable for the information age. It wants train stations as pick-up (7) for such goods, as books, flowers and groceries purchased (8) the Internet. In a country (9) urbanites depend heavily on trains (10) commuting, about 16 million people a day go to its train stations anyway, the company (11) . So, picking up purchases at train stations spare (12) extra travel and missed home deliveries. JR East already has been using its station (13) stores for this purpose, but it plans to create (14) spaces for the delivery of Internet goods. The company also plans to introduce (15) cards--known in Japan as IC cards because they use integrated (16) for holding information-- (17) train tickets and commuter passes (18) the magnetic ones used today, integrating them into a single pass. This will save the company money, because (19) for IC cards are much less expensive than magnetic systems. Increased use of IC cards should also (20) the space needed for ticket vending.

单选题We can learn from the first paragraph that in the world the scheme of tolling systems is

单选题For the first time in history more people live in towns than in the country. In Britain this has had a curious result. While polls show Britons rate "the countryside" alongside the royal family, Shakespeare and the National Health Service (NHS) as what makes them proudest of their country, this has limited political support. A century ago Octavia Hill launched the National Trust not to rescue stylish houses but to save "the beauty of natural places for everyone forever." It was specifically to provide city dwellers with spaces for leisure where they could experience "a refreshing air." Hill"s pressure later led to the creation of national parks and green belts. They don"t make countryside any more, and every year concrete consumes more of it. It needs constant guardianship. At the next election none of the big parties seem likely to endorse this sentiment. The Conservatives" planning reform explicitly gives rural development priority over conservation, even authorising "off-plan" building where local people might object. The concept of sustainable development has been defined as profitable. Labour likewise wants to discontinue local planning where councils oppose development. The Liberal Democrats are silent. Only Ukip, sensing its chance, has sided with those pleading for a more considered approach to using green land. Its Campaign to Protect Rural England struck terror into many local Conservative parties. The sensible place to build new houses, factories and offices is where people are, in cities and towns where infrastructure is in place. The London agents Stirling Ackroyd recently identified enough sites for half a million houses in the London area alone, with no intrusion on green belt. what is true of London is even truer of the provinces. The idea that "housing crisis" equals "concreted meadows" is pure lobby talk. The issue is not the need for more houses but, as always, where to put them. Under lobby pressure, George Osborne favours rural new-build against urban renovation and renewal. He favours out-of-town shopping sites against high streets. This is not a free market but a biased one. Rural towns and villages have grown and will always grow. They do so best where building sticks to their edges and respects their character. We do not ruin ur ban conservation areas. Why ruin rural ones? Development should be planned, not let rip. After the Netherlands, Britain is Europe"s most crowded country. Half a century of town and country planning has enabled it to retain an enviable rural coherence, while still permitting low-density urban living. There is no doubt of the alternative—the corrupted landscapes of southern Portugal, Spain or Ireland. Avoiding this rather than promoting it should unite the left and right of the political spectrum.

单选题Few insects have inspired as much fear and hatred as the diminutive fire ants, less than half an inch long but living in colonies of more than 250,000 others. Everyone in the southern United States gets to know fire ants sooner or later by painful experience. Fire ants live in large earthen mounds and are true social insects--that means they have a caste system ( division of labor), with a specialized caste that lays eggs (queen) and a worker caste of sterile females. There are several reasons that they are considered pests. About 60% of people living in areas where fire ants occur are stung every year. Of these, about 1% have some degree of allergic reaction ( called anaphylaxis) to the sting. Their large mounds are unsightly and can damage mowing equipment. Fire ants sometimes enter electrical and mechanical equipment and can short out switches or chew through insulation. Finally. as fire ants move into new areas, they reduce diversity of native ants and prey on larger animals such as ground-nesting birds and turtles. Even though fire ants are pests in many circumstances, they can actually be beneficial in others. There is evidence that their predatory activities can reduce the numbers of some other important pests. In cotton, for example, they prey on important pests that eat cotton plants such as bollworms and budworms. In Louisiana sugarcane, an insect called the sugarcane borer used to be a very important pest before fire ants arrived and began preying on it. Fire ants also prey on ticks and fleas. Whether fire ants are considered pest or not depend on where they are found, but one thing is sure—we had best get used to living with them. Eradication attempts in the 1960s and 1970s failed for a number of reasons, and scientists generally agree that complete elimination of fire ants from the United States is not possible. A new, long-term approach to reducing fire ant populations Involves classical biological control. When fire ants were accidentally brought to the United States, most of their parasites and diseases were not. Classical biological control involves identifying parasites and diseases specific to fire ants in South America, testing them to be sure that they don ' t attack or infect native plants or animals and establishing them in the Introduced fire ant population In the United States. Since fire ants are about 5 to 7 times more abundant here than in South America, scientists hope to reduce their numbers using this approach.

单选题Mountaineering is also a team sport because ______.

单选题Where did Robert Laurent learn to carve?

单选题What might the author think of Neville Rigby's comment?

单选题A class action lawsuit has been filed against a prominent Toronto doctor, by patients who allege he injected a banned substance into their faces for cosmetic purposes. The doctor had already been investigated more than three years ago for using the liquid silicone, a product not authorized for use in Canada. Some patients say they are now suffering health problems and think the liquid silicone may be to blame. One of those patients is Anna Barbiero. She says her Toronto dermatologist told her he was using liquid silicone to smooth out wrinkles. What she says he didn't tell her is that it isn't approved for use in Canada. "I didn't know what liquid silicone was and he just called it ' liquid gold' ," Barbiero remembers. After her last treatment, Anna discovered Dr. Sheldon Pollack had been ordered to stop using the silicone two years earlier by Health Canada. Experts say silicone can migrate through the body, and cause inflammation and deformities. "My upper lip is always numb and it burns," Barbiero says. Barbiero is spearheading a lawsuit against the doctor, who her lawyer thinks might involve up to 100 patients injected with the same material. "The fact, a physician of his stature would use an unauthorized product on a patient because he thought it was okay, is really very disturbing, "says lawyer Douglas Elliott. Ontario's College of Physicians and Surgeons (OCPS) is also investigating Dr. Pollack to see if, in fact, he continued to use the silicone after agreeing to stop and whether he wrote in patient records that he used another legal product when he had used silicone. However, in a letter to the College, Dr. Pollack wrote that he had always told patients that the silicone was not approved for sale in Canada, and had warned them of the risks. And in Barbiero's case, " ... at the time of her first visit, prior to her ever receiving IGLS treatment, I specifically informed her that the material was not approved for sale in Canada by the Health Protection Branch and that I did receive the material from outside the country... I would like to emphasize that, as is evident on Ms. Barbiero's chart, I drew a specific diagram on the chart which 1 carefully discussed with and explained to Ms. Barbiero as I do with every other patient to explain the nature and likelihood of possible complications and the reasons and consequences of those possible complications. " Dr. Pollack declined to speak to CTV News, or to have his lawyer discuss the case. None of the allegations have been proven in court. But the case raises questions about the ability of governing bodies to monitor doctors. "There's a larger message and that is. buyer beware," says Nancy Neilsen of Cosmetic Surgery Canada. "It's incumbent on consumers to do their research. /

单选题When they advise your kids to "get an education" if you want to raise your income, they tell you only half the truth. What they really mean is to get just enough education to provide manpower for your society, but not too much that prove an embarrassment to your society. Get high school diploma, at least. Without that, you are occupationally dead, unless your name happens to be George Bernard Shaw or Thomas Alva Edison and you can successfully drop out in grade school. Get a college degree, if possible. With a B.A., you are on the launching pad(发射台). But now you have to start to put on the brakes. If you go for a master's degree, make sure it is a M. B. A., and only from a first-rate university. Beyond this, the famous law of diminishing returns begins to take effect. Do you know, for instance, that long-haul truck drivers earn more a year than full professors? Yes, the average 1977 salary for those truckers was ＄24000, while the full professors managed to average just ＄23930. A Ph. D. is the highest degree you can get, but except in a few specialized fields such as physics or chemistry, where the degree can quickly be turned to industrial or commercial purposes, you are facing a dim future. There are more Ph. D.s unemployed or underemployed in this country than in any other part of the world by far. If you become a doctor of philosophy in English or history or anthropology or political science or language or—worst of all—in philosophy, you run the risk of becoming overeducated for our national demands. Not for our needs, mind you, but for our demands. Thousands of Ph. D. s are selling shoes, driving cabs, waiting on tables and filling out fruitless applications month after month. And then maybe taking a job in some high school or backwater college that pays much less than the janitor(看门人)earns. You can equate the level of income with the level of eduction only so far. Far enough, that is, to make you useful to the gross national product, but not so far that nobody can turn much of a profit on you.

单选题The word "substantially" (Para. 5, Line2) most likely means

单选题The road to controlling population growth in the 20th century was paved with good intentions and unpleasant policies that did not work, a new book argues an historian who grew up as the youngest of eight children might well be expected to approach the question of whether the world is overpopulated from an unusual angle. Matthew Connelly, a professor at Columbia University, dedicates his study of those who thought the planet had too many people and tried to do something about it to his parents, "for having so many children". Yet, he assures the reader, it Was not his personal experience of large families that drew him to the subject. Mr. Connelly's mentor, Paul Kennedy of Yale University, believed it was necessary to look beyond great-power rivalries to understand the post-cold-war era. In 1994 the pair wrote an article for Atlantic Mouthly arguing that population growth in poor countries, increasing awareness of global economic inequality and the prospect of mass migration could lead to clashes between the West and "the rest". When, years later, Mr. Connelly began his own book on population growth, he still thought of the topic as a way to offer a broader understanding of world security. He ended up writing a very different-and angry-book, one about people who looked at the human race reproducing itself and saw what a gardener sees when looking at a prize plant: something to be encouraged to bloom in some places and pruned in others. As the world population soared, the population controllers came to believe they were fighting a war, and there would be collateral damage. Millions of devices were exported to poor countries although they were known to cause infections and sterility. "Perhaps the individual patient is expendable in the general scheme of things," said a participant at a conference on the devices organized in 1962 by the Population Council, a research institute founded by John [D] Rockefeller, "particularly if the infection she acquires is sterilizing but not lethal. " Furthermore, statistical estimates suggest that as much as 90% of the reason that women have families of a particular size is simply because that is the number of children they want. Where women gained education and rights, birth rates fell. As with reproduction itself, for people to become less fruitful, desire must precede performance.

单选题Although there are many skillful Braille readers, thousands of other blind people find it difficult to learn that system. They are thereby shut (1) from the world of books and newspapers, having to (2) on friends to read aloud to them. A young scientist named Raymond Kurzweil has now designed a computer which is a major (3) in providing aid to the (4) .His machine, Cyclops, has a camera that (5) any page, interprets the print into sounds, and then delivers them orally in a robot-like (6) through a speaker. By pressing the appropriate buttons (7) Cyclops's keyboard, a blind person can "read" any (8) document in the English language. This remarkable invention represents a tremendous (9) forward in the education of the handicapped. At present, Cyclops costs $ 50,000. (10) , Mr. Kurzweil and his associates are preparing a smaller (11) improved version that will sell (12) less than half that price. Within a few years, Kurzweil (13) the price range will be low enough for every school and library to (14) one. Michael Hingson, Director of the National Federation for the Blind, hopes that (15) will be able to buy home (16) of Cyclops for the price of a good television set. Mr. Hingson's organization purchased five machines and is now testing them in Maryland, Colorado, Iowa, California, and New York. Blind people have been (17) in those tests, making lots of (18) suggestions to the engineers who helped to produce Cyclops. "This is the first time that blind people have ever done individual studies (19) a product was put on the market," Hingson said. "Most manufacturers believed that having the blind help the blind was like telling disabled people to teach other disabled people. In that (20) , the manufacturers have been the blind ones. /