单选题How does the author think of himself?

单选题The passage may be taken from a

单选题Withmedicine,theboonofbiotechnologyhasbeenobvious.Peoplereadilyacceptitwhentheyseehowbetterdrugsandclearerdiagnosesimprovetheirlives.Whyisitdifferentwhenbiotechisappliedtoagriculture?Theansweristhattheclearestgainsfromthecurrentcropofgeneticallymodified(GM)plantsgonottoconsumersbuttoproducers.Indeed,thatwaswhattheirdevelopersintended:anappealtofarmersofferedthepurveyorsofGMtechnologythebesthopeofaspeedyreturn.Forconsumers,especiallyintherichworld,thebenefitsofsuper-yieldingsoybeansarelessclear:theworld,byandlarge,alreadyhastoomuchfoodinitsstores;developingcountriesprincipallylackmoney,notfoodassuch.Yetcompaniesstillpitchtheirproductsasacureformalnutritioneventhoughlittlethattheyaredoingcanjustifysuchanobleclaim.Inhypingthetechnologyastheonlyanswertoeverythingfrompestcontroltoworldhunger,theindustryhasfedthepopularviewthatitsproductsareunsafe,unnecessaryandbadfortheenvironment.OfthetwomainchargesagainstGMcrops,byfartheweakeristhattheyareunsafetoeat.Criticsassertthatgeneticengineeringintroducesintofoodgenesthatarenotpresentnaturally,cannotbeintroducedthroughconventionalbreedingandmayhaveunknownhealtheffectsthatshouldbeinvestigatedbeforethefoodissoldtothepublic.GMcropssuchasthemaizeandsoybeansthatnowblanketAmericacertainlydifferfromtheirgardenvarietyneighbours.ButthereisabroadscientificconsensusthatthepresentgenerationofGMfoodsissafe.Evenso,thisdoeslittletoreassureconsumers.Foodfrightssuchas"madcow"diseaseandrevelationsofcancer-causingdioxin(二英)inBelgianfoodhavesorelyunderminedtheirconfidenceinscientificpronouncementsandregulatoryauthoritiesalike.GMfoodhavelittlefutureinEuropeuntilthisfaithcanberestored.ThesecondbigworryaboutGMfoodisthatitmayharmtheenvironment.Theproducersarguethattheengineeredtraits—suchasresistancetocertainbrandsofherbicideortypesofinsectsandvirus—actuallydoecologicalgoodbyreducingchemicaluseandimprovingyieldssothatlesslandneedstogoundertheplough.Opponentsretortthatanysuchbenefitsarefaroutweighedbythedamagesuchcropsmightdo.Theyworrythatpesticide-resistantgenesmayspreadfromplantsthatshouldbesavedtoweedsthathavetobekilled.Theyfearalossofbiodiversity.Theyfretthatthein-builtresistancetobugsthatsomeGMcropswillhavemaypoisoninsectssuchasMonarchbutterfly,andallowother,nastierbugstodevelopanaturalresistanceandthrive.Manyofthefearsarebasedonresultsfromlimitedexperiments,ofteninthelaboratory.Theonlywaytodiscoverwhethertheywillariseinreallife,orwhethertheywillbeanymoredamagingthansimilarrisksposedbyconventionalcropsandfarmingpractice,istodomoreresearchinthefield.BanningtheexperimentalgrowthofGMplantsassomeprotesterswantsimplydeprivesscientistsoftheirmostfruitfullaboratory.

单选题Since the industrial revolution, government, society, and industry have attempted to channel technological progress in useful directions. Whether it is the printing press, the cotton gin the automobile or the Internet, technological innovations often have profound economic and social effects. To harness the benefits and minimize the more harmful effects of new technologies, modern governments use four basic approaches: specific direction, market incentives, criminal prohibition, and behavior modification. Specific direction starts with governments identifying one or more key factors in the R&D phase. Then, using a variety of means ranging from administrative regulation to outright state ownership, the government seeks to control the implementation of the technology. Market incentives are the deliberate manipulation of the market by the government to control how a particularly technology is distributed and used. For example, some governments impose taxes to cover the hidden costs associated with the use of a particular technology. For example, raising gasoline taxes to pay for highway improvements. Other methods include the granting of subsidies to private researchers or the strengthening of intellectual property laws to give added incentives to developers. Criminal prohibition usually takes place when strong opposition exists to a particular technology or field of research. In recent years, most developed countries have enacted legislation to ban the cloning of human beings. Other examples are the enforcement of clean air regulations that force power plants to emit fewer greenhouse gasses. Finally, behavior modification includes the use of the media, advertising, and government and corporate leadership to encourage a particular society to use a technology in a beneficial way. For example, while there is limited government regulation of the Internet, websites are encouraged to install safeguards to prevent children from viewing inappropriate material. A recent national advertising campaign recently boosted the percentage of New York residents who recycled by almost 25%. Such campaigns do not use direct government regulation, but instead appeal to the user's sense of civic duty or social responsibility. Of all new technologies, perhaps none has changed the landscape and character of American life more than the automobile. Yet, the costs of this technology are not always reflected in the price of Using the technology. For example, it costs an oil company $ 0.89 per gallon of gas produced. This same liter is sold to U. S. consumers at about $1.20 per gallon. Yet while this price reflects the cost of production plus a profit for the oil company it does not reflect the actual cost of using the technology. For that, we must factor in the environmental costs associated with air pollution (increased health care, environmental degradation) and the political costs (dependence on foreign oil, energy shortages). In short, in order to be effective, all of these strategies for channeling technology to benefit society must incorporate all the costs associated with usage.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} The human Y chromosome—the DNA chunk that makes a man a man—has lost so many genes over evolutionary time that some scientists have suspected it might disappear in 10 million years. But a new study says it'll stick around. Researchers found no sign of gene loss over the past 6 million years, suggesting the chromosome is "doing a pretty good job of maintaining itself," said researcher David Page of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass. That agrees with prior mathematical calculations that suggested the rate of gene loss would slow as the chromosome evolved, Page and study co-authors note in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. And, they say, it clashes with what Page called the "imminent demise" idea that says the Y chromosome is doomed to extinction. The Y appeared 300 million years ago and has since eroded into a dinky chromosome, because it lacks the mechanism other chromosomes have to get rid of damaged DNA. So mutations have disabled hundreds of its original genes, causing them to be shed as useless. The Y now contains only 27 genes or families of virtually identical genes. In 2003, Page reported that the modern-day Y has an unusual mechanism to fix about half of its genes and protect them from disappearing. But he said some scientists disagreed with his conclusion. The new paper focuses on a region of the Y chromosome where genes can't be fixed that way. Researchers compared the human and chimpanzee versions of this region. Humans and chimps have been evolving separately for about 6 million years, so scientists reasoned that the comparisons would reveal genes that have become disabled in one species or the other during that time. They found five such genes on the chimp chromosome, but none on the human chromosome, an imbalance Page called surprising. "It looks like there has been little if any gene loss in our own species lineage in the last 6 million years," Page said. That contradicts the idea that the human Y chromosome has continued to lose genes so fast it'll disappear in 10 million years, he said. "I think we can with confidence dismiss … the 'imminent demise' theory," Page said. Jennifer A. Marshall Graves of the Australian National University in Canberra, a gene researcher who argues for eventual extinction of the Y chromosome, called Page's work "beautiful" but said it didn't shake her conviction that the Y is doomed. The only real question is when, not if, the Y chromosome disappears, she said. "It could be a lot shorter than 10 million years, but it could be a lot longer," she said. The Y chromosome has already disappeared in some other animals, and "there's no reason to expect it can't happen to humans," she said. If it happened in people, some other chromosome would probably take over the sex-determining role of the Y, she said.

单选题The PWA differed from the WPA in that

单选题Uruguay has been a proud exception to the privatizing wave that swept through South America in the 1990s. Its state-owned firms are more efficient than many of their counterparts in Argentina and Brazil ever were. In 1992, Uruguayans voted in a referendum against privatizing telecoms. They rightly observe that some of Argentina's sales were smashed, creating inefficient private monopolies. And with unemployment at 15%, nobody is enthusiastic about the job cuts privatization would involve. That leaves President Jorge Batlle with a problem. Uruguay has been in recession for the past two years, mainly because of low prices for its agricultural exports, and because of Argentina's woes. But public debt is at 45% of GDP, and rising. Some economists argue that privatization would give a boost to the economy, by attracting foreign investment, and by lowering costs. CERES, a think-tank, having compared tariffs for public services in Uruguay and its neighbors, believes liberalization could save businesses and households the equivalent of 4% of GDP annually, raise growth and produce a net 45,000 jobs. The polls that show continuing support for public ownership also show growing opposition to monopolies. So Mr. Baffle plans to keep the state firms, but let private ones either compete with them or bid to operate their services under contract. The opposition Broad Front and the trade unions are resisting. They have gathered enough signatures to demand a "public consultation" next month on a new law to allow private operators in the ports and railways—a referendum on whether to hold a referendum on the issue. Alberto Bension, the finance minister, admits the vote will be a crucial indicator of how far the government can push. But he notes that, since 1992, attempts to overturn laws by calling referendums have flopped. The liberalization of telecoms has already begun. Bell South, an American firm, is the first private cell-phone operator. There are plans to license others, and talk of allowing competition for fixed-line telephones. A new law allows private companies to import gas from Argentina to generate electricity in competition with the state utility. Another plan would strip Ancap, the state oil firm, of its monopoly of imports. It has already been allowed to seek a private partner to modernize its refinery. Harder tasks lie ahead. The state-owned banks are burdened with problem loans to farmers and home owners. And Mr. Batlle shows no appetite for cutting the bureaucracy. After a year in office, the president is popular. He has created a cross-party commission to investigate "disappearances" during Uruguay's military dictatorship of 1976-85 The unions are weakened by unemployment. At CERES. Ernesto Talvi argues that Mr. Baffle should note his own strength, and push ahead more boldly. But that is not the Uruguayan way.

单选题In the relationship of education to business we observe today a fine state of paradox. On the one hand, the emphasis which most business places upon a college degree is so great that one can almost visualize the time when even the office boy will have his baccalaureate. On the other hand, we seem to preserve the belief that some deep intellectual chasm separates the businessman from other products of the university system. The notion that business people are quite the Philistines sounds absurd. For some reason, we tend to characterize vocations by stereotypes, none too flattering but nonetheless deeply imbedded in the national conscience. In the cast of characters the businessman comes on stage as a ill-mannered and simple-minded person. It is not a pleasant conception and no more truthful or less unpleasant than our other stereotypes. Business is made up of people with all kinds of backgrounds, all kinds of motivations, and all kinds of tastes, just as in any other form of human endeavour. Businessmen are not mobile balance sheets and profit statements, but perfectly normal human beings, subject to whatever strengths, frailties, and limitations characterize man on the earth. They are people grouped together in organizations designed to complement the weakness of one with strength of another, tempering the exuberance of the young with the caution of the more mature, the poetic soarings of one mind with the counting house realism of another. Any disfigurement which society may suffer will come from man himself, not from the particular vocation to which he devotes his time. Any group of people necessarily represents an approach to a common one, and it is probably true that even individually they tend to conform somewhat to the general pattern. Many have pointed out the danger of engulfing our original thinkers in a tide of mediocrity. Conformity is not any more prevalent or any more exacting in the business field than it is in any other. It is a characteristic of all organizations of whatever nature. The fact is the large business unit provides greater opportunities for individuality and requires less in the way of conformity than other institutions of comparable size — the government, or the academic world, or certainly the military.

单选题If open-source software is supposed to be free, how does anyone selling it make any money? It's not that different from how other software companies make money. You'd think that a software company would make most of its money from, well, selling software. But you'd be wrong. For one thing, companies don't sell software, strictly speaking; they license it. The profit margin on a software license is nearly 100 percent, which is why Microsoft gushes billions of dollars every quarter. But what's the value of a license to a customer? A license doesn't deliver the code, provide the utilities to get a piece of software running, or answer the phone when something inevitably goes wrong. The value of software, in short, doesn't lie in the software alone. The value is in making sure the soft- ware does its job. Just as a traveler should look at the overall price of a vacation package instead of obsessing over the price of the plane ticket or hotel mom, a smart tech buyer won't focus on how much the license costs and ignore the support contract or the maintenance agreement. Open-source is not that different. If you want the software to work, you have to pay to ensure it will work. The open-source companies have refined the software model by selling subscriptions. They roll together support and maintenance and charge an annual fee, which is a healthy model, though not quite as wonderful as Microsoft's money-raking one. Tellingly, even Microsoft is casting an envious eye at aspects of the open-source business model. The company has been taking halting steps toward a similar subscription scheme for its software sales. Microsoft's subscription program, known as Soft- ware Assurance, provides maintenance and support together with a software license. It lets you up- grade to Microsoft's next version of the software for a predictable sum. But it also contains an implicit threat: If you don't switch to Software Assurance now, who knows how much Microsoft will charge you when you decide to upgrade? Chief information officers hate this kind of *'assurance", since they're often perfectly happy running older versions of software that are proven and stable. Microsoft, on the other hand, rakes in the software-licensing fees only when customers upgrade. Software Assurance is Microsoft's attempt to get those same licensing fees but wrap them together with the service and support needed to keep systems running. That's why Microsoft finds the open-source model so threatening: open-source companies have no vested interest in getting more licensing fees and don't have to pad their service contracts with that extra cost. In the end, the main difference between open-source and proprietary software companies may be the size of the check you have to write.

单选题For my proposed journey, the first priority was clearly to start learning Arabic. I have never been a linguist. Though I had traveled widely as a journalist, I had never managed to pick up more than a smattering of phrases in any tongue other than French, and even my French, was laborious for want of lengthy practice. The prospect of tackling one of the notoriously difficult languages at the age of forty, and trying to speak it well, both deterred and excited me. It was perhaps expecting a little too much of a curiously unreceptive part of myself, yet the possibility that I might gain access to a completely alien culture and tradition by this means was enormously pleasing. I enrolled as a pupil in a small school in the center of the city. It was run by a Mr Beheit, of dapper appearance and explosive temperament, who assured me that after three months of his special treatment I would speak Arabic fluently. Whereupon he drew from his desk a postcard which an old pupil had sent him from somewhere in the Middle East, expressing great gratitude and reporting the astonishment of local Arabs that he could converse with them like a native. It was written in English. Mr Beheit himself spent most of his time coaching businessmen in French, and through the thin, partitioned walls of his school one could hear him bellowing in exasperation at some confused entrepreneur: "Non, M. Jones. Jane suis pas francais. Pas, Pas, Pas!" (No Mr. Jones, I'm NOT French, I'm not, not, NOT!). I was gratified that my own tutor, whose name was Ahmed, was infinitely softer and less public in approach. For a couple of hours every morning we would face each other across a small table, while we discussed in meticulous detail the colour scheme of the tiny cubicle, the events in the street below and, once a week, the hair-raising progress of a window-cleaner across the wall of the building opposite. In between, hearing in mind the particular interest I had in acquiring Arabic, I would inquire the way to some imaginary oasis, anxiously demand fodder and water for my camels, wonder politely whether the sheikh was prepared to grant me audience now. It was all hard going. I frequently despaired of ever becoming anything like a fluent speaker, though Ahmed assured me that my pronunciation was above average for a Westemer. This, I suspected, was partly flattery, for there are a couple of Arabic sounds which not even a gift for mimicry allowed me to grasp for ages. There were, moreover, vast distinctions of meaning conveyed by subtle sound shifts rarely employed in English. And for me the problem was increased by the need to assimilate a vocabulary, that would vary from place to place across five essentially Arabic-speaking countries that practiced vernaculars of their own: so that the word for "people", for instance, might be nais, sah 'ab or sooken. Each day I was mentally exhausted by the strain of a morning in school, followed by an afternoon struggling at home with a tape recorder. Yet there was relief in the most elementary forms of understanding and progress. When merely got the drift of a torrent which Ahmed had just released, I was childishly elated. When I managed to roll a complete sentence off my tongue without apparently thinking what I was saying, and it came out right, I beamed like an idiot. And the enjoyment of reading and writing the flowing Arabic script was something that did not leave me once I had mastered it. By the end of June, no-one could have described me as anything like a fluent speaker of Arabic. I was approximately in the position of a fifteen-year old who, equipped with a modicum of schoolroom French, nervously awaits his first trip to Paris. But this was something I could reprove upon in my own time. I bade farewell to Mr Beheit, still struggling to drive the French negative into the still confused mind of Mr Jones.

单选题The example of a Russia-China-India coalition is used to show

单选题In the author's opinion, visual and spatial abilities are good for ______.

单选题The Grokster decision was based on the evidence that Grokster

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} At some point during their education, biology students are told about a conversation in a pub that took place over 50 years ago. J. B. S. Haldane, a British geneticist, was asked whether he would lay down his life for his country. After doing a quick calculation on the back of a napkin, he said he would do so for two brothers or eight cousins. In other words, he would die to protect the equivalent of his genetic contribution to the next generation. The theory of kin selection—the idea that animals can pass on their genes by helping their close relatives—is biology's explanation for seemingly altruistic acts. An individual carrying genes that promote altruism might be expected to die younger than one with "selfish" genes, and thus to have a reduced contribution to the next generation's genetic pool. But if the same individual acts altruistically to protect its relatives, genes for altruistic behavior might nevertheless propagate. Acts of apparent altruism to non-relatives can also be explained away, in what has become a cottage industry within biology. An animal might care for the offspring of another that it is unrelated to because it hopes to obtain the same benefits for itself later on (a phenomenon known as reciprocal altruism). The hunter who generously shares his spoils with others may be doing so in order to signal his superior status to females, and ultimately boost his breeding success. These apparently selfless acts are therefore disguised acts of selfinterest. All of these examples fit economists' arguments that Homo sapiens is also Homo economicus—maximizing something that economists call utility, and biologists fitness. But there is a residuum of human activity that defies such explanations: people contribute to charities for the homeless, return lost wallets, do voluntary work and tip waiters in restaurants to which they do not plan to return. Both economic rationalism and natural selection offer few explanations for such random acts of kindness. Nor can they easily explain the opposite: spiteful behavior, when someone harms his own interest in order to damage that of another. But people are now trying to find answers. When a new phenomenon is recognized by science, a name always helps. In a paper in Human Nature, Dr Fehr and his colleagues argue for a behavioral propensity they call "strong reciprocity". This name is intended to distinguish it from reciprocal altruism. According to Dr Fehr, a person is a strong reciprocator if he is willing to sacrifice resources to be kind to those who are being kind, and to punish those who are being unkind. Significantly, strong reciprocators will behave this way even if doing so provides no prospect of material rewards in the future.

单选题The author of some forty novels, a number of plays, volumes of verse, historical, critical and autobiographical works, an editor and translator, Jack Lindsay is clearly an extraordinarily prolific writer--a fact which can easily obscure his very real distinction in some of the areas into which he bas ventured. His co editorship of Vision in Sydney in the early 1920's, for example, is still felt to have introduced a significant period in Australian culture, while his study of Kickens written in 1950 is highly regarded. But of all his work it is probably the novel to which he has made his most significant contribution. Since 1936 when, to use his own words in Fanfrolico and after, he "reached bedrock", Lindsay bas maintained a consistent Marxist viewpoint--and it is this viewpoint which if nothing else has guaranteed his novels a minor but certainly not negligible place in modern British literature. Feeling that "the historical novel is a form that bas a limitless future as a fighting weapon and as a cultural instrument" (New Masses, January 1937), Lindsay first attempted to formulate his Marxist convictions in fiction mainly set in the past: particularly in his trilogy in English novels--1949 (dealing with the Digger and Leveller movements), Lost Birthright (the Wilkesite agitations), and Men of Forth-Eight (written in 1939, the Chartist and revolutionary uprisings in Europe). Basically these works set out, with most success in the first volume, to vivify the historical traditions behind English Socialism and attempted to demonstrate that it stood, in Lindsay's words, for the "true completion of the national destiny." Although the war years saw the virtual disintegration of the left-wing writing movement of the 1930s, Lindsay himself carried on: delving into contemporary affairs in We Shall Return and Beyond Terror, novels in which the epithets formerly reserved for the evil capitalists or Franco's soldiers have been transferred rather crudely to the German troops. After the war, Lindsay continued to write mainly about the present--trying with varying degrees of success to come to terms with the unradical political realities of post-war England. In the series of novels known collectively as The British Way, and beginning with Betrayed Spring in 1953, it seemed at first as if his solution was simply to resort to more and more obvious authorial manipulation and heavy-banded didacticism. Fortunately, however, from Revolt of the Sons, this process was reversed, as Lindsay began to show an increasing tendency to ignore party solutions, to fail indeed to give anything but the most elementary political consciousness to his characters, so that in his latest (and what appears to be his last) contemporary novel, Choice of Times, his hero, Colin, ends on a note of desperation: "Everything must be different, I can't live this way any longer. But how can I change it, how?" To his credit as an artist, Lindsay doesn't give him any explicit answer.