单选题 About 40 percent of Americans think of themselves as shy, while only 20 percent say they have never suffered from shyness at some point in their lives. Shyness occurs when a person's apprehensions are so great that they {{U}}(1) {{/U}} his making an expected or desired social response. {{U}}(2) {{/U}} of shyness can be as minor as {{U}}(3) {{/U}} to make eye contact when speaking to someone, {{U}}(4) {{/U}} as major as avoiding conversations whenever possible. "Shy people tend to be too {{U}}(5) {{/U}} with themselves, "said Jonathan Cheek, a psychologist, who is one of those at the forefront of current research on the topic."{{U}} (6) {{/U}}, for a smooth conversation, you need to pay attention to the other person's cues {{U}}(7) {{/U}} he is saying and doing. But the shy person is full of {{U}}(8) {{/U}} about how he seems to the other person, and so he often {{U}}(9) {{/U}} cues he should pick up. The result is an awkward lag in the conversation. Shy people need to stop focusing on {{U}}(10) {{/U}} and switch their attention to the other person." {{U}} (11) {{/U}},shy people by and large have {{U}}(12) {{/U}} social abilities than they think they do. {{U}}(13) {{/U}} Dr. Cheek videotaped shy people talking to {{U}}(14) {{/U}},and then had raters (评估者) evaluate how socially skilled the people were, he found that, in the {{U}}(15) {{/U}} of other people, the shy group had few {{U}}(16) {{/U}} problems. But when he asked the shy people themselves {{U}}(17) {{/U}} they had done, they were unanimous in saying that they had been social flops(失败). "Shy people are their own {{U}}(18) {{/U}} critics, "Dr. Cheek said. {{U}}(19) {{/U}}, he added, shy people feel they are being judged more {{U}}(20) {{/U}} than they actually are, and overestimate how obvious their social anxiety is to others.

单选题Menorca or Majorca? It is that time of the year again. The brochures are piling up in travel agents while newspapers and magazines bulge with advice about where to go. But the traditional packaged holiday, a British innovation that provided many timid natives with their first experience of warm sand, is not what it was. Indeed, the industry is anxiously awaiting a High Court ruling to find out exactly what it now is. Two things have changed the way Britons research and book their holidays: low-cost airlines and the Internet. Instead of buying a ready-made package consisting of a flight, hotel, car hire and assorted entertainment from a tour operator's brochure, it is now easy to put together a trip using an online travel agent like Expedia or Travelocity, which last July bought Lastminute. com for ￡ 577 million ($1 billion), or from the proliferating websites of airlines, hotels and car-rental firms. This has led some to sound the death knell for high-street travel agents and tour operators. There have been upheavals and closures, but the traditional firms are starting to fight back, in part by moving more of their business online. First Choice Holidays, for instance, saw its pre-tax profit rise by 16% to ￡ 114 million ($195 million) in the year to the end of October. Although the overall number of holidays booked has fallen, the company is concentrating on more valuable long-haul and adventure trips. First Choice now sells more than half its trips directly, either via the Internet, over the telephone or from its own travel shops. It wants that to reach 75% within a few years. Other tour operators are showing similar hustle. MyTravel managed to cut its loss by almost half in 2005. Thomas Cook and Thomson Holidays, now both German owned, are also bullish about the coming holiday season. Highstreet travel agents are having a tougher time, though, not least because many leading tour operations have cut the commissions they pay. Some high-street travel agents are also learning to live with the Internet, helping people book complicated trips that they have researched online, providing advice and tacking on other services. This is seen as a growth area. But if an agent puts together separate flights and hotel accommodation, is that a package, too? The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) says it is and the agent should hold an Air Travel Organisers Licence, which provides financial guarantees to repatriate people and provide refunds. The scheme dates from the early 1970s, when some large British travel firms went bust, stranding customers on the Costas. Although such failures are less common these days, the CAA had to help out some 30,000 people last year. The Association of British Travel Agents went to the High Court in November to argue such bookings are not traditional packages and so do not require agents to acquire the costly licences. While the court decides, millions of Britons will happily click away buying online holidays, unaware of the difference.

单选题According to the passage, women are usually good at ______.

单选题Business cards are likely to have appeared

单选题Climatic conditions are delicately adjusted to the composition of the Earth's atmosphere. If there were a change in the atmosphere--for example, in the relative proportions of atmospheric gases"-the climate would probably change also. A slight increase in water vapor, for instance, would increase the heat-retaining capacity of the atmosphere and would lead to a rise in global temperatures. In contrast, a large increase in water vapor would increase the thickness and extent of the cloud layer, reducing the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface. The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has an important effect on climatic change. Most of the Earth's incoming energy is short-wavelength radiation, which tends to pass through atmospheric carbon dioxide easily. The Earth, however, reradiates much of the received energy as long-wavelength radiation, which carbon dioxide absorbs and then remits toward the Earth. This phenomenon, known as the greenhouse effect, can result in an increase in the surface temperature of a planet. An extreme example of the effect is shown by Venus, a planet covered by heavy clouds composed mostly of carbon dioxide, whose surface temperatures have been measured at 43012. If the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere is reduced, the temperature falls. According to one respectable theory, if the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration were halved, the Earth would become completely covered with ice. Another equally respectable theory, however, states that a halving of the carbon dioxide concentration would lead only to reduction in global temperatures of 312. If, because of an increase in forest fires or volcanic activity, the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere increased, a warmer climate would be produced. Plant growth, which relies on both the warmth and the availability of carbon dioxide, would probably increase. As a consequence, plants would use more and more carbon dioxide. Eventually carbon dioxide levels would diminish and the climate, in turn, would become cooler. With reduced temperatures many plants would die; carbon dioxide would thereby be returned to the atmosphere and gradually the temperature would rise again. Thus, if this process occurred, there might be a long-term oscillation in the amount of carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere, with regular temperature increases and decreases of a set magnitude. Some climatologists argue that the burning of fossil fuels has raised the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and has caused a global temperature increase of at least 1 C. But a supposed global temperature rise of 112 may in reality be only several regional temperature increases, restricted to areas where there are many meteorological stations and mused simply by shifts in the pattern of atmospheric circulation. Other areas, for example, the Southern Hemisphere Oceanic Zone, may be experiencing an equivalent temperature decrease that is unrecognized because of the shortage of meteorological recording stations.

单选题 While it's easy to get swept up in the commercialism at major sports events, one shouldn't ignore the transformative capacity of sport to produce social change. Historically, the potential for sports lies not with the values they promote, since they are invariably unjust and uneven. Instead, the possibilities that exist within sports are those that bridge divides between societies with radically different views of the world. The concept of an "Olympic Truce" is noteworthy in terms of recognising the role of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in influencing and brokering international relations. An Olympic Truce was launched on January 24, 1994 for the period of the Lillehammer Winter Games in an attempt to resolve the conflict in Yugoslavia. This Olympic Truce involved representatives from the World Health Organisation (WHO), UNICEF, the Red Cross, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and the Norwegian Government. These groups evacuated coaches, athletes, and members of the national Olympic committee from Sarajevo so that they could compete in the Games. Many African runners have provided an exhilarating spectacle for global audiences. Maria Mutola, the Mozambican former Olympic and five-time world indoor 800m champion and world record holder, routinely sends track winnings back to her country. Chamanchulo, the suburb of Maputo in which Mutola grew up, is ravaged by HIV, passed on in childbirth or breast milk to 40 percent of the children. In 2003 when Mutola became the first athlete to collect ＄1million for outright victory on the Golden League Athletic Grand Prix Circuit, part of the cash went to the foundation she endowed to help provide scholarships, clothing, education, and coaching for young athletes. Farms and small businesses have often been sustained by her winnings on the circuit, which have purchased tractors, fertilizer, and equipment to drill small wells. Catherine Astrid Salome Freeman became the first Aboriginal to represent Australia at the Olympics, at Barcelona in 1992 and became its first world champion and first Olympic champion. In doing so she became a symbol for reconciliation between a black and white Australia. Her grandmother, Alice Sibley, was one of the members of the so-called "stolen generation. " She was taken from her parents at the age of eight by a reviled 1950s Australian government policy that removed Aboriginal children removed from their parents and resettled them with white families. Her Olympic success has perhaps helped to change the face of prejudice, almost a taboo subject in a modern Australia. She herself had become perhaps one of Australia's greatest sporting icons but also a symbol of the struggle that aboriginal Australians had to endure in order to win social, civil, and political rights.

单选题Few scientific fields are as full of risk as that of research into human intelligence. The two questions that (1) over and over again are "is it a result of nature or nurture?" and "does race make a difference?" Making (2) comments about the second question can be a (3) move, as James Watson, a co-discoverer of DNA structure, recently found. He suggested that he was " (4) about the prospect of Africa" (5) "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours (white people) (6) all the testing says not really". Such (7) by Dr. Watson are not merely (8) , they are scientifically weird. If the term (9) has any useful scientific meaning, then Africa, the continent where modern humanity began, is most racially diverse. The resulting (10) among the public forced Dr. Watson to leave his laboratory. (11) , the study of the first question (12) between intelligence and genetics— has some wiser practitioners. One of them, Terrie Moffitt, of King's College, has just (13) a project judging the relative importance of nature and nurture. Dr. Moffitt's team (14) the effect on intelligence of breastfeeding, but in a genetic context. Previous studies have shown that breastfed children are more intelligent, (15) about six IQ points, than those given baby formulas. The team, however, (16) the involvement of a gene called FADS2, which comes in two varieties, known as C and G. The researchers (17) if these two varieties interacted differently with breast milk. (18) on data from two groups of people, they found that the intelligence increase associated with breastfeeding only happened to people having (19) at least one copy of the C variety. The effect did not. (20) on the social classes or IQs of the parents.

单选题According to the author energy security can only be achieved by ______.

单选题By "terrorist risk became the pariah of perils" (Paragraph 1), the author means

单选题The third statistics as pointed out in the opening paragraph, in view of Mr Fortune Wood, is

单选题"WHAT'S the difference between God and Larry Ellison?" asks an old software industry joke. Answer: God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison. The boss of Oracle is hardly alone among corporate chiefs in having a reputation for being rather keen on himself. Indeed, until the bubble burst and the public turned nasty at the start of the decade, the cult of the celebrity chief executive seemed to demand bossly narcissism, as evidence that a firm was being led by an all-conquering hero. Narcissus met a nasty end, of course. And in recent years, boss-worship has come to be seen as bad for business. In his management bestseller, "Good to Great", Jim Collins argued that the truly successful bosses were not the serf-proclaimed stars who adorn the covers of Forbes and Fortune, but instead self-effacing, thoughtful, monkish sorts who lead by inspiring example. A statistical answer may be at hand. For the first time, a new study, "It's All About Me", to be presented next week at the annual gathering of the American Academy of Management, offers a systematic, empirical analysis of what effect narcissistic bosses have on the firms they run. The authors, Arijit Chatterjee and Donald Hambrick, of Pennsylvania State University, examined narcissism in the upper levels of 105 firms in the computer and software industries. To do this, they had to solve a practical problem: studies of narcissism have hitherto relied on surveying individuals personally, something for which few chief executives are likely to have time or inclination. So the authors devised an index of narcissism using six publicly available indicators obtainable without the co-operation of the boss. These are: the prominence of the boss's photo in the annual report; his prominence in company press releases; the length of his "Who's Who" entry; the frequency of his use of the first person singular in interviews; and the ratios of his cash and non-cash compensation to those of the firm's second-highest paid executive. Narcissism naturally drives people to seek positions of power and influence, and because great self-esteem helps your professional advance, say the authors, chief executives will tend on average to be more narcissistic than the general population. How does that affect a firm? Messrs Chatterjee and Hambrick found that highly narcissistic bosses tended to make bigger changes in the use of important resources, such as research and development, or in spending and leverage; they carried out more and bigger mergers and acquisitions ; and their results were both more extreme (more big wins or big losses) and more transient than those of firms run by their humbler peers. For shareholders, that could be good or bad. Although (oddly) the authors are keeping their narcissism ranking secret, they have revealed that Mr Ellison did not come top. Alas for him, that may be because the study limited itself to people who became the boss after 1991--well after he took the helm. In every respect Mr Ellison seems to be the classic narcissistic boss, claims Mr Chatterjee. There is life in the old joke yet.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} If phone calls and web pages can be beamed through the air to portable devices, then why not electrical power, too? It is a question many consumers and device manufacturers have been asking themselves for some time. But to seasoned observers of the electronics industry, the promise of wireless recharging sounds depressingly familiar. In 2004 Splashpower, a British technology firm, was citing “very strong” interest from consumer-electronics firms for its wireless charging pad. Based on the principle of electromagnetic induction (EMI) that Faraday had discovered in the 19th century, the company’s “Splashpad” contained a coil that generated a magnetic field when a current flowed through it. When a mobile device containing a corresponding coil was brought near the pad, the process was reversed as the magnetic field generated a current in the second coil, charging the device’ s battery without the use of wires. Unfortunately, although Faraday’s principles of electromagnetic induction have stood the test of time, Splashpower has not — it was declared bankrupt last year without having launched a single product. Thanks to its simplicity .and measurability, electromagnetic induction is still the technology of choice among many of the remaining companies in the wireless-charging arena. But, as Splashpower found, turning the theory into profitable practice is not straightforward. But lately there have been some promising developments. The first is the formation in December 2008 of the Wireless Power Consortium, a body dedicated to establishing a common standard for inductive wireless charging, and thus promoting its adoption. The new consortium’s members include big consumer-electronics firms, such as Philips and Sanyo, as well as Texas Instruments, a chipmaker. Fierce competition between manufacturers of mobile devices is also accelerating the introduction of wireless charging. The star of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas was the Pre, a smart-phone from Palm. The Pre has an optional charging pad, called the Touchstone, which uses electromagnetic induction to charge the device wirelessly. As wireless-charging equipment based on electromagnetic induction heads towards the market, a number of alternative technologies are also being developed. PowerBeam, a start-up based in Silicon Valley, uses lasers to beam power from one place to another. It now seems to be a matter of when, rather than if, wireless charging enters the mainstream. And if those in the field do find themselves languishing in the disillusionment, they could take some encouragement from Faraday himself. He observed that “nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature.” Not even a wirelessly rechargeable iPhone.

单选题Euthanasia has been a topic of controversy in Europe since at least 1936. On an average of six times a day, a doctor in Holland practices "active" euthanasia: (1) administering a lethal drug to a (2) ill patient who has asked to be relieved (3) suffering. Twenty times a day, life prolonging treatment is withheld or withdrawn (4) there is no hope that it can (5) an ultimate cure. "Active" euthanasia remains a crime on the Dutch statute books, punishable (6) 12 years in prison. But a series of court cases over the past 15 years has made it clear that a competent physician who (7) it out will not be prosecuted. Euthanasia, often called "mercy killing", is a crime everywhere in Western Europe. (8) more and more doctors and nurses in Britain, Germany, Holland and elsewhere readily (9) to practicing it, most often in the "passive" form of withholding or withdrawing (10) The long simmering euthanasia issue has lately (11) into a sometimes fierce public debate, (12) both sides claiming the mantle of ultimate righteousness. Those (13) to the practice see themselves (14) sacred principles of respect for life, (15) those in favor raise the banner of humane treatment. After years (16) the defensive, the advocates now seem to be (17) ground. Recent polls in Britain show that 72 percent of British (18) favor euthanasia in some circumstances. An astonishing 76 percent of (19) to a poll taken late last year in France said they would like the law changed to (20) mercy killings. Obviously, pressure groups favoring euthanasia and "assisted suicide" have grown steadily in Europe over the years.

单选题We can see from the available statistics that ______.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} At the start of the year, The Independent on Sunday argued that there were three overwhelming reasons why Iraq should not be invaded: there was no proof that Saddam posed an imminent threat; Iraq would be even more unstable as a result of its liberation; and a conflict would increase the threat posed by terrorists. What we did not know was that Tony Blair had received intelligence and advice that raised the very same points. Last week's report from the Intelligence and Security Committee included the revelation that some of the intelligence had warned that a war against Iraq risked an increased threat of terrorism. Why did Mr. Blair not make this evidence available to the public in the way that so much of the alarmist intelligence on Saddam's weapons was published? Why did he choose to ignore the intelligence and argue instead that the war was necessary, precisely because of the threat posed by international terrorism? There have been two parliamentary investigations into this war and the Hutton inquiry will reopen tomorrow. In their different ways they have been illuminating, but none of them has addressed the main issues relating to the war. The Foreign Affairs Committee had the scope to range widely, but chose to become entangled in the dispute between the Government and the BBC. The Intelligence Committee reached the conclusion that the Government's file on Saddam's weapons was not mixed up, but failed to explain why the intelligence was so hopelessly wrong. The Hutton inquiry is investigating the death of Dr. David Kelly, a personal tragedy of marginal relevance to the war against Iraq. Tony Blair has still to come under close examination about his conduct in the building-up to war. Instead, the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, is being fingered as if he were master-minding the war behind everyone's backs from the Ministry' of Defence. Mr. Hoon is not a minister who dares to think without consulting Downing Street first. At all times he would have been dancing to Downing Street's tunes, Mr. Blair would be wrong to assume that he can draw a line under all of this by making Mr.Hoon the fall-guy. It was Mr. Blair who decided to take Britain to war, and a Cabinet of largely skeptical ministers that backed him. It was Mr. Blair who told MPs that unless Saddam was removed, terrorists would pose a greater global threat--even though he had received intelligence that suggested a war would lead to an increase in terrorism. Parliament should be the forum in which the Prime Minister is called more fully to account, but lain Duncan Smith's support for the war has neutered an already inept opposition. In the absence of proper parliamentary scrutiny, it is left to newspapers like this one to keep asking the most important questions until the Prime Minister answers them.

单选题The main concern of the last paragraph is______.