单选题Young people in the early 1980s are taking on a set of attitudes and values remarkably different from those of the stormy' 60s and '70s. Instead of anti-establishment outbursts, today's younger generation had turned more thoughtful and more serious. There is heightened concern for the future of the country and a yearning for the traditions and support systems that gave comfort in the past. Many young men and Women of high-school and college age are having second thoughts about the "new morality" and condemn what a soaring divorce rate has done to families. They speak openly of gaining strength from religion. Patriotism, too, seems to be making a modest comeback. One change in the early 1980s is a questioning of the permissive moral climate of recent years. More young people, while hesitant to preach or to condemn their peers, cite the destructive effects of the drugs and alocohol that are so widely available in the schools. It is peer pressure that pushes teenagers into drugs, but now the habit often is dropped after high school, according to Debbie Bishop, a 22-year-old secretary. James Elrod, a college junior in Kentucky, also reports that use of marijuana on campus has lessened. A Cornell University law student reflects the views of many with the comment: "I think that drug abuse is harmful to your own health and those around you." But he adds: "Drinking is fine only as long as it's not done to excess." With the added pressures of a more uncertain world, most young people stress the importance of a healthy family life. Yet, as they look at the family's breakup that has taken place in the past decade, they concede that the challenge for many is to make the best of one-parent families. "The American family is evolving and changing, "according to Nina Mule, "Women are going out into the world and having careers. They're becoming more independent instead of being the burden of the family." "But a great need remains for a family structure, "says Nina, who still lives with her parents, "because people have to be able to survive emotionally." In Atlanta, 18-year-old Liss Jciner feels strongly about what's happened to the family." People have realized that the family has disintegrated, "she says, "But today's family—particularly the black family—is trying to pull itself together and become the strong unit as it once was. "A similar view is expressed by a senior at Brigham Young University: "A happy family means everything to me. I read a lot about how the American family is falling a part. But I see losts of strong families around me, and that makes me very optimistic./

单选题According to Dr. Liu's paper, the dwindling of biodiversity is due to

单选题Bruce Friedman seems to suggest that

单选题A petition to save Arlington County"s David M. Brown Planetarium is 800 signatures strong and there are more than 3,000 fans on the related Facebook page, but the facility is still cut from the proposed school"s budget. "There are a couple of weeks before the public school"s budget is final," said James Gartner, a member of the organization working to save the 40-year-old planetarium before the April 29 cutoff date. Patrick K. Murphy, Arlington school"s superintendent, said during remarks updating his budget figures last week that school officials are "in a dialogue" with planetarium supporters. "I would encourage us to continue to keep this dialogue open, evaluate positions...and think about a window of time ranging anywhere from 12 to 18 months to see whether the community can raise enough money to keep the institution open," Murphy said. The planetarium"s $230,000 operating budget is cut from the proposed fiscal 2011 budget because the facility is outdated and requires about $500,000 in upgrades. School officials have said the money is needed elsewhere in the system. Gartner said a core group of supporters is becoming a nonprofit, but he fears that without the School Board"s support, the planetarium could still be closed by July. "If we don"t get that other year, we believe any fundraising activities would be sabotaged if the planetarium is already closed," he said. Last week, the School Board presented the Arlington County Board with a $439.8 million budget, $2.3 million less than what Murphy proposed in February, primarily because of less state funding. The new budget figures include several English as a second language specialists who were previously cut, thanks to updated student enrollment numbers and adjustments made by the state to the required retirement accounts for school employees. "School-based substitutes, many transportation cuts and higher sports fees also were reinstated," Murphy said. Students and teachers from the Langston and Arlington Mill continuing education programs spoke at the board"s meeting last week requesting no changes to the programs. "The system has proposed to reduce the continuing education teachers" salaries by 17 percent, add days to their school year and cut instructional time so the program is more consistent with high school schedules. The adjustments allowed all of the teachers to keep their jobs and put the program in a better position for future initiatives," said Betty E. Hobbs, assistant superintendent of personnel.

单选题By 1,800 about half the population of Brazil had come from Africa. So had about half the population of Venezuela. So had a smaller but still large part of all the population of Trans-Atlantic republics, whether in North, Central or South Africa, or in the Caribbean islands. It was these men and women of African descent conquered the wilderness of the Americas, clearing and working in countless farms and plantations, founding and opening innumerable mines of iron or precious metals. Harsh and painful as it was, the overseas slave trade (like the not much less painful movement of millions of hungry and jobless men and women from Europe) laid the foundations of American republics. These Africans beyond the seas have their place in the story of Africa (the story of West Africa), for what they attempted and achieved was also a reflection of the strong and independent civilization from which they came. Consider, for example, the heroic and successful struggle for independence conducted by the slaves of the Caribbean land of St. Domingue. In 1789, at the moment of the French Revolution, this French colony in the Caribbean was probably the wealthiest colony in the world. Its tens of thousands of African slave-workers produced enormous quantities of sugar, whole European communities lived off the profits. When news of the Revolution in France reached St. Domingue, these slaves claimed their share in its ideals and benefits. They demanded their freedom. When denied this, they rose in revolt against their masters. In years of hard fighting against large armies sent by France, and afterwards against large armies sent by Britain, these men of St. Domingue won their freedom and founded the Republic of Haiti. Yet more than half these soldiers of freedom had made the "middle passage" across the Atlantic. More than half, in other words, had been born in Africa, had spent their childhood in Africa, and had learned in Africa their respect for freedom; while nearly all the rest were the children of parents or grandparents born in Africa. And they were led by Africans: by men of genius and courage such as Boukman, the unforgettable Toussaint Louverture, and Dessalines. Raised by Toussaint and his Africans, the banner of freedom across the Atlantic was carried from people to people. Many threw off their bondage. Large numbers of men of African origin fought in the armies that made the United States what they are today. It was a general of African descent, Antonio Maceo, who led the military struggle for Cuban independence against Spain in 1868. Like other men of vision, Maceo had no time for racism, for the false idea that one race of men is better or worse than any other. Some of the whites of Cuba disagreed with him. They were Spanish settlers who thought that white was going to be better than black even in an independent Cuba. One day Maceo was approached by a Spanish Cuban who suggested that the regiments of independence army should be divided into whites and non-whites. Maceo made him a reply which became famous in Cuba. "If you were not white," Maceo said to this man, "I would have you shot on the spot. But I do not wish to be accused of being racialist as you are, and so I let you go, but with the warning that I shall not be so patient another time. The revolution has no color./

单选题Income inequality in the United State remained relatively stable for a period of nearly forty years. Beginning in the 1970's, however, this period of stability ended, as the first signs of widening income inequality became apparent. Over the course of the 1970's and 1980's , an increasingly clear trend toward greater income inequality emerged. By the end of the 1980's, the top 20 percent of workers were receiving the largest share of income ever recorded by government figures, and the bottom three fifths were receiving the lowest shares ever recorded. This trend has continued into the 1990's and currently shows no signs of decline. When the indicators of growing inequality were first observed in the 1970's, some researchers argued that the effects were merely temporary artifacts of short-term labor market disturbances. The new occupational structure appears to be one with an increase of well-paid technical, scientific and professional jobs at the top, a sliding middle class, and a growing poorly-paid service and retail jobs at the bottom. Several important labor-force changes appeared to be contributing to the shifting occupational structure. As occupational reconstructing and growing income inequality have become increasingly evident, a heated debate as to the causes and magnitude of these changes arose. Two dominant bodies of thought emerged around the issue: the job-skill mismatch thesis and the polarization thesis. Mismatch theorists argue that there is an increasing distance between the high skill requirements of post-industrial jobs and the inadequate training and mediocre qualifications of workers. They see the post-industrial economy leaving behind unskilled workers, especially women and minorities. For the mismatch theorist, the trend toward greater inequality is temporary arid will dissipate once the supply of workers acquires the skills demanded by a post-industrial economy. And they predict that the workers will experience an upgrading in their wages over the long run. Polarization theorists, on the other hand, believe that the rise in inequality is permanent, a result of the shift to a service-based economy. This vision of the postindustrial economy is characteristically polarized. The problem according to these theorists, is the type of jobs being generated in the new economy, not worker attributes. Because they believe the causes are structural and permanent, polarization theorists would deny the efficacy of public policies designed to educate and train unskilled workers. They predict a long-term continuation of the trend towards increasing income inequality. Studies show that the long-run increase in income inequality is also related to changes in the Nation's labor market and its household composition. The wage distribution has become considerably more unequal with more highly skilled, trained and educated workers at the top experiencing real wage gains and those at the bottom real wage losses. One factor is the shift in employment from those goods-producing industries that have disproportionately provided high-wage opportunities for low-skilled workers, towards services that disproportionately employ college graduates, and towards low-wage sectors such as retail trade. But within industry, shifts in labor demand away from less-educated workers are perhaps a more important explanation of eroding wages than the shift out of manufacturing. Also cited as putting downward pressure on the wages of less-educated workers are intensifying global competition and immigration, the decline of the proportion of workers belonging to unions, the decline in the real value of the minimum wage, the increasing need for computer skills, and the increasing use of temporary workers.

单选题The word "flameout" (Line 1, Paragraph 4) may probably mean

单选题Before a big exam, a sound night's sleep Will do you better than poring over textbooks. That, at least, is the folk wisdom. And science, in the form of behavioral psychology, supports that wisdom. But such behavioral studies cannot distinguish between two competing theories of why sleep is good for the memory. One says that sleep is when permanent memories form. The other says that they are actually formed during the day, but then "edited" at night, to flush away what is superfluous. To tell the difference, it is necessary to look into the brain of a sleeping person, and that is hard. But after a decade of painstaking work, a team led by Pierre Maquet at Liege University in Belgium has managed to do it. The particular stage of sleep in which the Belgian group is interested is rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when brain and body are active, heart rate and blood pressure increase, the eyes move back and forth behind the eyelids as if watching a movie, and brainwave traces resemble those of wakefulness. It is during this period of sleep that people are most likely to relive events of the previous day in dreams. Dr. Maquet used an electronic device called PET to study the brains of people as they practiced a task during the day, and as they slept during the following night. The task required them to press a button as fast as possible, in response to a light coming on in one of six positions. As they learnt how to do this, their response times got faster. What they did not know Was that the appearance of the lights sometimes followed a pattern—what is referred to as "artificial grammar". Yet the reductions in response time showed that they learnt faster when the pattern was present than when there was not. What is more, those with more to learn (i. e. the "grammar", as well as the mechanical task of pushing the button) have more active brains. The "editing" theory would not predict that, since the number of irrelevant stimuli would be the same in each case. And to eliminate any doubts that the experimental subjects were learning as opposed to unlearning, their response times when they woke up were even quicker than when they went to sleep. The team, therefore, concluded that the nerve connections involved in memory are reinforced through reactivation during REM sleep, particularly if the brain detects an inherent structure in the material being learnt. So now, on the eve of that crucial test, maths students can sleep soundly in the knowledge that what they will remember the next day are the basic rules of algebra and not the incoherent talk from the radio next door.

单选题The writer argues that in the foreseeable future the insurer of last resort for airline's terrorist risk will be

单选题According to the author, the cell-phone industry must adopt a mind-set in order to

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/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}} It may not have generated much interest outside energy and investment circles, but a recent comment by Tidewater, Inc. president Dean Taylor sent earthquakes through the New Orleans business community. In June, Taylor told the Houston Chronicle that the international marine services company—the world's largest operator of ships serving the offshore oil industry—was seriously considering moving its headquarters, along with scores of administrative jobs, from the Crescent City to Houston. "We have a lot of sympathy for the city," Taylor said. "But our shareholders don't pay us to have sympathy. They pay us to have results for them." It was the last thing the hurricane-scarred city needed to hear. Tidewater was founded here a little more than 50 years ago, and kept its main office in New Orleans throughout the oil bust of the 1980s and the following decades of industry consolidation, when dozens of energy firms all but abandoned New Orleans for greener pastures on the Texas coast. In the nearly two years since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city, the pace of exodus has accelerated. complicating New Orleans' halting recovery; according to the local business weekly CityBusiness, the metropolitan area has lost 12 of the 23 publicly traded companies headquartered here, taking white-collar jobs, corporate community support and sorely needed taxpayers with them—and threatening to leave the city even more dependent on a tourismbased economy than it was before the storm. Making matters worse, some observers say, is the city leadership's apparent indifference 10 the bloodletting. Just weeks after Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, Mayor Ray Nagin, then in the very early stages of a heated reelection bid, dismissed warnings that many companies, like displaced residents, might opt to relocate. Nagin said he hoped they would stay. "But if they don't," he said with typical glibness, "I'll send them a postcard. "The comment might have been written off as one of Nagin's many verbal missteps. But in the months that followed, the warnings turned out in many cases to be true, even as the city's rebuilding effort languished, infrastructure repairs limped along, the state reimbursement program for damaged homes faltered and the New Orleans' infamous crime rate made a sickening comeback. New Orleans "wasn't considered a great city for doing business before the storm. People were always dribbling out," says Peter Ricchiuti, a professor of economics at Tulane University. While many of the companies that made it through the storm could stand to benefit from the city' s recovery, he says, Katrina may have hastened the loss of high-paying energy jobs. "We're losing the white-collar jobs and keeping the blue-collar jobs," he says. "We' re becoming much more of a blue-collar oil industry." One of the latest examples is Chevron Corp., which is building new offices in the northern suburbs, 40 miles north of the city across Lake Pontchartrain, and plans to transfer 550 employees from New Orleans to Covington by the end of the year. That would take well-paid people out of downtown New Orleans, a move that will impact the central business district's economy. "We made the decision in May, 2006, when our employees were making important housing decisions," says Qi Wilson, a Chevron spokesperson. The company, like many employees, decided the north shore offered better security should another hurricane strike, along with fewer of the post-Katrina headaches that still plague the city. The move "will make it easier to retain the talent we have, and to attract new talent," Wilson says.

单选题The Caribbean became something of a heaven because