单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} “Two centuries ago, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark left St. Lois to explore the new lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase,” George W. Bush said, announcing his desire for a program to send men and women to Mars. “They made that journey in the spirit of discovery... America has ventured forth into space for the same reasons.” Yet there are vital differences between Lewis and Clark’s expedition and a Mars mission. First, Lewis and Clark were headed to a place amenable to life; hundreds of thousands of people were already living there. Second, Lewis and Clark were certain to discover places and things of immediate value to the new nation. Third, the Lewis and Clark venture cost next to nothing by today’s standards. In 1989 NASA estimated that a people-to-Mars program would cost $ 400 billion, which inflates to $ 600 billion today. But the fact that a destination is tantalizing does not mean the journey makes sense, even considering the human calling to explore. And Mars as a destination for people makes absolutely no sense with current technology. Present systems for getting from Earth’s surface to low-Earth orbit are so fantastically expensive that merely launching the 1,000 tons or so of spacecraft and equipment a Mars mission would require could be accomplished only by cutting health-care benefits, education spending or other important programs or by raising taxes. Absent some remarkable discovery, astronauts, geologists and biologists once on Mars could do little more than analyze rocks and feel awestruck beholding the sky of another world. It is interesting to note that when President Bush unveiled his proposal, he listed these recent major achievements of space exploration: pictures of the rings of Saturn and the outer planets, evidence of water on Mars and the moon of Jupiter, discovery of more than 100 planets outside our solar system and study of the soil of Mars. All these accomplishments came from automated probes or automated space telescopes. Bush’s proposal, which calls for “reprogramming” some of NASA’s present budget into the Mars effort, might actually lead to a reduction in such unmanned science, the one aspect of space exploration that’s working really well. Rather than spend hundreds of billions of dollars to hurl tons toward Mars using current technology, why not take a decade or two decades, or however much time is required researching new launch systems and advanced propulsion? If new launch systems could put weight into orbit affordably, and if advanced propulsion could speed up that long, slow transit to Mars, then the dreams of stepping onto the Red Planet might become reality. Mars will still be there when the technology is ready. The drive to explore is part of what makes us human, and exploration of the past has led to unexpected glories. Dreams must be tempered by realism, however. For the moment, going to Mars is hopelessly unrealistic.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Few beyond California's technology crowd recognise the name Larry Sonsini; none within its circle could fail to. For four decades he has been lawyer, adviser and friend to many prominent companies and investors. Some consider him the most powerful person in Silicon Valley. Companies beg for his law firm to represent them. The 65-year-old chairman of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and more recently, as outside counsel to Hewlett-Packard (HP), for initially defending the board's dubious investigative practices. WSG&R boasts 600 lawyers and represents around half of Silicon Valley's public companies, including Apple, Sun Microsystems and Google. Last year it ranked first in private-equity and venture-capital deals, with nearly twice as many as its closest rival. Over the past five years WSG&R has worked on over 1,000 mergers and acquisitions, collectively worth over $260 billion. The recent troubles cast a shadow over WSG&R's reputation. Although Mr. Sonsini is not accused of wrongdoing himself, many of his firm's clients are on the ropes. Former executives at Brocade Communications suffered criminal charges in July. Mr. Sonsini served on Brocade's board until last year and his firm was its outside counsel. He also was on the boards of Pixar, Echelon, Lattice Semiconductor, LSI Logic and Novell-all firms at which the issuing of stock options is being called into question. WSG&R dismisses the idea that Mr. Sonsini faced a conflict of interest by acting as both director and legal adviser to so many firms and says he did not advise HP in its investigation of board members. Mr. Sonsini initially said it was "well done and within legal limits". It now seems it was neither.

单选题What links cognitive development to the needs of society?

单选题The custom of young men bowing to show respect when passing the dwellings of their elders was cited as a characteristic of

单选题The marvelous telephone and television network that has now enmeshed the whole world, making all men neighbors, cannot be extended into space. It will never be possible to converse with anyone on another planet. Even with today's radio equipment, the messages will take minutes—sometimes hours—on their journey, because radio and light waves travel at the same limited speed of 186, 000 miles a second. Twenty years from now you will be able to listen to a friend on Mars, but the words you hear will have left his mouth at least three minutes earlier, and your reply will take a corresponding time to reach him. In such circumstances, an exchange of verbal messages is possible—but not a conversation. To a culture which has come to take instantaneous communication for granted, as part of the very structure of civilized life, this "time barrier" may have a profound psychological impact. It will be a perpetual reminder of universal laws and limitations against which not all our technology can ever prevail. For it seems as certain as anything can be that no signal--still less any material object—can ever travel faster than light. The velocity of light is the ultimate speed limit, being part of the very, structure of space and time. Within the narrow confines of the solar system, it will not handicap us too severely. At the worst, these will amount to twenty hours—the time it takes a radio signal to span the orbit of Pluto, the outer-most planet. It is when we move out beyond the confines of the solar system that we come face to face with an altogether new order of cosmic reality. Even today, many otherwise educated men—like those savages who can count to three but lump together all numbers beyond four—cannot grasp the profound distinction between solar and stellar space. The first is the space enclosing our neighboring worlds, the planets; the second is that which embraces those distant suns, the stars, and it is literally millions of times greater. There is no such abrupt change of scale in the terrestrial affairs. Many conservative scientists, appalled by these cosmic gulfs, have denied that they can ever be crossed. Some people never learn ; those who sixty years ago scoffed at the possibility of flight, and ten years ago laughed at the idea of travel to the planets, are now quite sure that the stars will always be beyond our reach. And again they are wrong, for they have failed to grasp the great lesson of our age— that if something is possible in theory, and no fundamental scientific laws oppose its realization, then sooner or later it will be achieved. One day we shall discover a really efficient means of propelling our space vehicles. Every technical device is always developed to its limit and the ultimate speed for spaceships is the velocity of light. They will never reach that goal, but they will get very near it. And then the nearest star will be less than five years voyaging from the earth.

单选题Section Ⅲ will be of no help unless the reader______.

单选题Does using a word processor affect a writer s style? The medium usually does do something to the message after all, even if Marshall McLuhan' s claim that the medium simply is the message has been heard and largely forgotten now. The question matters. Ray Hammond, in his excellent guide The Writer and the Word Processor, predicts that over half the professional writers in Britain and the USA will be using word processors by the end of 1985. The best known recruit is Leu Deighton, from as long ago as 1968, though most users have only started since the microcomputer boom began in 1980. Ironically word processing is in some ways psychologically more like writing in rough than typing, since it restores fluidity and provisionality to the text. The typist' s dread of having to get out the Tippex, the scissors and paste, or of redoing the whole thing if he has any substantial second thoughts, can make him consistently choose the safer option in his sentences, or let something stand which he knows to be unsatisfactory or incomplete, out of weariness. In word processing the text is loosened up whilst still retaining the advantage of looking formally finished. This has, I think, two apparently contradictory effects. The initial writing can become excessively sloppy and careless, in the expectation that it will be corrected later. That crucial first inspiration is never easy to recapture, though, and therefore, on the other hand, the writing can become over - deliberated, lacking in flow and spontaneity, since revision becomes a larger part of composition. However, these are faults easier to detect in others than in oneself. My own experience of the sheer difficulty of committing any words at all to the page means I' m grateful for all the help I' can get. For most writers, word processing quite rapidly comes to feel like the ideal method ( and can always be a second step after drafting on paper if you prefer). Most of the writers interviewed by Hammond say it has improved their style ( "immensely", says Deighton). Seeing your own word on a screen helps you to feel cool and detached about them. Thus is not just by freeing you from-the labor of mechanical retyping that a word processor can help you to write. One author (Terence Feely) claims it has increased his output by 400%. Possibly the feeling of having a reactive machine, which appears to do things, rather than just have things done with it, accounts for this--your slave works hard and so do you. Are there no drawbacks? It costs a lot and takes time to learn--" expect to lose weeks of work", says Hammond, though days might be nearer the mark. Notoriously it is possible to lose work altogether on a word processor, and this happens to everybody at least once. The awareness that what you have written no longer' exists anywhere at all, is unbelievably enraging and baffling. Will word processing generally raise the level of professional writing then? Does it make writers better as well as more productive? Though all users insist it has done so for them individually, this is hard to believe. But reliance happens fast.

单选题When anyone opens a current account at a bank, he is lending the bank money. He may (1) the repayment of the money at any time, either (2) cash or by drawing a check in favor of another person. (3) , the banker-customer relationship is that of debtor and creditor who is (4) depending on whether the customer's account is (5) credit or is overdrawn. But, in (6) to that basically simple concept, the bank and its customer (7) a large number of obligations to one another. Many of these obligations can give (8) to problems and complications but a bank customer, unlike, say, a buyer of goods, cannot complain that the law is (9) against him. The bank must (10) its customer's instructions, and not those of anyone else. (11) , for example, a customer opens an account, he instructs the bank to debit his account only in (12) of checks drawn by himself. He gives the bank (13) of his signature, and there is a very firm rule that the bank has no right or (14) to pay out a customer's money (15) a check on which its customer's signature has been (16) It makes no difference that the forgery may have been a very (17) one: the bank must recognize its customer's signature. For this reason there is no (18) to the customer in the practice, (19) by banks, of printing the customer's name on his checks. If this (20) Forgery, it is the bank that will lose, not the customer. (254 words)

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} If Bill Gates ever had reason to doubt that the brash young billionaires of Google were out to get him, the time for such uncertainty is now officially over. Last month's dramatically revised version of its program Google Desktop is a glove slap across the face of Microsoft's fabled chief software architect. Obviously Google's update to a previous tool that searched people's hard drives in addition to the usual lightning-quick survey of the entire World Wide Web, Google Desktop 2 turns out to be a not-so-stealthy attempt to hijack the desktop from Microsoft. And in a move that must be particularly galling to Gates, the program does it in a way that directly steals thunder from Microsoft's upcoming Windows update, Vista. Specifically, I'm talking about Google's feature called Sidebar, a stack of small windows that sit on the side of the screen and dynamically draw on Web and personal information to track things like weather, stock prices, your e-mail, your photos, recently opened documents and Web destinations . Several years ago, demonstrating an early version of Vista, Microsoft proudly showed a column of on-screen "tiles" that did the same kinds of things. Microsoft's name for this upcoming feature (which it still plans to include in Vista when it ships in late 2006): Sidebar. That's not all. Google product manager Nakhil Bhatla explains that another purpose of Desktop is to use the search box to quickly locate programs and files that you want to open--bypassing the Windows way of clicking on an icon or using the Start menu. Clearly, Google is squatting on Microsoft's turf, asking users to live in its environment as opposed to Bill's. Microsoft still believes that the central point of personal computing is productivity. That's why the desktop search in Vista will limit itself to probing the user's hard disk. Microsoft's explanation for this approach is that mixing Web-search results with hits from your own information is just too confusing. Things go more efficiently, the theory goes, when your personal data pond is segregated from the ocean of information data located elsewhere in the world. (Microsoft offers Web search as a separate program. ) In contrast, Google Desktop searches bring results from everywhere--your hard disk, your email and billions of Web sites. That's because the Google mission is organizing and managing all the world's information. "You shouldn't have to think about where the information comes from," says Google VP Susan Wojcicki. Though Google-sites acknowledge difficulties in merging the personal with the public, their core belief is that the essence of 21st-century computing springs from the connectivity that allows all human knowledge, from books to instant messages, to be potentially shared. As Google tries to annex new information flows, it increasingly runs smack against issues of privacy, copyright and censorship. That's one part of Google's challenge. The other will be fending off Bill Gates, undoubtedly determined to prove that his vision of computing still dominates.

单选题 Three makes a trend. The Washington Post Co. Friday announced that it would look to sell its iconic headquarters building in downtown Washington, D.C. In January, the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News announced they would put up for sale their headquarters. The same month, Frank Gannett said it will sell the building that houses the Rochester, N.Y., Democrat circulation revenues are back to where they were in 1996. The digital numbers are rising, but not nearly fast enough. Print media is hampered by high fixed costs incurred in the pre-digital era-pensions and union contracts, equipment like printing presses, large numbers of employees, and big office buildings. Virtually every newspaper company has engaged in drastic measures—laying off experienced employees, eliminating sections, cutting back printing from daily to a few days per week. Those efforts are all meant to lower day-to-day operating costs. But we've also seen newspaper companies seek onetime injections of cash by selling off non-core assets. Increasingly, the headquarters building—typically located right in the middle of town-is falling into the non-core asset category. Traditionalists may find these sales and the continued shrinking of newspapers' real-estate footprints to be depressing. But it's actually a positive development. Call it creative destruction, or adaptive reuse. In cities around the country, investors are finding better uses for properties. In lower Manhattan, Class B office buildings that used to house financial firms have been converted into ex pensive condos. "It's a great thing, because it drives more tax revenue to the cities. And it gives the suburbs a run for the money," said Jonathan Miller, president of appraisal company MillerSamuel. In D.C., the Washington Post will likely fetch an excellent price for its headquarters because Washington is a boomtown. Throughout D.C., investors are plowing cash into housing, office, and retail developments. The building that housed the organization that exposed the Watergate scandal may become the next Watergate complex. Of course, progress inevitably displaces the prior tenants. It's likely the new homes that will be occupied by newspapermen and newspaperwomen in Washington, Rochester, and Detroit will be less grand, less central, and less historic than their current homes. And the sale of these properties alone won't solve the newspapers' financial problems. But it will buy them a very valuable commodity: time.

单选题It was the biggest scientific grudge match since the space race. The Genome Wars had everything: two groups with appealing leaders ready to fight in a scientific dead heat, pushing the limits of technology and rhetoric as they battled to become the first to read every last one of the 3 billion DNA "letters" in the human body. The scientific importance of the work is unquestionable. The completed DNA sequence is expected to give scientists unprecedented insights into the workings of the human body, revolutionizing medicine and biology. But the race itself, between the government's Human Genome Project and Rockville, Md., biotechnology company Celera Genomics, was at least partly symbolic, the public/private conflict played out in a genetic lab. Now the race is over. After years of public attacks and several failed attempts at reconciliation, the two sides are taking a step toward a period of calm. HOP head Francis Collins (and .Ari Patrinos of the Department of Energy, an important ally on the government side) and Craig Venter, the founder of Celera, agreed to hold a joint press conference in Washington this Monday to declare that the race was over (sort of), that both sides had won (kind of) and that the hostilities were resolved (for the time being). No one is exactly sure how things will be different now. Neither side will be turning off its sequencing machines any time soon--the "finish lines" each has crossed are largely arbitrary points, "first drafts" rather than the definitive version. And while the joint announcement brings the former Genome Warriors closer together than they've been in years, insiders say I that future agreements are more likely to take the form of coordination, rather than outright collaboration. The conflict blew up this February when Britain's Welcome Trust, an HGP participant, released a confidential letter to Celera outlining the HGP's complaints. Venter called the move "a lowlife thing to do," but by spring, there were the first signs of a thaw. "The attacks and nastiness are bad for science and our investors," Venter told Newsweek in March, "and fighting back is probably not helpful." At a cancer meeting earlier this month, Venter and Collins praised each other's approaches, and expressed hope that all of the scientists involved in sequencing the human genome would be able to share the credit By late last week, that hope was becoming a reality as details for Monday's joint announcement were hammered out. Scientists in both camps welcomed an end to the hostilities. "If this ends the horse race, science wins." With their difference behind them, or at least set aside, the scientists should now be able to get down to the interesting stuff, figuring how to make use of all that data.