单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} According to studies cited by the National Eating Disorders Association, 42 percent of girls in first through third grade want to be thinner, 81 percent of 10-year-olds are afraid of being fat, and 51 percent of 9-and 10-year-old girls feel better about themselves if they are on a diet. In many ,ways, this fixation on weight at ever earlier ages comes at an inopportune time physiologically. At a recent Hadassah meeting at the Woodlands Community Temple in White Plains, Dr. Maxcie Schneider, the director of adolescent medicine at Greenwich Hospital, and Erica Leon, a registered dietitian, spoke about early adolescence as a time when a little bit of pudginess is necessary for proper growth, and youngsters wrestle constantly with their body image. "I can't tell you how many kids I've seen who've been on the Atkins diet, or on the South Beach diet," Ms. Leon said, adding that overweight children who try diets can be at risk of developing eating disorders. After the presentation, three mothers from Hartsdale who wanted to help their children avoid such issues spoke about how their young daughters are already beginning to become weight-conscious. Anorexia is a mental illness in which the victim eats barely enough to survive, because her distorted thinking makes her think she is fat. Bulimia, a mental illness in which someone binges on large amounts of food, then purges it through vomiting or the abuse of laxatives, is on the rise, and is surfacing in younger and younger patients, mostly girls, said Judy Scheel, the director of the Center for Eating Disorder Recovery in Mount Kisco. About 90 percent of victims of eating disorders are female, and often the male victims are on teams like wrestling and crew, where they must keep their weight low for competitive reasons. Dr. Scheel believes that where girls claim the eating disorder enables them to be thin, boys typically state their goal is to achieve or maintain a muscular but thin physique. The average onset for bulimia used to be 17, but to see teenagers age 14 and 15 with bulimia is common these days, Dr. Scheel said. Other people believe the disorders have genetic or chemical components, and many people with eating disorders respond well to anti-depressants, for example. "A certain amount of education is necessary to help young people avoid becoming obsessed with their body image. Teachers need to stay outside of talking about diets," Dr. Scheel said. "It's like a parent, always talking about their next diet. You have to help a child understand that if you cat healthily and exercise, your body is going to take care of itself." And in relatively homogenous populations, like in some Westchester schools, competition runs high. "So the young people don't really see how beautiful diversity is," she said, "and they tend to all be competing for kind of the same goals."

单选题 September 11th 2001 drew the transatlantic alliance together; but the mood did not last, and over the five years since it has pulled ever further apart. A recent poll for the German Marshall Fund shows that 57% of Europeans regard American leadership in world affairs as "undesirable". The Iraq war is mainly to blame. But there is another and more. intractable reason for the growing division: God. Europeans worry that American foreign policy under George Bush is too influenced by religion. The "holy warriors" who hijacked the planes on September 11th reintroduced God into international affairs in the most dramatic of ways. It seems that George Bush is replying in kind, encouraging a clash of religions that could spell global catastrophe. Dominique Moisi, a special adviser at the French Institute for International Relations, argues that "the combination of religion and nationalism in America is frightening. We feel betrayed by God and by nationalism, which is why we are building the European Union as a barrier to religious warfare." Josef Braml, of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, complains that in America "religious attitudes have more of an influence on political choices than in any other western democracy." The notion that America is too influenced by religion is not confined to the elites. Three in five French people and nearly as many Dutch think that Americans are too religious-and that religion skews what should be secular decisions. Europeans who think that America is "too religious" are more inclined to anti-Americanism than their fellow countrymen. 38% of Britons have an unfavourable view of America, but that number rises to 50% among people who are wary of American religiosity. Is America engaged in a faith-based foreign policy? Religion certainly exerts a growing influence on its actions in the world, but in ways more subtle and complicated than Europeans imagine. It is true that America is undergoing a religious revival. "Hot" religions such as evangelical Protestantism and hardline Catholicism are growing rapidly while "cool" mainline versions of Christianity are declining. It is also true that the Republican Party, is being reshaped by this revival. Self-identified evangelicals provided almost 40% of Mr. Bushes vote in 2004; if you add in other theological conservatives, such as Mormons and traditional Catholics, that number rises closer to 60%. All six top Republican leaders in the Senate have earned 100K ratings from the Christian Coalition. It is also true that Mr. Bush frequently uses religious rhetoric when talking of foreign affairs. On September 12th he was at it again, telling a group of conservative journalists that he sees the war on terror as "a confrontation between good and evil", and remarking, "It seems to me that there's a Third Awakening" (in other words, an outbreak of Christian evangelical fervour, of the sort that has swept across America at least twice before). And Christian America overall is taking a bigger interest in foreign policy. New voices are being heard, such as Sam Brownback, a conservative senator from Kansas who has led the fight against genocide in Darfur, and Rick Warren, the author of a bestseller called "The Purpose-Driven Life", who is sending 2,000 missionaries to Rwanda. Finally, it is true that religious figures have done some pretty outrageous things. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Hugo Ch vez, the president of Venezuela. Lieutenant-General William "Jerry" Boykin, deputy under-secretary of defence for intelligence, toured the country telling Christian groups that radical Muslims hate America "because we're a Christian nation and the enemy is a guy named Satan". He often wore uniform.

单选题SoBig. F was the more visible of the two recent waves of infection because it propagated itself by e-mail, meaning that victims noticed what was going on. SoBig. F was so effective that it caused substantial disruption even to those protected by anti-virus software. That was because so many copies of the virus spread (some 500,000 computers were infected) that many machines were overwhelmed by messages from their own anti-virus software. On top of that, one common counter-measure backfired, increasing traffic still further. Anti-virus software often bounces a warning back to the sender of an infected e-mail, saying that the e-mail in question cannot be delivered because it contains a virus. SoBig. F was able to spoof this system by "harvesting" e-mail addresses from the hard disks of infected computers. Some of these addresses were then sent infected e-mails that had been doctored to look as though they had come from other harvested addresses. The latter were thus sent warnings, even though their machines may not have been infected. Kevin Haley of Symantec, a firm that makes anti-virus software, thinks that one reason SoBig. F was so much more effective than other viruses that work this way is because it was better at searching hard drives for addresses. Brian King, of CERT, an internet-security centre at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, notes that, unlike its precursors, SoBig. F was capable of "multi-threading", it could send multiple e-mails simultaneously, allowing it to dispatch thousands in minutes. Blaster worked by creating a "buffer overrun in the remote procedure call". In English, that means it attacked a piece of software used by Microsoft's Windows operating system to allow one computer to control another. It did so by causing that software to use too much memory. Most worms work by exploiting weaknesses in an operating system, but whoever wrote Blaster had a particularly refined sense of humour, since the website under attack was the one from which users could obtain a program to fix the very weakness in Windows that the worm itself was exploiting. One Way to deal with a wicked worm like Blaster is to design a fairy godmother worm that goes around repairing vulnerable machines automatically. In the case of Blaster someone seems to have tried exactly that with a program called Welchi. However, according to Mr. Haley, Welchi has caused almost as many problems as Blaster itself, by overwhelming networks with "pings" signals that checked for the presence of other computers. Though both of these programs fell short of the apparent objectives of their authors, they still caused damage. For instance, they forced the shutdown of a number of computer networks, including the one used by the New York Times newsroom, and the one organising trains operated by CSX, a freight company on America's east coast. Computer scientists expect that it is only a matter of time before a truly devastating virus is unleashed.

单选题Most people do not realize that______

单选题If sustainable competitive advantage depends on work-force skills, American firms have a problem. Human-resource management is not traditionally seen as central to the competitive survival of the firm in the United States. Skill acquisition is considered an individual responsibility. Labor is simply another factor of production to be hired—rented at the lowest possible cost—much as one buys raw materials or equipment. The lack of importance attached to human-resource management can be seen in the corporate hierarchy. In an American firm the chief financial officer is almost always second in command. The post of head of human resource management is usually a specialized job, off at the edge of corporate hierarchy. The executive who holds it is never consulted on major strategic decisions and has no chance to move up to Chief Executive Officer (CEO). By way of contrast, in Japan the head of human-resource management is central—usually the second most important executive, after the CEO, in the firm's hierarchy. While American firms often talk about the vast amounts spent on training their work forces, in fact they invest less in the skills of their employees than do either Japanese or German firms. The money they do invest is also more highly concentrated on professional and managerial employees. And the limited investments that are made in training workers are also much more narrowly focused on the specific skills necessary to do the next job rather than on the basic background skills that make it possible to absorb new technologies. As a result, problems emerge when new breakthrough technologies arrive. If American workers, for example, take much longer to learn how to operate new flexible manufacturing stations than workers in Germany (as they do), the effective cost of those stations is lower in Germany than it is in the United States. More time is required before equipment is up and running at capacity, and the need for extensive retraining generates costs and creates bottlenecks that limit the speed with which new equipment can be employed. The result is a slower pace of technological change. And in the end the skills of the bottom half of the population affect the wages of the top half. If the bottom half can' t effectively staff the processes that have to be operated, the management and professional jobs that go with these processes will disappear.

单选题Being unemployed in the wake of the worst recession since the" 1930s is enough to tax anyone's faith. So a growing number of churches, particularly the large evangelical kind, are ministering to the jobless through programmes offering spiritual as well as professional help. "Being out of work can be a time of faith renewal," says Jay Litton, leader of the Job Networking Ministry at Roswell United Methodist Church in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, which attracts more than 400 unemployed people of all faiths to its weekly two-hour gatherings. "We believe God should be a part of the job search. " Like other faith-based programmes for the unemployed that have sprung up across the country, the one in Roswell has all the passion of an evangelical service. Meetings start with time for networking (or "fellowship") followed by prayer, a meal and a sermon. The names of people in the group who have recently found jobs, or "landed", are flashed on video screens overhead. Participants then disperse to attend workshops run by volunteers on such topics as writing a résumé and making an "elevator pitch" (explaining why you should be hired in the time it takes to ride a few floors in a lift). Petrol and food gift-cards are given out to those who have been unemployed the longest. Mark Godshall is a pastor at Bayside Covenant Church in Granite Bay, a suburb of Sacramento in California. Last year his church, which has a congregation of 11,000, started four-day workshops and weekly programmes for the growing number of jobless in its flock, as well as others from the surrounding area where unemployment exceeds 12%. "It's in these moments when you don't have work when you can grow and make the changes that need to he made in your life," Mr Godshall insists gamely. Although gaining new members would he an obvious benefit for the churches, those involved say it is not the primary goal. "We're here to provide spiritual support and encouragement at a time when people can experience feelings of" hopelessness and worthlessness," says Cindy Hall, a minister at the 1,000-member First Baptist Church in Sanford, North Carolina, which started a support group for its jobless congregants last July. Employers often post job openings with her first rather than in the local newspaper, she says. "I guess they know the kind of people our programme attracts tend to be principled and hard workers," she says. When the temptation is to stay in bed and watch the soaps, "these are people who regularly come to meetings and listen to devotionals. " Amen to that.

单选题The Sino-American relationship is of great importance because______.

单选题Which one of the following is the Expressionist position concerning harmony and beauty in art?

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Soon after his appointment as secretary-general of the United Nations in 1997, Kofi Annan lamented that he was being accused of failing to reform the world body in six weeks. "But what are you complaining about?" asked the Russian ambassador: "You've had more time than God." Ah, Mr. Annan quipped back, "but God had one big advantage. He worked alone without a General Assembly, a Security Council and [all] the committees." Recounting that anecdote to journalists in New York this week, Mr. Annan sought to explain why a draft declaration on UN reform and tackling world poverty, due to be endorsed by some 150 heads of state and government at a world summit in the city on September 14th- 16th, had turned into such a pale shadow of the proposals that he himself had put forward in March. "With 191 member states", he sighed, "it's not easy to get an agreement." Most countries put the blame on the United States, in the form of its abrasive new ambassador, John Bolton, for insisting at the end of August on hundreds of last minute amendments and a line-by-line renegotiation of a text most others had thought was almost settled. But a group of middle-income developing nations, including Pakistan, Cuba, Iran, Egypt, Syria and Venezuela, also came up with plenty of last-minute changes of their own. The risk of having no document at all, and thus nothing for the world's leaders to come to New York for, was averted only by marathon all-night and all-weekend talks. The 35-page final document is not wholly devoid of substance. It calls for the creation of a Peacebuilding Commission to supervise the reconstruction of countries after wars; the replacement of the discredited UN Commission on Human Rights by a supposedly tougher Human Rights Council; the recognition of a new "responsibility to protect" peoples from genocide and other atrocities when national authorities fail to take action, including, if necessary, by force; and an "early" reform of the Security Council. Although much pared down, all these proposals have at least survived. Others have not. Either they provod so contentious that they were omitted altogether, such as the sections on disarmament and non-proliferation and the International Criminal Court, or they were watered down to little more than empty platitudes. The important section on collective security and the use of force no longer even mentions the vexed issue of pre-emptive strikes; meanwhile the section on terrorism condemns it "in all its forms and manifestations, committed by whomever, wherever and for whatever purposes", but fails to provide the clear definition the Americans wanted. Both Mr. Annan and, more surprisingly, George Bush have nevertheless sought to put a good face on things, with Mr. Annan describing the summit document as "an important step forward" and Mr. Bush saying the UN had taken "the first steps" towards reform. Mr. Annan and Mr. Bolton are determined to go a lot further. It is now up to the General Assembly to flesh out the document's skeleton proposals and propose new ones. But its chances of success appear slim.

单选题"THE SERVANT"(1963) is one of those films that it is impossible to forget. The servant exploits his master"s weaknesses until he turns the tables: the story ends with the a cringing master ministering to a lordly servant. It is hard to watch it today without thinking of another awkward relationship—the one between business folk and their smartphones. Smart devices are sometimes empowering. They put a world of information at our fingertips. But for most people the servant has become the master. Not long ago only doctors were on call all the time. Now everybody is. Bosses think nothing of invading their employees" free time. Work invades the home far more than domestic chores invade the office. Hyper connectivity exaggerates the decline of certainty and the general cult of flexibility. Smartphones make it easier for managers to change their minds at the last moment. Employees find it ever harder to distinguish between "on-time" and "off-time"—and indeed between real work and make-work. None of this is good for business people"s marriages or mental health. It may be bad for business, too. When bosses change their minds at the last minute, it is hard to plan for the future. How can we reap the benefits of connectivity without becoming its slaves? One solution is digital dieting. Banning browsing before breakfast can reintroduce a small amount of civilization. Banning texting at weekends or, say, on Thursdays, can really show the iPhone who is boss. The problem with this approach is that it works only if you live on a desert island or at the bottom of a lake. Leslie Perlow of Harvard Business School argues that for most people the only way to break the 24/7 habit is to act collectively rather than individually. One of the world"s most hard-working organisations, the Boston Consulting Group, introduced rules about when people were expected to be offline, and encouraged them to work together to make this possible. Eventually it forced people to work more productively while reducing burnout. Ms Perlow"s advice should be taken seriously. The problem of hyper connectivity will only get worse, as smartphones become smarter and young digital natives take over the workforce. But ultimately it is up to companies to outsmart the smartphones by insisting that everyone turn them off from time to time.

单选题The purpose of the author in writing the text is

单选题Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as good as possible. Several months later, he died at home. He got no chemotherapy, radiation, or surgical treatment. Medicare didn’t spend much on him. It's not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don't die like the rest of us. What's unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. Of course, doctors don't want to die ; they want to live. But they know enough about modern medicine to know its limits. Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call "futile care" being performed on people. That's when doctors bring the cutting edge of technology to bear on a grievously ill person near the end of life. The patient will get cut open, perforated with tubes, hooked up to machines, and assaulted with drugs. I cannot count the number of times fellow physicians have told me, in words that vary only slightly, "Promise me if you find me like this that you' ll kill me. " How has it come to this—that doctors administer so much care that they wouldn't want for themselves? The simple, or not-so-simple, answer is this: patients, doctors, and the system. To see how patients play a role, imagine a scenario in which someone has lost consciousness and been admitted to an emergency room, and shocked and scared family members find themselves caught up in a maze of choices. When doctors ask if they want "everything" done, they answer yes. Then the nightmare begins. Feeding into the problem are unrealistic expectations of what doctors can accomplish. For example, many people think of CPR as a reliable lifesaver when, in fact, the results are usually poor. But of course it's not just patients making these things happen. Doctors play an enabling role, too. The trouble is that even doctors who hate to administer futile care must find a way to address the wishes of patients and families. Imagine, once again, the emergency room with those grieving family members. They do not know the doctor. Establishing trust and confidence under such circumstances is a very delicate thing. People are prepared to think the doctor is acting out of base motives, trying to save time, or money, or effort, especially if the doctor is advising against further treatment. It's easy to find fault with both doctors and patients in such stories, but in many ways all the parties are simply victims of a larger system that encourages excessive treatment. In some unfortunate cases, doctors use the fee-for-service model to do everything they can, no matter how pointless, to make money. More commonly, though, doctors are fearful of litgation and do whatever they're asked to avoid getting in trouble.

单选题It is often observed that the aged spend much time thinking and talking about their past lives, rather than about the future. These reminiscences are not simply random or trivial memories, 1 is their purpose merely to make conversation. The old person"s recollections of the past help to 2 an identity that is becoming increasingly fragile. 3 any role that brings respect or any goal that might provide 4 to the future, the individual mentions their 5 as a reminder to listeners, that here was a life 6 living. 7 , the memories form part of a continuing life 8 , in which the old person 9 the events and experiences of the years gone by and 10 on the overall meaning of his or her own almost completed life. As the life cycle 11 to its close, the aged must also learn to accept the reality of their own impending death. 12 this task is made difficult by the fact that death is almost a 13 subject in the United States. The mere discussion of death is often regarded as 14 As adults, many of us find the topic frightening and are 15 to think about it and certainly not to talk about it 16 the presence of someone who is dying. Death has achieved this taboo 17 only in the modern industrial societies. There seems to be an important reason for our reluctance to 18 the idea of death. It is the very fact that death remains 19 our control; it is almost the only one of the natural processes 20 is so.

单选题A study by scientists in Finland has found that mobile phone radiation can cause changes in human cells that might affect the brain, the leader of the research team said. But Darius Leszczynski, who headed the 2-year study and will present findings next week at a conference in Quebec, said more research was needed to determine the seriousness of the changes and their impact on the brain or the body. The study at Finland's Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority found that exposure to radiation from mobile phones can cause increased activity in hundreds of proteins in human cells grown in a laboratory, he said. "We know that there is some biological response. We can detect it, with our very sensitive approaches, but we do not know whether it can have any physiological effects on the human brain or human body," Leszczynski said. Nonetheless the study, the initial findings of which were published last month in the scientific journal Differentiation, raises new questions about whether mobile phone radiation can weaker/the brain's protective shield against harmful substances. The study focused on changes in cells that line blood vessels and on whether such changes could weaken the functioning of the blood-brain barrier, which prevents potentially harmful substances from entering the brain from the bloodstream, Leszczynski said. The study found that a protein called hsp27 linked to the functioning of the bloodbrain barrier showed increased activity due to irradiation and pointed to a possibility that such activity could make the shield more permeable, he said. "Increased protein activity might cause cells to shrink--not the blood vessels but the cells themselves—and then tiny gaps could appear between those cells through which some molecules could pass." he said. Leszczynski declined to speculate on what kind of health risks that could pose, but said a French study indicated that headache, fatigue and sleep disorders could result. "These are not life-threatening problems but can cause a lot of discomfort," he said, adding that a Swedish group had also suggested a possible link with Alzheimer's disease. "Where the truth is I do not know," he said. Leszczynski said that he, his wife and children use mobile phones, and he said that he did not think his study suggested any need for new restrictions on mobile phone use.

单选题 Music comes in many forms; most countries have a style of their own. {{U}}(1) {{/U}} the turn of the century when jazz was born, America had no prominent {{U}}(2) {{/U}} of its own. No one knows exactly when jazz was {{U}}(3) {{/U}},or by whom. But it began to be {{U}}(4) {{/U}} in the early 1900s. Jazz is America's contribution to {{U}}(5) {{/U}} music. In contrast to classical music, which {{U}}(6) {{/U}} formal European traditions, jazz is spontaneous and free-form. It bubbles with energy, {{U}}(7) {{/U}} the moods, interests, and emotions of the people. In the 1920, jazz {{U}}(8) {{/U}} like America. And {{U}}(9) {{/U}} it does today. The {{U}}(10) {{/U}} of this music are as interesting as the music {{U}}(11) {{/U}}. American Negroes, or blacks, as they are called today, were the jazz {{U}}(12) {{/U}}. They were brought to the Southern states {{U}}(13) {{/U}} slaves. They were sold to plantation owners and forced to work long {{U}}(14) {{/U}}. When a Negro died his friends and relatives {{U}}(15) {{/U}} a procession to carry the body to the cemetery. In New Orleans, a band often accompanies the {{U}}(16) {{/U}}. On the way to the cemetery the band played slow, solemn music suited to the occasion. {{U}}(17) {{/U}} on the way home the mood changed. Spirits lifted. Death had removed one of their {{U}}(18) {{/U}}, but the living were glad to be alive. The band played {{U}}(19) {{/U}} music, improvising on both the harmony and the melody of the tunes {{U}}(20) {{/U}} at the funeral. This music made everyone want to dance. It was an early form of jazz.