单选题Changes in the conditions of international trade resulted in an

单选题It is the staff of dreams and nightmares. Where Tony Blair's attempts to make Britain love the euro have fallen on deaf ears, its incarnation as notes and coins will succeed. These will be used not just in the euro area but in Britain. As the British become accustomed to the euro as a cash currency, they will warm to it--paving the way for a yes note in a referendum. The idea of euro creep appeals to both sides of the euro argument. According to the pros, as Britons become familiar with the euro, membership will start to look inevitable, so those in favor are bound to win. According to the antis, as Britons become familiar with the euro, membership will start to look inevitable, so those opposed must mobilize for the fight. Dream or nightmare, euro creep envisages the single currency worming its way first into the British economy and then into the affections of voters. British tourists will come back from their European holidays laden with euros, which they will spend not just at airports but in high street shops. So, too, will foreign visitors. As the euro becomes a parallel currency, those who make up the current two-to-one majority will change their minds. From there, it will be a short step to decide to dispense with the pound. Nell Kinnock, a European commissioner and former leader of the Labor Party, predicts that the euro will soon become Britain's second currency. Hans Eichel, the German finance minister, also says that it will become a parallel currency in countries like Switzerland and Britain. Peter Hain, the European minister who is acting as a cheerleader for membership, says the euro will become "a practical day-to-day reality and that will enable people to make a sensible decision about it." As many as a third of Britain's biggest retailers, such as Marks and Spencer, have said they will take euros in some of their shops. BP has also announced that it will accept euros at some of its garages. But there is less to this than meet the eyes. British tourists can now withdraw money from cashpoint from European holiday destinations, so they are less likely than in the past to end up with excess foreign money. Even if they do, they generally get rid of it at the end of their holidays, says David Southwell, a spokesman for the British Retail Consortium (BRC).

单选题The consequences of heavy drinking are well documented: failing health, broken marriages, regrettable late-night phone calls. But according to Gregory Luzaich's calculations, there can be a downside to modest drinking, too—though one that damages the wallet, not the liver. The Pek Wine Steward prevents wine from spoiling by injecting argon, an inert gas, into the bottle before sealing it airtight with silicon. Mr. Luzaich. a mechanical engineer in Windsor, Calif.—in the Sonoma County wine country—first tallied the costs of his reasonable consumption in October 2001. "I'd like to come home in the evening and have a glass of wine with dinner," he said. "My wife doesn't drink very much. so the bottle wouldn't get consumed. And maybe I would forget about it the next day, and I'd check back a day or two later, and the wine would be spoiled." That meant he was wasting most of a $15 to $20 bottle of wine. dozens of times a year. A cheek of the wine-preservation gadgets on the market left Mr. Luzaich dissatisfied High-end wine cabinets cost thousands of dollars—a huge investment for a glass-a-day drinker. Affordable preservers, meanwhile, didn't quite perform to Mr. Luzaich's liking; be thought they allowed too much oxidation, which degrades the taste of a wine. The solution, he decided, was a better gas. Many preservers pumped nitrogen into an opened bottle to slow a wine's decline, even though oenological literature suggested that argon was more effective. So when he began designing the Pek Wine Steward. a metal cone into which a wine bottle is inserted, Mr. Luzaich found that his main challenge was to figure out how best to introduce the argon. He spent months fine-tuning a gas injection system. "We used computational fluid dynamics to model the gas flow," Mr. Luzaich said. referring to a computer-analysis technique that measures how smoothly particles are flowing. The goal was to create an injector that could swap a bottle's oxygen atoms for argon atoms; argon is an inert gas, and thus unlikely to harm a nice Chianti. Mr. Luzaich, who had previously designed medical and telecommunications products, also worked on creating an airtight seal, to secure the bottle after the argon was injected. He experimented with several substances, from neoprene to a visco-elastic polymer (which he dismissed as "too gooey"), before settling on a food-grade silicon. To save wine, a bottle is placed inside the Pek Wine Steward, the top is closed, and a trigger is pulled for 5 to 10 seconds, depending on how much wine remains. When the trigger is released, the bottle is sealed automatically, preserving the wine for a week or more. the company says. "We wanted to make it very easy for the consumer," Mr. Luzaich said. "It's basically mindless." The device, which resembles a high-tech thermos, first became available to consumers in March 2004, and 8,000 to 10.000 have been sold, primarily through catalogs like those of The Wine Enthusiast and Hammacher Schlemmer The base model sells for $99; a deluxe model, which also includes a thermoelectric cooler, is $199

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Conventional wisdom says trees are good for the environment. They absorb carbon dioxide -- a greenhouse gas -- from the atmosphere and store it as carbon while releasing oxygen. The roots of trees have been thought to trap sediments and nutrients in the soil, keeping nearby rivers free flowing . Trees have also been credited with steadying the flow of these rivers, keeping it relatively constant through wet and dry seasons, thus preventing both drought and flooding. Pernicious nonsense, conclude two pieces of research published this week. The first, a four-year international study led by researchers at the University of Newcastle, in Britain, and the Free University of Amsterdam, identifies several myths about the link between forests and water. For example, in arid and semi-arid areas, trees consume far more water than they trap. And it is not the trees that catch sediment and nutrients, and steady the flow of the rivers, but the fact that the soil has not been compressed. The World Commission on Water estimates that the demand for water will increase by around 50% in the next 30 years. Moreover, around 4 billion people -- one half of the world's population -- will live in conditions of severe water stress, meaning they will not have enough water for drinking and washing to stay healthy, by 2025. The government of South Africa has been taking a tough approach to trees since it became the first to treat water as a basic human right in 1998. In a scheme praised by the hydrologists, the state penalizes forestry companies for preventing this water reaching rivers and underground aquifers. In India, large tree-planting schemes not only lose valuable water but dim the true problem identified by the hydrologists: the unregulated removal of water from aquifers to irrigate crops. Farmers need no permit to drill a borehole and, as most farmers receive free electricity, there is little economic control on the volume of water pumped. So a report of Britain's Department for International Development concludes that there is no scientific evidence that forests increase or stabilize water flow in arid or semi-arid areas. It recommends that, if water shortages are a problem, governments should impose limits on forest plantation. The second piece of research looked at how long the forests of the Amazon basin cling on to carbon. Growing trees consume carbon dioxide and it was thought that only when the tree died, perhaps hundreds of years later, would the carbon be returned to the atmosphere. No such luck. In a paper published in Nature this week, a team of American and Brazilian scientists found that trees were silently returning the carbon after just five years. Before taking an axe to trees, however, consider the merits of the tropical rainforests.

单选题To the narrator, roundness stands for ______.

单选题When we listen to a person talking, the most important thing for us to do is______.

单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read the following text. Choose the best word (s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on Answer Sheet 1. In October 2002, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank{{U}} (1) {{/U}}a new electronic market (www. gs. com/econderivs) for economic indices that{{U}} (2) {{/U}}substantial economic risks, such as nonfarm payroll (a measure of job availability) and retail sales. This new market was made possible by a{{U}} (3) {{/U}}trading technology, developed by Longitude, a New York company providing software for financial markets,{{U}} (4) {{/U}}the Parimutuel Digital Call Auction. This is "digital"{{U}} (5) {{/U}}of a digital option: ie, it pays out only if an underlying index lies in a narrow, discrete range. In effect, Longitude has created a horse race, where each "horse" wins if and{{U}} (6) {{/U}}the specified index falls in a specified range. By creating horses for every possible{{U}} (7) {{/U}}of the index, and allowing people to bet{{U}} (8) {{/U}}any number of runners, the company has produced a liquid integrated electronic market for a wide array of options on economic indices. Ten years ago it was{{U}} (9) {{/U}}impossible to make use of electronic information about home values. Now, mortgage lenders have online automated valuation models that allow them to estimate values and to{{U}} (10) {{/U}}the risk in their portfolios. This has led to a proliferation of types of home loan, some of{{U}} (11) {{/U}}have improved risk-management characteristics. We are also beginning to see new kinds of{{U}} (12) {{/U}}for homes, which will make it possible to protect the value of{{U}} (13) {{/U}}, for most people, is the single most important{{U}} (14) {{/U}}of their wealth. The Yale University-Neighbourhood Reinvestment Corporation programme,{{U}} (15) {{/U}}last year in the city of Syracuse, in New York State, may be a model for home-equity insurance policies that{{U}} (16) {{/U}}sophisticated economic indices of house prices to define the{{U}} (17) {{/U}}of the policy. Electronic futures markets that are based on econometric indices of house prices by city, already begun by City Index and IG Index in Britain and now{{U}} (18) {{/U}}developed in the United States, will enable home-equity insurers to hedge the risks that they acquire by writing these policies. These examples are not impressive successes yet. But they{{U}} (19) {{/U}}as early precursors of a technology that should one day help us to deal with the massive risks of inequality that{{U}} (20) {{/U}}will beset us in coming years.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} The European Union's Barcelona summit, which ended on March 16th, was played out against the usual backdrop of noisy "anti-globalizati0n' demonstrations and massive security. If nothing else, the demonstrations illustrated that economic liberalization in Europe--the meeting's main topic--presents genuine political difficulties. Influential sections of public opinion continue to oppose anything that they imagine threatens "social Europe", the ideal of a cradle-to-grave welfare state. In this climate of public opinion, it is not surprising that the outcome in Barcelona was modest. The totemic issue was opening up Europe's energy markets. The French government has fought hard to preserve a protected market at home for its state-owned national champion, Electricite de France (EDF). At Barcelona it. made a well-flagged tactical retreat. The summiteers concluded that from 2004 industrial users across Europe would be able to choose from competing energy suppliers, which should account for "at least" 60% of the market. Since Europe's energy market is worth 350 billion (＄ 309 billion) a year and affects just about every business, this is a breakthrough. But even the energy deal has disappointing aspects. Confining competition to business users makes it harder to show that economic liberalization is the friend rather than the foe of the ordinary person. It also allows EDF to keep its monopoly in the most profitable chunk of the French market. In other areas, especially to do with Europe's tough labor markets, the EU is actually going backwards. The summiteers declared that "disincentives against taking up jobs" should be removed; 20m jobs should be created within the EU by 2010. But only three days after a Barcelona jamboree, the European Commission endorsed a new law that would give all temporary-agency workers the same rights as full-timers within six weeks of getting their feet under the desk. Six out of 20 commissioners did, unusually, vote against the measure--a blatant piece of re-regulation--but the social affairs commissioner, Anna Diamantopoulou, was unrepentant, indeed triumphant. A dissatisfied liberaliser in the commission called the directive "an absolute disaster". The summit's other achievements are still more fragile. Europe's leaders promised to increase spending on "research and development" from its current figure of 1.9% of GDP a year to 3%. But how will European politicians compel businesses to invest more in research? Nobody seems to know. And the one big research project agreed on at Barcelona, the Galileo satellite-positioning system, which is supposed to cost 3.2 billion of public money, is of dubious commercial value, since the Europeans already enjoy free access to the Americans' GPA system. Edward Bannerman, head of economics at the Centre for European Reform, a Blairite think-tank, calls Galileo "the common agricultural policy in space."

单选题The phrase "put on their thinking caps" ( Line 5, Paragraph 2) most probably means

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Caution seems the watchword among the institutional investors surveyed in our latest portfolio poll. The allocation of money between equities, bonds and cash has. on average, remained at the same levels as it did during the third quarter. While Lehman Brothers and Commerz International have increased their overall equity allocations. Daiwa has increased its bond allocation. But given the slowdown in the American economy, it is the reaction of our investors to American equity holdings that is worthy of note. While three of them. including Lehman Brothers, take a dim view of the prospects for American shares, the other four have either marginally increased their allocations, or have maintained them at the same levels as in the previous quarter. Lehman Brothers seems to have decided that the prospect for German shares is better than it is for American ones. Its allocation for American equities dropped by seven percentage points, to 45% of its equity holdings; while its German share portfolio increased by six percentage points, to 11%. Lehman's share allocation to America has dropped, even as its overall equity holdings have increased. Daiwa and Standard Life are the other two that have cut back on American equities. But Credit Suisse continues to be a cheerleader for American shares. Following its ten percentage-point increase in the third quarter, the Swiss firm increased its exposure to American equities once again in the fourth quarter. Commerz International appears to share Credit Suisse's bullish outlook: its American equity holdings have increased by four percentage points, to 490. Julius Baer is extremely bullish on American equities, with 60% of its equity funds parked there. But the average American equity holdings, among our institutional investors dropped by a percentage point in the fourth quarter. British equities seem to have become attractive—all our investors have increased their allocations. Credit Suisse, which in the third quarter cut its investment in British shares, appears to have changed its mind. It has increased its allocation by four percentage points, taking the total to 9%. On the other hand. Japanese shares have been given the thumbs-down: all our investors save Julius Baer (unchanged) and Credit Suisse (slightly up) have moved funds out of Japanese equities. It is a relatively similar story for Japanese bonds, where everybody apart from Commerz International has either dropped their yen-denominated bond holdings, or kept them unchanged. Robeco Group seems decidedly bearish, for it has sharply, cut its allocation, from 24% to 15%. Lehman Brothers. appears to have got the timing right, by raising its allocation of dollar-denominated bonds in the fourth quarter. Its increase was followed by the Fed interest-rate cut on January 3rd. Will Lehman's bearish timing prove right for American shares, too?

单选题By comparing past problems with present ones, the author draws attention to the

单选题Many foreigners who have not visited Britain call all the inhabitants English, for they are used to thinking of the British Isles as England. 1 , the British Isles contain a variety of people, and only the people of England call themselves,English. The others 2 to themselves as Welsh, Scottish, or Irish, 3 the case may be; they are often slightly annoyed at being 4 as "English". Even in England there are many differences in 5 character and speech. The chief 6 is between southern England and northern England. South of a line going from Bristol to London, people speak the type of English usually 7 by toreign students, 8 there are local variations. Further north, regional 9 is usually "broader" than that of southern Britain. Northerners are 10 to claim that they work harder than Southerners, and are more 11 . They are openhearted and hospitable; foreigners often find that they make friends with them 12 . Northerners generally have hearty 13 : the visitor to Lancashire or Yorkshire, for instance, may look forward to receiving generous 14 at meal times. In accent and character the people of the Midlands 15 a gradual change from the southern to the northern type of Englishman. In Scotland the sound 16 by the letter " R" is generally a strong sound, and " R" is often pronounced in words in which it would be 17 in southern English, The Scots are said to be a serious, cautious, thrifty people, 18 inventive and somewhat mystical. All the Celtic peoples of Britain (the Welsh, the Irish, the Scots) are frequently 19 as being more " fiery" than the English. They are of a race that is quite 20 from the English.

单选题Prolonged and excessive use of alcohol can seriously undermine an individual's health. Physical deterioration occurs. Large quantities of alcohol can directly damage body tissue and indirectly cause malnutrition. Nutritional deficiencies can result for several reasons. Alcohol contains empty calories, which have no significant nutritive value. When consumed in substantial amounts, alcohol curbs one' s appetite for more wholesome foods. Excessive alcohol intake can interfere with the proper digestion and absorption of food. Therefore, even the heavy drinker who does eat a well-balanced diet is deprived of me essential nutrients. Maintenance of a drinking habit can deplete economic resources otherwise available for buying good, wholesome food. Malnutrition itself further reduces the body' s ability to utilize the nutrients consumed. The result of damaged tissue and malnutrition can be brain injury, heart disease, diabetes, or cancer of the liver, and weakened muscle tissue. Untreated alcoholism can reduce one's life span by ten to twelve years. Heavy alcohol consumption also affects the body's usage of other drugs and medications. The dosages required by excessive drinkers may differ from those required by normal or non-drinkers. Serious consequences can be incurred unless the prescribing physician is aware of the patient's drinking habits. Sudden death may result from excessive drinking. It might occur when the individual has ingested such a large amount of alcohol that the brain center controlling breathing and heart action is adversely affected, or when taking some other drugs, particularly sleep preparations along with alcohol. Death, as a result of excessive drinking, can come during an automobile accident since half of all fatal traffic accidents involve the use of alcohol. Many self-inflicted deaths, as well as homicides, involve the use of alcohol. It is important to remember that alcohol is a drug that is potentially addictive. Once the user is hooked on alcohol, withdrawal symptoms occur when it is not sufficiently available to body cells. At the onset of developing alcohol addiction, these symptoms may be relatively mild and include hand tremors, anxiety, nausea, and sweating. As dependency increases, so does the severity of the withdrawal syndrome and the need for medical assistance to cope with it. In 1956 the American Medical Association supported the growing acceptance of alcoholism as an illness, falling under the treatment jurisdiction of the medical profession. Since then, the medical resources for problems of acute and chronic intoxication have increased and improved.