单选题"Hotspot" regions(Line 7, Para. 2) refer to

单选题To which of the following statements would Matthew Simmons most likely agree?

单选题Do you wake up every day feeling too tired, or even upset? If so, then a new alarm clock could be just for you. The clock, called Sleep Smart, measures your sleep cycle, and waits (1) you to be in your lightest phase of sleep (2) rousing you. Its makers say that should (3) you wake up feeling refreshed every morning. As you sleep you pass (4) a sequence of sleep states—light sleep, deep sleep and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep—that (5) approximately every 90 minutes. The point in that cycle at which you wake can (6) how you feel later, and may (7) have a greater impact than how much or little you have slept. Being roused during a light phase (8) you are more likely to wake up energetic. SleepSmart (9) the distinct pattern of brain waves (10) during each phase of sleep, via a headband equipped (11) electrodes and a microprocessor. This measures the electrical activity of the wearer's brain, in much the (12) way as some machines used for medical and research (13) , and communicates wirelessly with a clock unit near the bed. You (14) the clock with the latest time at (15) you want to be wakened, and it (16) duly wakes you during the last light sleep phase before that. The (17) was invented by a group of students at Brown University in Rhode Island (18) a friend complained of waking up tired and performing poorly on a test." (19) sleep-deprived people ourselves, we started thinking of (20) to do about it," says Eric Shashoua, a recent college graduate and now chief executive officer of Axon Sleep Research Laboratories, a company created by the students to develop their idea.

单选题What do we know from the first paragraph?

单选题However important we may regard school life to be, there is no denying the fact that children spend more time at home than in the classroom. Therefore, the great influence of parents cannot be ignored or discounted by the teacher. They can become strong allies of the school personnel or they can consciously or unconsciously hinder and frustrate curricular objectives. Administrators have been aware of the need to keep parents informed of the newer methods used in schools. Many principals have conducted workshops explaining such matters as the reading readiness program, manuscript writing and developmental mathematics. Moreover, the classroom teacher, with the permission of the supervisors, can also play an important role in enlightening parents. The informal tea and the many interviews carried on during the year, as well as new ways of reporting pupils" progress, can significantly aid in achieving a harmonious interplay between school and home. To illustrate, suppose that a father has been drilling Junior in arithmetic processes night after night. In a friendly interview, the teacher can help the parent sublimate his natural paternal interest into productive channels. He might be persuaded to let Junior participate in discussing the family budget, buying the food, using a yardstick or measuring cup at home, setting the clock, calculating mileage on a trip and engaging in scores of other activities that have a mathematical basis. If the father follows the advice, it is reasonable to assume that he will soon realize his son is making satisfactory progress in mathematics, and at the same time, enjoying the work. Too often, however, teachers" conferences with parents are devoted to petty accounts of children"s misdemeanors, complaints about laziness and poor work habits, and suggestion for penalties and rewards at home. What is needed is a more creative approach in which the teacher, as a professional adviser, plants ideas in parents" minds for the best utilization of the many hours that the child spends out of the classroom. In this way, the school and the home join forces in fostering the fullest development of youngsters" capacities.

单选题A new study finds that blacks on death row (1) of killing whites are more likely to be executed than whites who kill minorities. It also concludes that blacks who kill (2) minorities are (3) likely to be executed than blacks who kill whites. For example, there is more than a twofold greater risk that an African-American who killed a white will be executed than a white person who kills a (4) victim. A Hispanic is at least 1.4 (5) more likely to be executed (6) such an offender kills a white. The researchers of the study believe that there are two (7) explanations.. First, prosecutors often win (8) office if they win well-publicized cases. When a black kills a white, such killings gets more (9) and this idea can be (10) by many famous cases. (11) , the court judges at the state level are often (12) to elections, called retention elections. Retention election or judicial retention within the United States court system, is a periodic process, in which the voter (13) approval or disapproval for the judges presently (14) their position, and a judge can be removed from the position if the (15) of the citizens vote him or her out. Just as the researchers (16) out, death penalty is (17) political. The findings of the study, in short, show that American justice systems clearly (18) white lives more than those of blacks or Hispanics. The researchers also say their findings (19) serious doubts about (20) that the U.S. criminal justice system is colorblind.

单选题American universities like to think of themselves as engines of social justice, thronging with "diversity". But how much truth is there in this flattering self-image? Over the past few years Daniel Golden has written a series of stories in the Wall Street Journal about the admissions practices of America"s elite universities, suggesting that they are not so much engines of social justice as bastions of privilege. Golden shows that elite universities do everything in their power to admit the children of privilege. If they cannot get them in through the front door by relaxing their standards, then they smuggle them in through the back. No less than 60% of the places in elite universities are given to candidates who have some sort of extra "hook", from rich or alumni parents to "sporting prowess". The number of whites who benefit from this affirmative action is far greater than the number of blacks. The American establishment is extraordinarily good at getting its children into the best colleges. The former president George Bush and his rival in the election John Kerry were "C" students who would have had little chance of getting into Yale if they had not come from Yale families. A1 Gore and Bill Frist both got their sons into their alma maters (Harvard and Princeton respectively), despite their average academic performances. Universities bend over backwards to admit "legacies". Harvard admits 40% of legacy applicants compared with 11% of applicants overall. When it comes to the children of particularly rich donors, the bending-over-backwards reaches astonishing levels. Most people think of black football and basketball stars when they hear about "sports scholarships". But there are also sports scholarships for rich white students who play preppie sports such as fencing, squash, sailing, riding, golf and, of course, lacrosse. The University of Virginia even has scholarships for polo-players, relatively few of whom come from the inner cities. You might imagine that academics would be up in arms about this. Alas, they have too much skin in the game. Academics not only escape tuition fees if they can get their children into the universities where they teach. They get huge preferences as well. Boston University accepted 91% of "faculty brats" in 2003, at a cost of about $9m. Notre Dame accepts about 70% of the children of university employees, compared with 19% of "unhooked" applicants, despite markedly lower average SAT scores. Two groups of people overwhelmingly bear the burden of these policies—Asian-Americans and poor whites. Asian-Americans are the "new Jews", held to higher standards (they need to score at least 50 points higher than non-Asians even to be in the game) and frequently stigmatised for their "characters" (Harvard evaluators persistently rated Asian-Americans below whites on "personal qualities").

单选题From the author's point of view, the Wi-Fi technology

单选题This fall the Pew Research Center, in association with TIME, conducted a nationwide poll exploring the contours of modern marriage and the new American family. And of all the transformations our family structures have undergone in the past 50 years, perhaps the most profound is the marriage differential that has opened between the rich and the poor. In 1960 the median household income of married adults was 12% higher than that of single adults, after adjusting for household size. By 2008 this gap had grown to 41%. In other words, the richer and more educated you are, the more likely you are to marry, or to be married — or, conversely, if you're married, you're more likely to be well off. To begin the question of why the wealth disparity between the married and the unmarried has grown so much, it might be useful to take a look at the brief but illustrative marriage of golfer Greg Norman and tennis star Chris Evert, who married in June 2008 and divorced 15 months later. From all reports, their union had many of the classic hallmarks of modern partnerships. The bride and groom had roughly equal success in their careers. Being wealthy, sporty and blond, they had similar interests. This is typical of the way many marriages start. Americans are increasingly marrying people who are on the same socioeconomic and educational level. Since more women than men have graduated from college for several decades, it's more likely than it used to be that a male college graduate will meet, fall in love with, wed and share the salary of a woman with a degree. Women's advances in education have roughly paralleled the growth of the knowledge economy, so the slice of the family bacon she brings home will be substantial. On the face of it, this might explain why fewer people are married. They want to finish college first. In 2010 the median age of men getting hitched for the first time is 28.2, and for women it's 26.1. It's gone up about a year every decade since the '60s. But here's the rub. In the past two decades, people with only a high school education started to get married even later than college graduates. In 1990 more high-school-educated couples than college graduates had made it to the altar by age 30. By 2007 it was the other way around. What has brought about the switch? It's not any disparity in desire. According to the Pew survey, 46% of college graduates want to get married, and 44% of the less educated do. Promising publicly to be someone's partner for life used to be something people did to lay the foundation of their independent life. It was the declaration of adulthood. Now it's more of a finishing touch, the last brick in the edifice, sociologists believe. Marriage is the capstone for both the college-educated and the less well educated, " says Johns Hopkins' Cherlin. "The college-educated wait until they're finished with their education and their careers are launched. The less educated wait until they feel comfortable financially. " But that comfort keeps getting more elusive. "The loss of decent-paying jobs that a high-school-educated man or woman could get makes it difficult for them to get and stay married, " says Cherlin. As the knowledge economy has overtaken the manufacturing economy, couples in which both partners' job opportunities are disappearing are doubly disadvantaged. So they wait to get married.

单选题The extent of a nation's power over its coastal ecosystems and the natural resources in its coastal waters has been defined by two international law doctrines, freedom of the seas and adjacent state sovereignty. Until the mid-twentieth century, most nations favored application of broad open-seas freedoms and limited sovereign rights over coastal waters. A nation had the right to include within its territorial dominion only a very narrow band of coastal waters (generally extending three miles from the shoreline), within which it had the authority, but not the responsibility, to regulate all activities. But, because this area of territorial dominion was so limited, most nations did not establish rules for management or protection of their territorial waters. Regardless of whether or not nations enforced regulations in their territorial waters, large ocean areas remained free of controls or restrictions. The citizens of all nations had the right to use these unrestricted ocean areas for any innocent purpose, including navigation and fishing. Except for controls over its own citizens, no nation had the responsibility to control such activities in international waters. And, since there were few standards of conduct that applied on the "open seas," there were few jurisdictional conflicts between nations. The lack of standards is traceable to popular perceptions held before the middle of this century. By and large, marine pollution was not perceived as a significant problem, in part because the adverse effect of coastal activities on ocean ecosystems was not widely recognized, and pollution caused by human activities was generally believed to be limited to that caused by navigation. Moreover, the freedom to fish, or over-fish, was an essential element of the traditional legal doctrine of freedom of the seas that no maritime country wished to see limited. And finally, the technology that later allowed exploitation of other ocean resources, such as oil, did not yet exist. To date, controlling pollution and regulating ocean resources have still not been comprehensively addressed by law, but two recent developments may actually lead to future international rules providing for ecosystem management. First, the establishment of extensive fishery zones, extending territorial authority as far as 200 miles out from a country's coast, has provided the opportunity for nations individually to manage larger ecosystems. This opportunity, combined with national self-interest in maintaining fish populations, could lead nations to reevaluate policies for management of their fisheries and to address the problem of pollution in territorial waters. Second, the international community is beginning to understand the importance of preserving the resources and ecology of international waters and to show signs of accepting responsibility for doing so. Thus it will become more likely that international standards and policies for broader regulation of human activities that affect ocean ecosystems will be adopted and implemented.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Clever, rich or both -- almost every country in the world has some sort of programme to attract desirable migrants. The only exceptions are "weird places like Bhutan" says Christian Kalin of Henley & Partners, which specializes in fixing visas and passports for globe-trotters. Competition is fierce and, as with most things, that lowers the price and increases choice. Britain has two programmes, one for the rich -- who have to invest ￡ 750,000 ($1.36m) in actively traded securities -- and one, much larger, for talented foreigners. Both have worked well. Unlike some other countries, Britain does not make applicants find a job first: with good qualifications, they can just turn up and look for work. That helps keep Britain's economy flexible and competitive. But now a bureaucratic snag is threatening the scheme. The problem comes with anyone wanting to convert his visa into "indefinite leave to remain" (Britain's equivalent of America's Green Card). This normally requires four years' continuous residence in Britain. After a further year, it normally leads to British citizenship. The law defines continuous residence sensibly. Business trips and holidays don't count, if the applicant's main home is in Britain. As a rule of thumb, an average of 90 days abroad was allowed each year. But unpublished guidelines seen by The Economist are tougher: they say that "none of the absences abroad should be of more than three months, and they must not amount to more than six months in all." Over the four years needed to quality, that averages only six weeks a year. For many jet-setters, this restriction is a career-buster. Six weeks abroad barely covers holidays, let alone business travel. Alexei Sidney, a Russian consultant, has to turn down important jobs because he cannot afford any more days abroad. If applicants travel "too much", their children risk losing the right to remain in Britain. The Home Office insists that the rules have not changed since 2001. That would confirm Mr. Gherson's suspicion that the new policy has come in by accident, probably as a result of zeal or carelessness by mid-ranking officials. Their attitude is at odds with the stance of the government, which has been trying for years to make the system more user-friendly for the world's elite. It even moved processing of business residency cases from a huge office in Croydon, notorious for its slowness and hostility to would-be immigrants, to a new outfit in Sheffield. But lawyers such as Mr Kalin are in no doubt of the risk Britain is running. America, he says, is already losing out in the global talent market because of its "painful and humiliating" immigration procedures. If Britain's rules stay tight, he says, foreigners will go elsewhere. Likely beneficiaries are Ireland and Austria, European Union countries whose residency visas and passports confer the same convenience as British ones, with less hassle.

单选题For health insurance, the United States has taken the road less traveled. The United States is the only rich country without universal health insurance. People in the United States spend the most, rely heavily on the private sector, and obtain care from the world's most complicated delivery system. While some supporters have expressed satisfaction, if not pride, in these remarkable qualities, others contend that the United States faces unique limitations in reforming health care. In her exceptional book, Parting at the Crossroads, Antonia Maioni compares the formation of the U.S. and Canadian health-care systems for the years 1930-60. The United States and Canada are often considered the most similar of Western democracies. They share a common border, are wealthy, and have federal government. Their trade unions are only moderately powerful, and their populations are diverse and young. Nevertheless, their health-insurance systems are nearly opposite. The United States relies on a mix of government plans, targeted to the elderly and indigent, and employment-based plans, which the government indirectly supports. Canada offers public health insurance to all qualified residents, with the private sector providing supplementary 'services in some provinces. Labor organizations became strong advocates for health-insurance reform in both countries. Their impact partially depended on political institutions and how other actors, particularly organized medicine, wielded them. Canada's governmental and electoral systems allowed labor to cooperate with a social democratic party in the Saskatchewan Province, which established a universal program. The Saskatchewan program demonstrated universal insurance feasibility, spurring the dominant Liberals to introduce a national universal program. In contrast, the U. S. electoral system effectively precluded third-party formation, forcing organized labor to dilute its health-insurance goals because it was one of many interests represented by the Democratic Party. Maioni suggested that economic vitality is important for the future of both countries' systems, but the prognosis is uncertain. Despite recent concerns about the Canadian government's budgetary health, Maioni contends that widespread support protects universal insurance. Conversely, Maioni seems pessimistic about options for U.S. universal health insurance. Despite economic buoyancy, dissension will likely prevent reforms. Although a devastating economic downturn would make health finance difficult in either country, the U.S. system seems especially vulnerable. Employment-based insurance and Medicare both rely on labor market attachment. High, chronic unemployment could result in coverage loss and financial difficulties for employer insurance and Medicare, swelling the uninsured pool. Such a crisis could provide an opening for universal health insurance. In any case, whether the United States relies on the public or private sector, escalating health expenditures figure into budget of government, corporations, and families. The U.S. health care system's future may depend on Americans' willingness to devote more of their national income to health care.

单选题Defenders of special protective labor legislation for women often maintain that eliminating such laws would destroy the fruits of a century long struggle for the protection of women workers. Even a brief examination of the historic practice of courts and employers would show that the fruit of such laws has been bitter; they are, in practice, more of a curse than a blessing. Sex defined protective laws have often been based on stereotypical assumptions concerning women's needs and abilities, and employers have frequently used them as legal excuses for discriminating against women. After the Second World War, for example, businesses and government sought to persuade women to vacate jobs in factories, thus making room in the labor force for returning veterans. The revival or passage of state laws limiting the daily or weekly work hours of women conveniently accomplished this. Employers had only to declare that overtime hours were a necessary condition of employment or promotion in their factory, and women could be quite legally fired, refused jobs, or kept at low wage levels, all in the name of "protecting" their health. By validating such laws when they are challenged by lawsuits, the courts have colluded over the years in establishing different, less advantageous employment terms for women than for men, thus reducing women's competitiveness on the job market. At the same time, even the most well intentioned lawmakers, courts, and employers have often been blind to the real needs of women. The lawmakers and the courts continue to permit employers to offer employee health insurance plans that cover all known human medical disabilities except those relating to pregnancy and childbirth. Finally, labor laws protecting only special groups are often ineffective at protecting the workers who are actually in the workplace. Some chemicals, for example, pose reproductive risks for women of childbearing years; manufacturers using the chemicals comply with laws protecting women against these hazards by refusing to hire them. Thus the sex defined legislation protects the hypothetical female worker, but has no effect whatever on the safety of any actual employee. The health risks to male employees in such industries cannot be negligible, since chemicals toxic enough to cause birth defects in fetuses or sterility in women are presumably harmful to the human metabolism. Protective laws aimed at changing production materials or techniques in order to reduce such hazards would benefit all employees without discriminating against any. In sum, protective labor laws for women are discriminatory and do not meet their intended purpose. Legislators should recognize that women are in the work force to stay, and that their needs—good health care, a decent wage, and a safe workplace—are the needs of all workers. Laws that ignore these facts violate women's rights for equal protection in employment.

单选题The word "classified" in the second paragraph most probably means______

单选题 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You may fall prey to a nonviolent but frightening and fast-growing crime: identity theft. It happens to at least 500, 000 new victims each year, according to government figures. And it happens very easily because every identification number you have Social Security, credit card, driver's license, telephone- "is a key that unlocks some storage of money or goods," says a fraud program manager of the US Postal Service. "So if you throw away your credit card receipt and I get it and use the number on it, I'm not becoming you, but to the credit card company I've become your account." One major problem, experts say, is that the Social Security Number (SSN) — originally meant only for retirement benefit and tax purposes — has become the universal way to identify people. It is used as identification by the military, colleges and in billions of commercial transactions. Yet a shrewd thief can easily snatch your SSN, not only by stealing your wallet, but also by taking mail from your box, going through your trash for discarded receipts and bills or asking for it over the phone on some pretext. Using your SSN, the thief applies for a credit card in your name, asking that it be sent to a different address than yours, and uses it for multiple purchases. A couple of months later the credit card company, or its debt collection agency, presses you for payment. You don't have to pay the debt, but you must clean up your damaged credit record. That means getting a police report and copy of the erroneous contract, and then using them to clear the fraud from your credit report, which is held by a credit bureau. Each step can require a huge amount of effort. In the Collins' case, the clearance of the erroneous charges from their record required three years of poring over records and ＄6, 000 in solicitor's fees. In the meantime, they were denied a loan to build a vacation home, forced to pay cash for a new heating and cooling system, hounded by debt collectors, and embarrassed by the spectacle of having their home watched by investigators looking for the missing car. Of course, thousands of people are caught and prosecuted for identity theft. But it was only last year that Congress made identity theft itself a federal crime. That law set up a special government office to help victims regain their lost credit and to streamline police efforts by tracking cases on a national scale. Consumer advocates say this may help but will not address the basic problems, which, they believe, are causing the outbreak in identity theft: industry's rush to attract more customers by issuing instant credit, inadequate checking of identity, and too few legal protections for consumers personal information.