单选题What happened in 1996?

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} It may be just as well for Oxford University's reputation that this week's meeting of Congregation, its 3,552-strong governing body, was held in secret, for the air of civilized rationality that is generally supposed to pervade donnish conversation has lately turned fractious. That's because the vice-chancellor, the nearest thing the place has to a chief executive, has proposed the most fundamental reforms to the university since the establishment of the college system in 1249; and a lot of the dons and colleges don't like it. The trouble with Oxford is that it is unmanageable. Its problems-the difficulty of recruiting good dons and of getting rid of bad ones, concerns about academic standards, severe money worries at some colleges-all spring from that. John Hood, who was recruited as vice-chancellor from the University of Auckland and is now probably the most-hated antipodean in British academic life, reckons he knows how to solve this, and has proposed to reduce the power of dons and colleges and increase that of university administrators. Mr. Hood is right that the university's management structure needs an overhaul. But radical though his proposals seem to those involved in the current row, they do not go far enough. The difficulty of managing Oxford stems only partly from the nuttiness of its system of governance; the more fundamental problem lies in its relationship with the government. That's why Mr. Hood should adopt an idea that was once regarded as teetering on the lunatic fringe of radicalism, but these days is discussed even in polite circles. The idea is independence. Oxford gets around ￡5,000 ($9,500) per undergraduate per year from the government. In return, it accepts that it can charge students only ￡1,150 (rising to￡3,000 next year) on top of that. Since it probably costs at least ￡10,000 a year to teach an undergraduate, that leaves Oxford with a deficit of ￡4,000 or so per student to cover from its own funds. If Oxford declared independence, it would lose the ￡52m undergraduate subsidy at least. Could it fill the hole? Certainly. America's top universities charge around ￡20,000 per student per year. The difficult issue would not be money alone, it would be balancing numbers of not-so-brilliant rich people paying top whack with the cleverer poorer ones they were cross-subsidising. America's top universities manage it: high fees mean better teaching, which keeps competition hot and academic standards high, while luring enough donations to provide bursaries for the poor. It should be easier to extract money from alumni if Oxford were no longer state-funded.

单选题On April 20,2000, in Accra, Ghana, the leaders of six West African countries declared their intention to proceed to monetary union among the non-CFA franc countries of the region by January 2003, as first step toward a wider monetary union including all the ECOWAS countries in 2004. The six countries (1) themselves to reducing central bank financing of budget deficits (2) 10 percent of the previous years government (3) ; reducing budget deficits to 4 percent of the second phase by 2003; creating a Convergence Council to help (4) macroeconomic policies; and (5) up a common central bank. Their declaration (6) that, " Member States (7) the need (8) strong political commitment and (9) to (10) all such national policies (11) would facilitate the regional monetary integration process. " The goal of a monetary union in ECOWAS has long been an objective of the organization, going back to its formation in 1975, and is intended to (12) broader integration process that would include enhanced regional trade and (13) institutions. In the colonial period, currency boards linked sets of countries in the region. (14) independence, (15) , these currency boards were (16) , with the (17) of the CFA franc zone, which included the francophone countries of the region. Although there have been attempts to advance the agenda of ECOWAS monetary cooperation, political problems and other economic priorities in several of the region's countries have to (18) inhibited progress. Although some problems remain, the recent initiative has been bolstered by the election in 1999 of a democratic government and a leader who is committed to regional (19) in Nigeria, the largest economy of the region, raising hopes that the long-delayed project can be (20) .

单选题"The U.S. economy is rapidly deteriorating," says Mr. Grannis. "The odds of a recession are now very high, perhaps by the end of the year. " There are already some signs that important pillars are weakening. Consumer confidence has fallen for the past two months; and the housing sector, which has been buoyant, is starting to sink. Corporate profits are falling. Some analysts are especially concerned over the sharp fall of commodity prices. They believe it represents the threat of inflation, or falling prices in general. While this may be good for consumers, it could cause a global slowdown. "The Central Bank will have to act forcefully to arrest the deflationary forces," says Robert LaMorte, chairman of Behavioral Economics, a consulting firm in San Diego. But others counter that the Central Bank doesn't need to intervene, and they argue it should wait to see real data before acting. "The fundamentals are better than the stock market reflects," says Peter Kretzmer, an economist at Nationsbanc Montgomery Securities. The president also tried to do his part to calm the markets, citing the strong job market and balanced budget. "We believe our fundamental economic policy is sound," he said. His comments echoed statements by Treasury Secretary in Washington. Some numbers do continue to reflect a strong economy. On September 11, the Conference Board released its index of leading indicators. The index rose 0.4 percent, promoting the business organization to predict that the nation's output should increase at a moderate pace for the rest of this year. The group sees little risk of recession in the near term. But what has changed is the global economy. Japan and the rest of Asia are in recession. The woes are spreading to Latin America. "I'm convinced that we are going to have a global economic recession," says Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at Norwest Corp. , a Minneapolis-based bank. But, he adds, it's not certain the U.S. will slide into a period of negative growth. He rates the risk of recession at only 10 to 15 percent. "We will be responding to the world economic situation rather leading it," he says. Still, Fed watchers don't think the Central Bank will act to try to save the world. "It's inconceivable the Fed could make much difference in Asia, Russia, or Latin America," says Lyle Gramley, a former Fed governor. After the last stock market crash, the Federal Revenue acted quickly to provide liquidity to the markets and to lower interest rates. But the economy is in better shape this time. The banking sector is stronger and the financial markets have been able to respond to enormous trading volume.

单选题Weak dollar or no, $ 46,000-the price for a single year of undergraduate instruction amid the red brick of Harvard Yard-is (1) But nowadays cost is (2) barrier to entry at many of America's best universities. Formidable financial-assistance policies have (3) fees or slashed them deeply for needy students. And last month Harvard announced a new plan designed to (4) the sticker-shock for undergraduates from middle and even upper-income families too. Since then, other rich American universities have unveiled (5) initiatives. Yale, Harvard's bitterest (6) , revealed its plans on January 14th. Students whose families make (7) than $60,000 a year will pay nothing at all. Families earning up to $ 200,000 a year will have to pay an average of 10% of their incomes. The university will (8) its financial- assistance budget by 43%, to over $ 80m. Harvard will have a similar arrangement for families making up to $180,000. That makes the price of going to Harvard or Yale (9) to attending a state-run university for middle-and upper-income students. The universities will also not require any student to take out (10) to pay for their (11) , a policy introduced by Princeton in 2001 and by the University of Pennsylvania just after Harvard's (12) . No applicant who gains admission, officials say, should feel (13) to go elsewhere because he or she can't afford the fees. None of that is quite as altruistic as it sounds. Harvard and Yale are, after all, now likely to lure more students away from previously (14) options, particularly state-run universities, (15) their already impressive admissions figures and reputations. The schemes also provide a (16) for structuring university fees in which high prices for rich students help offset modest prices for poorer ones and families are less (17) on federal grants and government-backed loans. Less wealthy private colleges whose fees are high will not be able to (18) Harvard or Yale easily. But America's state-run universities, which have traditionally kept their fees low and stable, might well try a differentiated (19) scheme as they raise cash to compete academically with their private (20) . Indeed, the University of California system has already started to implement a sliding-fee scale.

单选题It vanished in 2002, a result of a bad fall. As my neurosurgeon explained, when my head hit the ground, my brain sloshed around, which smashed delicate nerve endings in my olfactory system. Maybe they'll repair themselves, she said (in what struck me as much too casual a tone ), and maybe they won't, If I had to lose something, it might as well have been smell; at least nothing about my personality or my memory had changed, as can happen with head trauma. So it seemed almost churlish to feel, as the months went on, so devastated by this particular loss. But I was heartbroken. My sense of smell was always something I took pleasure in. Without scent, I felt as ff I were walking around the city without my contact lenses, dealing with people while wearing earplugs, moving through something sticky and thick. The sharpness of things, their specificity, diminished. I couldn't even tell when the milk had gone bad. Oddly, my sense of taste remained perfectly fine, but I was still nervous about opening a carton of yogurt without having someone nearby to sniff it for me. I had been stripped of the sense we all use, often without realizing it, to negotiate the world, to know which things are safe and which are dangerous. After nearly a year, I talked to a colleague savvying about neuro-science, who suggested I try to retrain my sense of smell on the assumption that the nerve endings had repaired themselves but that something was still broken along the pathway from nose to brain, where odor molecules activate olfactory receptors (the subject of this year's Nobel-winning research) . Her advice was to expose myself to strong, distinctive fragrances, asking the person I was with to tell me exactly what I was smelling even if I wasn't conscious of smelling anything at all. I began sticking my nose into everything that seemed likely to have a scent-the cumin in the spice cabinet, freshly ground coffee, red wine. I interrupted friends midsentence if we happened to be walking past a pizza place or a garbage truck and asked, stupidly, "What are you smelling now?" Slowly, the smell therapy started to work. At first, distressingly, all I could smell were unnatural scents: dandruff shampoo, furniture polish, a cloud of after-shave from a stocky young man. The first time I smelled cut grass again, in the small park near the American Museum of Natural History, was almost exactly two years after my fall. It made me cry. The tears embarrassed me, but cut grass is one of those fragrances that transport me directly to the landscape of childhood. And that's what I had been missing, really, and why getting back my sense of smell was so precious: a visceral connection to the person I used to be.

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}Directions: Read the following texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answer on ANSWER SHEET 1. {{B}}Text 1{{/B}} Children attending schools located in high-traffic zones have a 45 percent increased risk of developing asthma, even though time spent at school only accounts for about one-third of a child's waking hours, according to new research. Asthma is the most common chronic childhood illness in developed countries and has been linked to environmental factors such as traffic-related air pollution. "While residential traffic-related pollution has been associated with asthma, there has been little study of the effects of traffic exposure at school on new onset asthma," says Rob McConnell, professor of preventive medicine at USC's Keck School of Medicine. "Exposure to pollution at locations other than home, especially where children spend a large portion of their day and may engage in physical activity, appears to influence asthma risk as well." The study appears online in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. The study drew upon data from the Children's Health Study (CHS), a longitudinal study of children in Southern California communities that was designed to investigate the chronic effects of air pollution on respiratory health. Using a cohort of 2 497 kindergarten and first grade children who were asthma-free when they entered the study, researchers examined the relationship of local traffic around schools and homes to diagnosis new onset asthma that occurred during three years of follow-up. Traffic-related pollution exposure was assessed based on a model that took into account traffic volume, distance to major roadways from home and school and local weather conditions. Regional ambient ozone, nitrogen dioxide (二氧化氮) and particulate matter were measured continuously at one central site in each of the 13 study communities. The design allowed investigators to examine the joint effects of local traffic-related pollution exposure at school and at home and of regional pollution exposure affecting the entire community. Researchers found 120 cases of new asthma. The risk associated with traffic-related pollution exposure at schools was almost as high as for residential exposure, and combined exposure accounting for time spent at home and at school had a slightly larger effect. Although children spend less time at school than at home, physical education, and other activities that take place at school may increase ventilation rates and the dose of pollutants getting into the lungs, McConnell notes. Traffic-related pollutant levels may also be higher during the morning hours when children are arriving at school. Despite a state law that prohibits school districts from building campuses within 500 feet of a freeway, many Southern California schools are located near high-traffic areas, including busy surface streets. "It's important to understand how these micro-environments where children spent a lot of their time outside of the home are impacting their health," McConnell says. "Policies that reduce exposure to high-traffic environments may help to prevent this disease. " The study was funded by grants from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, and the Hastings Foundation.

单选题Like many Americans, Mark Seery watched the Virginia Tech school shooting unfold on the cable news networks in April 2007. It wasn"t just the catastrophe that disturbed him—it was how some psychologists were advising the campus community to respond in the wake of the devastating tragedy. "There"s a sense that"s very much alive within the professional community that if people don"t talk about what they"re feeling, and try to suppress it, somehow it will only rebound down the road and make things worse," says Seery, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Buffalo. That, says Seery, is one of many examples of situations in which the first response to a tragedy"s psychological ramifications is to encourage victims and bystanders to talk about their emotions in the wake of the event. That idea is constantly reinforced by a battery of television therapists who harp on the importance of sharing your feelings. But is that really the best medicine? Seery"s new research offers an alternative to that philosophy. His work suggests that those who do not reveal their feelings in the wake of a collective trauma turn out just fine, if not better, than those who do. Seery used an online survey to query a national sample about their reactions to the 9/11 attacks, beginning on the day itself. The respondents were divided into two groups: those who said they were initially unwilling to talk about their feelings, and the rest. At the end of the two-year survey period, those who decided not to share their feelings reported fewer related mental and physical problems. That effect was even more pronounced among those who lived close to the tragedy. Seery also found an interesting correlation between the level of sharing and well-being. Participants could decide how much they wanted to report about their feelings on the survey. Seery found that there was a correlation between those who wrote the lengthier, more in-depth descriptions of their feelings and those who had worse mental and physical statuses. Does the study turn conventional wisdom completely on its head, suggesting that it"s better to stay quiet in the aftermath of a traumatic event? Not quite. Seery explains that the respondents who felt the need to divulge their emotions started off in a worse mental and physical state in the first place, likely a bit more susceptible to the stress of a collective traumatic event. "The people who were talking were probably more distressed by the event," says Seery. "The initial distress motivated them to want to have some place to talk about it...whereas people who chose not to talk were less likely to say that they were trying cope." The take-home message, then, is that there is no one right way to react to traumatic events; there is a wide range of normal and healthy responses to tragedy.

单选题What does the word "ineligible" in par

单选题A study released a little over a week ago, which found that eldest children end up, on average, with slightly higher IQ's than younger siblings, was a reminder that the fight for self-definition starts much earlier than freshman year. Families, whatever the relative intelligence of their members, often treat the firstborn as if he or she were the most academic, and the younger siblings fill in other niches: the wild one, the flirt. These imposed caricatures, in combination with the other labels that accumulate from the sandbox through adolescence, can seem over time like a miserable entourage of identities that can be silenced only with hours of therapy. But there's another way to see these alternate identities: as challenges that can sharpen psychological skills. In a country where reinvention is considered a birthright, many people seem to treat old identities the way Houdini treated padlocked boxes: something to wriggle free from, before being dragged down. And psychological research suggests that this ability can be a sign of mental resilience, of taking control of your own story rather than being trapped by it. The late-night bull sessions in college or at backyard barbecues are at some level like out-of-body experiences, allowing a re-coloring of past experience to connect with new acquaintances. A more obvious outlet to expand identity—and one that's available to those who have not or cannot escape the family and community where they're known and labeled—is the Internet. Admittedly, a lot of the role-playing on the Internet can have a deviant quality. But researchers have found that many people who play life-simulation games, for example, set up the kind of families they would like to have had, even script alternate versions of their own role in the family or in a peer group. Decades ago the psychologist Erik Erickson conceived of middle age as a stage of life defined by a tension between stagnation and generativity-a healthy sense of guiding and nourishing the next generation, of helping the community. Ina series of studies, the Northwestern psychologist Dan P. McAdams has found that adults in their 40s and 50s whose lives show this generous quality—who often volunteer, who have a sense of accomplishment—tell very similar stories about how they came to be who they are. Whether they grew up in rural poverty or with views of Central Park, they told their life stories as series of redemptive lessons. When they failed a grade, they found a wonderful tutor, and later made the honor roll; when fired From a good job, they were forced to start their own business. This similarity in narrative constructions most likely reflects some agency, a willful reshaping and re-imagining of the past that informs the present. These are people who, whether pegged as nerds or rebels or plodders, have taken control of the stories that form their identities. In conversation, people are often willing to hand out thumbnail descriptions of themselves:" I'm kind of a hermit." Or a talker, a practical joker, a striver, a snob, a morning person. But they are more likely to wince when someone else describes them so authoritatively. Maybe that's because they have come too far, shaken off enough old labels already. Like escape artists with a lifetime's experience slipping through chains, they don't want or need any additional work. Because while most people can leave their family niches, schoolyard nicknames and high school reputations behind, they don't ever entirely forget them.

单选题With the spread of inter-active electronic media a man alone in his own home will never have been so well placed to fill the inexplicable mental space between cradle and crematorium. So I suspect that books will be pushed more and more into those moments of travel or difficult defecation (1) people still don't quite know what to do with. When people do read, I think they'll want to feel they are reading literature, or (2) something serious. (3) you're going to find fewer books presenting themselves as no- nonsense and (4) assuming literary pretensions and being packaged as works of art. We can expect an extraordinary variety of genre, but with an underlying (5) of sentiment and vision. Translators can only (6) from this desire for the presumably sophisticated. We can look forward to lots of difficult names and fantastic stories of foreign parts enthusiastically (7) by the overall worship of the "global village" Much of this will be awful and some wonderful, (8) don't expect the press or the organizers of prizes to offer you much help in making the appropriate distinctions. They will be chiefly (9) in creating celebrity, the greatest enemy of discrimination, but a good prop for the (10) consumer. Every ethnic grouping over the world will have to be seen to have a great writer--a phenomenon that will (11) a new kind of provincialism, more chronological than geographic, (12) only the strictly contemporary is talked about and (13) . Universities, including Cambridge, will include (14) their literature syllabus novels written only last year. (15) occasional exhumation for the Nobel, the achievements of ten or only five years ago will be largely forgotten. In short, you can't go too far wrong when predicting more of the same. But there is a (16) side to this--the inevitable reaction against it. The practical things I would like to see happen--publishers seeking less to (17) celebrity through extravagant advertising, (18) and magazines (19) space to reflective pieces--are rather more improbable than the Second Coming (耶稣复临). But dullness never quite darkens the whole planet. In their own idiosyncratic fashion a few writers will (20) be looking for new departures.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} The global reputation of Japan's animation industry -- an animated cartoon industry -- has never been higher, and at first glance it would appear to be in rude health. In the opening weekend of Miyazaki's new film, Howl's Moving Castle, a record 1.1 million Japanese crammed into cinemas nationwide. It has since been seen at home by nearly 10 million people, and has made Japan the only country in which The Incredibles has been kept out of the top slot. Yet Japan's animators are full of gloom. They fear that the future is bleak and that the success enjoyed by Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, which makes his films, is actually masking a sad decline. Indus- try experts say that not only is there a lack of creative talent on a par with Miyazaki, but the overall standard of animators has fallen over the past decade as low pay and poor working conditions force many to quit. "Miyazaki can't be replaced, he's a one-off," says Jonathan Clements, a British animation expert, "Miyazaki isn't 100 per cent of Ghibli, but when he goes, the party is over." The creative and commercial success enjoyed by Ghibli has afforded it a unique breathing space. For other studios, however, commercial pressures force work to be done at breakneck speed and on shoestring budgets. Veterans of the industry say quality has been sacrificed as television cartoon episodes are 'made for as little as ￡ 10,000. Many young animators rely on parental support to put them through animation schools and continue to need financial help just to afford to work in Tokyo, the world's most expensive city. Yet, remarkably, animation has little problem attracting recruits. Dozens of students pore over desks painstakingly producing page after page of drawings. Most say they are aware that pay is low but desperately want to work in the industry they fell in love with as children through cartoons such as Doraemon, the blue talking cat, and Battle of the Planets. But reality often bites as animators reach their thirties, by which time they typically earn around a third of the average pay for Japanese their age and at lower hourly rates than supermarket clerks. Clements believes that the soul of animation is at stake. "Animation is, by definition, from Japan, but it's only a matter of time before the number of foreign contributors tips the balance, and what used to be animation becomes plain old cartoons," he says. "It may ultimately remove much of what makes animation appeal to its current foreign audience base: its exoticism."

单选题 "You are not here to tell me what to do. You are here to tell me why I have done what I have already decided to do," Montagu Norman, the Bank of England's longest-serving governor (1920-1944), is reputed to have once told his economic adviser. Today, thankfully, central banks aim to be more transparent in their decision making, as well as more rational. But achieving either of these things is not always easy. With the most laudable of intentions, the Federal Reserve, America's central bank, may be about to take a step that could backfire. Unlike the Fed, many other central banks have long declared explicit inflation targets and then set interest rates to try to meet these. Some economists have argued that the Fed should do the same. With Alan Greenspan, the Fed's much-respected chairman, due to retire next year-after a mere 18 years in the job-some Fed officials want to adopt a target, presumably to maintain the central bank's credibility in the scary new post-Greenspan era. The Fed discussed such a target at its February meeting, according to minutes published this week. This sounds encouraging. However, the Fed is considering the idea just when some other central banks are beginning to question whether strict inflation targeting really works. At present centra1 banks focus almost exclusively on consumer-price indices. On this measure Mr. Greenspan can boast that inflation remains under control. But some central bankers now argue that the prices of assets, such as houses and shares, should also somehow be taken into account. A broad price index for America which includes house prices is currently running at 5.5%, its fastest pace since 1982. Inflation has simply taken a different form. Should central banks also try to curb increases in such asset prices? Mr. Greenspan continues to insist that monetary policy should not be used to prick asset-price bubbles. Identifying bubbles is difficult, except in retrospect, he says, and interest rates are a blunt weapon: an increase big enough to halt rising prices could trigger a recession. It is better, he says, to wait for a housing or stockmarket bubble to burst and then to cushion the economy by cutting interest rates-as he did in 2001-2002. And yet the risk is not just that asset prices can go swiftly into reverse. As with traditional inflation, surging asset prices also distort price signals and so can cause a misallocation of resources-encouraging too little saving, for example, or too much investment in housing. Surging house prices may therefore argue for higher interest rates than conventional inflation would demand. In other words, strict inflation targeting-the fad of the 1990s-is too crude.

单选题The majority of people, about nine out of ten, are right-handed. (1) until recently, people who were left-handed were considered (2) , and once children showed this tendency they were forced to use their right hands. Today left-handedness is generally (3) , but it is still a disadvantage in a world (4) most people are right-handed. For example, most tools and implements are still (5) for right-handed people. In sports (6) contrast, doing things with the left hand or foot, .is often an advantage. Throwing, kicking, punching or batting from the" (7) "side may result in throwing (8) many opponents who are more accustomed to dealing with the (9) of players who are right-handed. This is why, in many (10) at a professional level, a (11) proportion of players are left-handed than in the population as a whole. The word "right" in many languages means "correct" or is (12) with lawfulness, whereas the words associated (13) "left", such as "sinister", generally have (14) associations. Moreover, among a number of primitive peoples, there is (15) close association between death and the left hand. In the past, in (16) western societies, children were often forced to use their right hands, especially to write with. In some cases the left hand was (17) behind the child's back so that it could not be used. If, in the future, they are allowed to choose, (18) will certainly be more left-handers, and probably (19) people with minor psychological disturbances as a result of being forced to use their (20) hand.