单选题According to paragraph 3, some workers have been killed by harmful pollutants in that

单选题 So what is depression? Depression is often more about anger turned{{U}} (1) {{/U}}than it is about sadness. But it's usually{{U}} (2) {{/U}}as sadness. Depression can{{U}} (3) {{/U}}at all ages, from childhood to old age, and it's the United States' No. 1{{U}} (4) {{/U}}problem. When someone is depressed, her behavior{{U}} (5) {{/U}}change and she loses interest in activities she{{U}} (6) {{/U}}enjoyed (like sports, music, friendships). The sadness usually lasts every day for most of the day and for two weeks or more. What{{U}} (7) {{/U}}depression? A{{U}} (8) {{/U}}event can certainly bring{{U}} (9) {{/U}}depression, but some will say it happens{{U}} (10) {{/U}}a specific cause. So how do you know if you're just having a bad day{{U}} (11) {{/U}}are really depressed? Depression affects your{{U}} (12) {{/U}}, moods, behavior and even your physical health. These changes often go{{U}} (13) {{/U}}or are labeled{{U}} (14) {{/U}}simply a bad case of the blues. Someone who's truly{{U}} (15) {{/U}}depression will have{{U}} (16) {{/U}}periods of crying spells, feelings of{{U}} (17) {{/U}}(like not being able to change your situation) and{{U}} (18) {{/U}}(tike you'll feel this way forever), irritation or agitation. A depressed person often{{U}} (19) {{/U}}from others, Depression seldom goes away by itself, and the greatest{{U}} (20) {{/U}}of depression is suicide. The risk of suicide increases if the depression isn't treated.

单选题The main impact the Telecommunications Act of 1996 had on radio was to______.

单选题Biologists have made a lot of progress in understanding ageing. They have not, however, been able to do much about slowing it down. A piece of work reported in this week's Nature by Darren Baker, though, describes an extraordinary result that points to a way the process might be improved. Dr Baker has shown— in mice, at least—that ageing body cells not only suffer themselves, but also have adverse effects on otherwise healthy cells around them. If such ageing cells are selectively destroyed, these adverse effects go away. The story starts with an observation that senescent cells often produce a molecule called P16INK4A. Dr Baker genetically engineered a group of mice that were already quite unusual. They had a condition called progeria, meaning that they aged much more rapidly than normal mice. The extra tweak he added to the DNA of these mice was a way of killing cells that produce P16INK4A. He did this by inserting into the animals' DNA, near the gene for P 16INK4A, a second gene that was, because of this proximity, controlled by the same genetic switch. This second gene, activated whenever the gene for P16INK4A was active, produced a protein that was harmless in itself, but which could kill the senescent cells by the presence of a particular drug. The results were spectacular. Mice given the drug every three days from birth suffered far less age-related body-wasting than those which were not. Their muscles remained plump and effective. And they did not suffer cataracts of the eye. They did, though, continue to experience age-related problems in tissues that do not produce P16INK4A as they get old. In particular, their hearts and blood vessels aged normally. For that reason, since heart failure is the main cause of death in such mice, their lifespans were not extended. Regardless of the biochemical details, the most intriguing thing Dr Baker's result provides is a new way of thinking about how to slow the process of ageing—and one that works with the grain of nature, rather than against it. Actually eliminating senescent cells may be a logical extension of the process of shutting them down, and thus may not have adverse consequences. It is not an elixir of life, for eventually the body will run out of cells, as more and more of them reach their Hayflick limits. But it could be a way of providing a healthier and more robust old age than people currently enjoy. Genetically engineering people in the way that Dr Baker engineered his mice is obviously out of the question for the foreseeable fixture. But if some other means of clearing cells rich in P 16INK4A from the body could be found, it might have the desired effect. The wasting and weakening of the tissues that accompanies senescence would be a thing of the past, and old age could then truly become ripe.

单选题A study of practices of financial institutions with no discrimination against self-employed women would tend to contradict

单选题Historians have only recently begun to note the increase in demand for luxury goods and services that took place in eighteenth-century England. MeKendrick has explored the Wedgewood Firm"s remarkable success in marketing luxury pottery. Plumb has written about the proliferation of provincial theaters, musical festivals and children" s toys and books . While the feat of this consumer revolution is hardly in doubt, three key questions remain : Who were the consumers? What were their motives? And what were the effects of the new demand for luxuries? An answer to the first of these has been difficult to obtain. Although it has been possible to infer from the goods and service actually produced what manufacturers and servicing trades thought their customers wanted, only a study of relevant personal documents written by actual consumers will provide a precise picture of who wanted what. We still need to know how large this consumer market was and how far down the social scale the consumer demand for luxury goods penetrated. With regard to this last question, we might note in passing that Thompson, while rightly restoring laboring people to the stage of eighteenth-century English history, has probably exaggerated the opposition of these people to the inroads of capitalist consumerism in general: for example, laboring people in eighteenth-century England readily shifted from home-brewed beer to standardized beer produced by huge, heavily capitalized urban breweries. To answer the question of why consumers became so eager to buy, some historians have pointed to the ability of manufacturers to advertise in a relatively uncensored press. This, however, hardly seems a sufficient answer. MeKendriek favors a Viable model of conspicuous consumption stimulated by competition for status. The " middling sort" bought goods and services because they wanted to follow fashions set by the rich. Again, we may wonder whether this explanation is sufficient. Do not people enjoy buying things as a form of self-gratification? If so, consumerism could be seen as a product of the rise of new concepts of individualism and materialism, but not necessarily of the frenzy for conspicuous competition. Finally, what were the consequences of this consumer demand for luxuries? MeKendriek claims that it goes a long way toward explaining the coming of the Industrial Revolution. But does it? What, for example, does the production of high-quality potteries and toys have to do with the development of iron manufacture or textile mills? I t is perfectly possiMe Go have the psychology and reality of consumer society without a heavy industrial sector. That future exploration of these key questions is undoubtedly necessary should not, however, diminish the force of the conclusion of recent studies: the insatiable demand in the tenth-century England for frivolous as well as useful goods and services foreshadows our own world.

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on Answer Sheet 1.{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} The Catholic Church is changing in America at its most visible point: the parish church where believers pray, sing and clasp hands across pews to share the peace of God. Today there are fewer parishes and fewer priests than in 1990 and fewer of the nation's 65 million Catholics in those pews. And there's no sign of return. Some blame the explosive 2002 clergy sexual abuse scandal and its financial price tag. But a study of 176 Roman Catholic dioceses shows no statistically significant link between the decline in priests and parishes and the $ 772 million the church has spent to date on dealing with the scandal. Rather, the changes are driven by a constellation of factors: ·Catholics are moving from cities in the Northeast and Midwest to the suburbs, South and Southwest. ·For decades, so few men have become priests that one in five dioceses now can't put a priest in every parish. ·Mass attendance has fallen as each generation has become less religiously observant. ·Bishops--trained to bless, not to budget--lack the managerial skills to govern multimillion-dollar institutions. All these trends had begun years before the scandal piled on financial pressures to cover settlements, legal costs, care and counseling for victims and abusers. The Archdiocese of Boston, epicenter of the crisis, sold chancery property to cover $ 85 million in settlements last year, and this year will close 67 churches and recast 16 others as new parishes or worship sites without a full-time priest. Archbishop Sean O'Malley has said the crisis and the {{U}}reconfiguration plan{{/U}} are "in no way" related. He cites demographic shifts, the priest shortage and aging, crumbling buildings too costly to keep up. Fargo, N. D. , which spent $ 821,000 on the abuse crisis, will close 23 parishes, but it's because the diocese is short of more than 50 priests for its 158 parishes, some with fewer than a dozen families attending Mass. They know how this ~eels in Milwaukee. That archdiocese shuttered about one in five parishes from 1995 to 2003. The city consolidations "gave some people who had been driving back into the city from new homes in the suburbs a chance to say they had no loyalty to a new parish and begin going to one near their home,' says Noreen Welte, director of parish planning for the Milwaukee Archdiocese. "It gave some people who already were mad at the church for one reason or another an excuse to stop going altogether. "

单选题Dan Niles thinks that the PC market______.

单选题Exposure to asbestos fibers is harmful to people's health,______

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Positive surprises from government reports on retail sales, industrial production, and housing in the past few months are leading economists to revise their real gross domestic product forecasts upward, supporting the notion that the recession ended in December or January. Bear in mind: This recovery won't have the vitality normally associated with an upturn. Economists now expect real GDP growth of about 1. 5% in the first quarter. That's better than the 0. 4% the consensus projected in December, but much of the additional growth will come from a slower pace of inventory drawdowns, not from surging demand. Moreover, the economy won't grow fast enough to help the labor markets much. The only good news there is that jobless claims have fallen back from their spike after September 11 and that their current level suggests the pace of layoffs is easing. The recovery also does not mean the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates soon. The January price indexes show that inflation remains tame. Consequently, the Fed can take its time shifting monetary policy from extreme accommodation to relative neutrality. Perhaps the best news from the latest economic reports was the January data on industrial production. Total output fell only 0. 1%, its best showing since July. Factory output was flat, also the best performance in six months. Those numbers may not sound encouraging, but manufacturers have been in recession since late 2000, The data suggest that the factory sector is finding a bottom from which to start its recovery. Production of consumer goods, for instance, is almost back up to where it was a year ago. That's because consumer demand for motor vehicles and other goods and the housing industry remained healthy during the recession, and they are still growing in early 2002. Besides, both the monthly homebuilding starts number and the housing market index for the past two months are running above their averages for all of 2001, suggesting that homebuilding is off to a good start and probably won't be a big drag on GDP growth this year. Equally important to the outlook is how the solid housing market will help demand for home-related goods and services. Traditionally, consumers buy the bulk of their furniture, electronics and textiles within a year of purchasing their homes. Thus, spending on such items will do well this year, even as car sales slip now that incentives are less attractive. Look for the output of consumer goods to top year-ago levels in coming months. Even the business equipment sector seems to have bottomed out. Its output rose 0. 4% in January, led by a 0.6% jump computer gear. A pickup in orders for capital goods in the fourth quarter suggests that production will keep increasing--although at a relaxed pace--in coming months.

单选题Alan "Ace" Greenberg chose his nickname to improve his chances with girls at the University of Missouri. But it is an apt (1) of his wading skills on Wall Street. This week, as the 73-year-old (2) down (3) chairman of Bear Stearns, the investment bank where he has worked since 1949 is in a high. It (4) an increase in post-tax profits in the second quarter of 43% on a year earlier, (5) a time when many of its Wall Street rivals have (6) . On June 26th Merrill Lynch (7) a warning that its profits in the second quarter would fall by half, far (8) of expectations. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have also reported lower profits. Strange that this surprised. (9) Alan Greenspan's frenetic cuts (10) interest rates, times are good for underwriters and waders of bonds, core activities for Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, (11) also recorded a sharp increase in profits. It has been a terrible (12) for equity underwriters and for advisers on the small amounts of mergers and acquisitions (M＆A) this year. Merrill, Goldman and Morgan Stanley are three of the investment banks that gained (13) during the boom in equity and M＆A business, and they are now (14) the most. Of the three, Merrill is weakest in bonds. It cut (15) its fixed-income activities after the collapse of Lung-Term Capital Management (LTCM) in 1998. As it happens, both Bear Stearns and Lehman have long been criticised for their weakness in equities. Mr Greenberg is famous for worrying about even the price of a paper-clip at Bear Stearns. This used to seem terribly (16) ,but these days other Wall Street firms are (17) about costs. Lay-offs are (18) though not yet alarmingly-not least, because banks saw how Merrill Lynch lost (19) when the markets rebounded quickly after the LTCM crisis. Still, if few (20) of improvement show soon, expect real blood-letting on Wall Street.

单选题Current Group, a Germantown-based technology firm, has taken over an ordinary looking house in Bethesda and turned it into a laboratory for smart-grid technology, the system the company believes will bring the nation's electricity grids into the digital age. In the front yard stands a utility pole hooked up to a special transformer that connects the power lines to high-speed Internet. Hundreds of sensors attached to the lines monitor how power flows through the home. That information is then sent back to the utility company. The process lets a utility more efficiently manage the distribution of electricity by allowing two-way communication between consumers and energy suppliers via the broadband network on the power lines. Based on data they receive from hundreds of homes, utilities can monitor usage and adjust output and pricing in response to demand. Consumers can be rewarded with reduced rates by cutting back on consumption during peak periods. And computerized substations can talk to each other so overloaded circuits hand off electricity to those that have not fully loaded, helping to prevent blackouts. Some utility companies have launched initiatives to give consumers data about their energy consumption habits in an effort to lower energy bills. Smart-grid technology takes such programs further by automating electricity distribution, which would make grids more reliable and efficient. By partnering with utilities, the company hopes to tap into $4.5 billion in stimulus grants intended to encourage smart-grid development. When he announced the funding, President Obama pointed to a project in Boulder, Colo. , as an example of a successful smart-grid experiment. Current is one of the companies working on the project. Current's chief executive Tom Casey believes the technology will help utility companies better distribute electricity produced by renewable resources, such as solar panels or wind farms. " A smart grid's system can be paired up with the renewable resources so that when the renewable source is varying, the overall load can be varied as well, " Casey told the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. " This will reduce or eliminate the need for backup coal or gas-based power generation plants. /

单选题The history of responses to the work of the artist Sandro Botticelli (1444 ～ 1510) suggests that widespread appreciation by critics is a relatively recent phenomenon. Writing in 1550, Vasari expressed an unease with Botticelli's work, admitting that the artist fitted awkwardly into his evolutionary scheme of the history of art. Over the next two centuries, academic art historians defamed Botticelli in favor of his fellows Florentine, Michelangelo. Even when anti-academic art historians of the early nineteenth century rejected many of the standards of evaluation adopted by their predecessors, Botticelli's work remained outside of accepted taste, pleasing neither amateur observers nor connoisseurs. (Many of his best paintings, however, remained hidden away in obscure churches and private homes. ) The primary reason for Botticelli's unpopularity is not difficult to understand: most observers, up until the midnineteenth century, did not consider him to be noteworthy, because his work, for the most part, did not seem to these observers to exhibit the traditional characteristics of fifteenth-century Florentine art. For example, Botticelli rarely employed the technique of strict perspective and, unlike Michelangelo, never used chiaroscuro. Another reason for Botticelli's unpopularity may have been that his attitude toward the style of classical art was very different from that of his contemporaries. Although he was thoroughly exposed to classical art, he showed little interest in borrowing from the classical style. Indeed, it is paradoxical that a painter of large-scale classical subjects adopted a style that was only slightly similar to that of classical art. In any case, when viewers began to examine more closely the relationship of Botticelli's work to the tradition of fifteenth-century Florentine art, his 'reputation began to grow. Analyses and assessments of Botticelli made between 1850 and 1870 by the artists of the Pre Raphaelite movement, as well as by the writer Pater (although he, unfortunately, based his assessment on an incorrect analysis of Botticelli's personality), inspired a new appreciation of Botticelli throughout the English-speaking world. Yet Botticelli's work, especially the Sistine frescoes, did not generate worldwide attention until it was finally subjected to a comprehensive and scrupulous analysis by Home in 1908. Home rightly demonstrated that the frescoes shared important features with paintings by other fifteenth-century Florentines features such as skillful representation of anatomical proportions, and of the human figure in motion. However, Home argued that Botticelli did not treat these qualities as ends in themselves--rather, that he emphasized clear depletion of a story, a unique achievement and one that made the traditional Florentine qualities less central. Because of Home's emphasis crucial to any study of art, the twentieth century has come to appreciate Bottieelli's achievements.

单选题One of the most important social developments that helped to make possible a shift in thinking about the r01e of public education was the effect of the baby boom of the 1950s and 1960s on the schools. In the 1920s, but especially in the Depression conditions of the 1930s, the United States experienced a declining birth rate—every thousand women aged fifteen to forty-four gave birth to about 118 live children in 1920, 89.2 in 1930, 75.8 in 1936, and 80 in 1940. With the growing prosperity brought on by the Second World War and the economic boom that followed it, young people married and established households earlier and began to raise larger families than had their predecessors during the Depression. Birth rates rose to 102 per thousand in 1946, 106.2 in 1950, and 118 in 1955. Although economics was probably the most important determinant, it is not the only explanation for the baby boom. The increased value placed on the idea of the family also helps to explain this rise in birth rates. The baby boomers began streaming into the first grade by the mid-1940s and became a flood by 1950. The public school system suddenly found itself overtaxed. While the number of schoolchildren rose because of wartime and postwar conditions, these same conditions made the schools even less prepared to cope with the flood. The wartime economy meant that few new schools were built between 1940 and 1945. Moreover, during the war and in the boom times that followed, large numbers of teachers left their profession for better-paying jobs elsewhere in the economy. Therefore, in the 1950s and 1960s, the baby boom hit an antiquated and inadequate school system. Consequently, the "custodial rhetoric" of the 1930s and early 1940s no longer made sense; that is, keeping youths aged sixteen and older out of the labor market by keeping them in school could no longer be a high priority for an institution unable to find space and staff to teach younger children aged five to sixteen. With the baby boom, the focus of educators and of laymen interested in education inevitably turned toward the lower grades and back to basic academic skills and discipline. The system no longer had much interest in offering nontraditional, new, and extra services to older youth.

单选题The term e-commerce refers to all commercial transactions conducted over the Internet, including transactions by consumers and business-to-business transactions. Conceptually, e-commerce does not (1) from well-known commercial offerings such as banking by phone, "mail order" catalogs, or sending a purchase order to supplier (2) fax. E-commerce follows the same model (3) in other business transactions; the difference (4) in the details. To a consumer, the most visible form of e-commerce consists (5) online ordering. A customer begins with a catalog of possible items, (6) an item, arranges a form of payment, and (7) an order. Instead of a physical catalog, e-commerce arranges for catalogs to be (8) on the Internet. Instead of sending an order on paper or by telephone, e-commerce arranges for orders to be sent (9) a computer network. Finally, instead of sending a paper representation of payment such as a check, e-commerce (10) one to send payment information electronically. In the decade (11) 1993, e-commerce grew from an (12) novelty to a mainstream business influence. In 1993, few (13) had a web page, and (14) a handful allowed one to order products or services online. Ten years (15) , both large and small businesses had web pages, and most (16) users with the opportunity to place an order. (17) , many banks added online access, (18) online banking and bill paying became (19) . More importantly, the value of goods and services (20) over the Internet grew dramatically after 1997.

单选题It is not just Indian software and "business-process outsourcing" firms that are benefiting from the rise of the internet. Indian modern art is also on an upward spiral, driven by the aspirations of newly rich Indians, especially those living abroad, who use the internet to spot paintings and track prices at hundreds of gallery and auction websites. Prices have risen around 20-fold since 2000. particularly for prized names such as Tyeb Mehta and F.N. Souza. There would have been "no chance" of that happening so fast without the internet, says Arun Vadehra, who runs a gallery in Delhi and is an adviser to Christie's, an international auction house. He expects worldwide sales of Indian art, worth $ 200million last year, to double in 2006. It is still a tiny fraction of the $ 30 billion global art market, but is sizeable for an emerging market. For newly rich--often very rich--non-resident Indians, expensive art is a badge of success in a foreign land." Who you are, and what you have, are on your walls," says Lavesh Jagasia, an art dealer in Mumbai. Indian art may also beat other forms of investment. A painting by Mr. Mehta that fetched $ 1.58 million last September would have gone for little more than $ 100 000 just four years ago. And a $ 22million art-investment fund launched in July by Osian's, a big Indian auction house, has grown by 4.1% in its first two months. Scant attention was paid to modern Indian art until the end of the 1990s. Then wealthy Indians, particularly those living abroad, began to take an interest. Dinesh Vazirani, who runs Saffronart, a leading Indian auction site, says 60% of his sales go to buyers overseas. The focus now is on six auctions this month. Two took place in India last week; work by younger artists such as Surendran Naif and Shibu Natesan beat estimates by more than 70%. Sotheby's and Christie's have auctions in New York next week, each with a Tyeb Mehta that is expected to fetch more than $ 1 million. The real question is the fate of other works, including some by Mr. Souza with estimates of up to $ 600 000. If they do well, it will demonstrate that there is strong demand and will pull up prices across the board. This looks like a market with a long way to run.