单选题Being good-looking is useful in so many ways. In addition to whatever personal pleasure it gives you, being attractive also helps you earn more money, f"amd a higher-earning spouse and get better deals on mortgages . Each of these facts has been demonstrated over the past 20 years by many economists and other researchers, The effects are not small: one study showed that an American worker who was among the bottom one-seventh in looks, as assessed by randomly chosen observers, earned 10 to 15 percent less per year than a similar worker whose looks were assessed in the top one-third — a lifetime difference, in a typical case, of about $ 230, 000. Most of us, regardless of our professed attitudes, prefer as customers to buy from better-looking salespeople, as jurors to listen to better-looking attorneys , as voters to be led by better-looking politicians, as students to learn from better-looking professors. This is not a matter of evil employers" refusing to hire the ugly: in our roles as workers, customers and potential lovers we are all responsible for these effects. How could we remedy this injustice? A radical solution may be needed: why not offer legal protections to the ugly, as we do with racial , ethnic and religious minorities, women and handicapped individuals? We actually already do offer such protections in a few places, including in some jurisdictions in California, and in the District of Columbia, where discriminatory treatment based on looks in hiring, promotions, housing and other areas is prohibited. The mechanics of legislating this kind of protection are not as difficult as you might think. Ugliness could be protected generally in the United States by small extensions of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Ugly people could be allowed to seek help from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and other agencies in overcoming the effects of discrimination. You might argue that people can"t be classified by their looks — that beauty is in the eye of the beholder . In one study, more than half of a group of people were assessed identically by each of two observers using a five-point scale ; and very few assessments differed by more than one point. There are possible other objections. "Ugliness" is not a personal trait that many people choose to embrace; those whom we classify as protected might not be willing to admit that they are ugly. But with the chance of obtaining extra pay and promotions amounting to $ 230, 000 in lost lifetime earnings, there"s a large enough incentive to do so . Bringing antidiscrimination lawsuits is also costly, and few potential plaintiffs could afford to do so. But many attorneys would be willing to organize classes of plaintiffs to overcome these costs, just as they now do in racial-discrimination and other lawsuits. Economic arguments for protecting the ugly are as strong as those for protecting some groups currently covered by legislation. So why not go ahead and expand protection to the looks-challenged? There"s one legitimate concern. With increasingly tight limits on government resources, expanding rights to yet another protected group would reduce protection for groups that have commanded our legislative and other attention for over 50 years. You might reasonably disagree and argue for protecting all deserving groups. Either way, you shouldn"t be surprised to see the United States heading toward this new legal frontier.

单选题From the text we can conclude that the robot race

单选题At 18, Ashanthi DeSilva of suburban Cleveland is a living symbol of one of the great intellectual achievements of the 20th century. Born with an extremely rare and usually fatal disorder that left her without a functioning immune system (the "bubble-boy disease", named after an earlier victim who was kept alive for years in a sterile plastic tent), she was treated beginning in 1990 with a revolutionary new therapy that sought to correct the defect at its very source, in the genes of her white blood cells. It worked. Although her last .gene-therapy treatment was in 1992, she is completely healthy with normal immune function, according to one of the doctors who treated her, W. French Anderson of the University of Southern California. Researchers have long dreamed of treating diseases from hemophilia to cancer by replacing mutant genes with normal ones. And the dreaming may continue for decades more. "There will be a gene-based treatment for essentially every disease, " Anderson says, "within 50 years. " It's not entirely clear why medicine has been so slow to build on Anderson's early success. The National Institutes of Health budget office estimates it will spend $432 million on gene-therapy research in 2005, and there is no shortage of promising leads. The therapeutic genes are usually delivered through viruses that don't cause human disease. "The virus is sort of like a Trojan horse," says Ronald Crystal of New York Presbyterian/Weill Comell Medical College. "The cargo is the gene." At the University of Pennsylvania's Abramson Cancer Center, immunologist Carl June recently treated HIV patients with a gene intended to help their cells resist the infection. At Comell University, researchers are pursuing gene-based therapies for Parkinson's disease and a rare hereditary disorder that destroys children's brain cells. At Stanford University and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, researchers are trying to figure out how to help patients with hemophilia who today must inject themselves with expensive clotting drugs for life. Animal experiments have shown great promise. But somehow, things get lost in the translation from laboratory to patient. In human trials of the hemophilia treatment, patients show a response at first, but it fades over time. And the field has still not recovered from the setback it suffered in 1999, when Jesse Gelsinger, an 18-year-old with a rare metabolic disorder, died after receiving an experimental gene therapy at the University of Pennsylvania. Some experts worry that the field will be tarnished further if the next people to benefit are not patients but athletes seeking an edge. This summer, researchers at the Sulk Institute in San Diego said they had created a "marathon mouse" by implanting a gene that enhances running ability; already, officials at the World Anti-Doping Agency are preparing to test athletes for signs of "gene doping". But the principle is the same, whether you're trying to help a healthy runner run faster or allow a muscular-dystrophy patient to walk. "Everybody recognizes that gene therapy is a very good idea," says Crystal. "And eventually it's going to work".

单选题 The oceans are the main source of humidity, but plants also pour moisture into the air. In one day, a five - acre forest can release 20, 000 gallons of water, enough to fill an average swimming, pool. A dryer extracts moisture from wet clothes, adding to humidity. Even breathing contributes to this sticky business. Every time we exhale, we expel nearly one pint of moist air into the atmosphere. Using sophisticated measuring devices, science is learning more and more about the far - reaching and often surprising impact humidity has on all of us. Two summers ago angry callers phoned American Television and Communications Corp. ' s cable - TV operation in northeastern Wisconsin, complaining about fuzzy pictures and poor reception. "What happened," said the chief engineer, "was that the humidity was interfering with our signals. "When a blast of dry air invaded the state, the number of complaints dropped sharply. Humidity plays hob with our mechanical world as well. Water condensation on the playing beads and tapes of videocassette recorders produces a streaky picture. Humidity shortens the life of flashlight and smoke - detector batteries. When the weather gets sticky, the rubber belts that power the fan, air conditioner and alternator under the hood of our cars can get wet and squeak. Moisture also causes pianos to go out of tune, often in no time flat. At the Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts in Vienna, Va. , pianos are tuned twice a day during the summer concert season. Often a tuner stands in the wings, ready to make emergency adjustments during performances. Humidity speeds the deterioration of treasured family photos and warps priceless antiques. Your home' s wooden support beams, doors and window framers absorb extra moisture and expand - swelling up to three percent depending on the wood, its grain and the setting. Too much moisture promotes blight that attacks potato and green - bean crops--adding to food costs. It also causes rust in wheat, which can affect grain- product prices. Humidity affects our health, as well. We get more migraine headaches, ulcer attacks, blood clots and skin rashes in hot, humid weather. Since 1987, the Health, Weight and Stress Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore has tested over 1700 patients for responses to high humidity. They have reported increased dizziness, stomachaches, chest pains, cramps, and visual disturbances such as double and blurred vision.

单选题The author tries to convince us that

单选题The television series mentioned is healthy in that______

单选题When it comes to jealousy, men and women aren't always on the same page. Previous studies have shown that, while men are more likely to see red over a partner's sexual infidelity, women are more upset by emotional cheating. Evolutionary psychologists- theorize that the difference is rooted in the sexes' historical roles--men wanted to guarantee that their partners were carrying their children, while women needed to feel secure that they and their children would be cared for by a committed partner. Yet, that evolutionary explanation doesn't account for a large group of men who say that emotional disloyalty is more upsetting than sexual infidelity, and women who are more upset by sexual betrayal. To gain a more thorough understanding of gender and jealousy, researchers from Pennsylvania State University (PSU) approached the issue with some modem psychology. In a study published in the journal Psychological Science, researchers found that, while generally speaking, the evolutionary explanation of gender and jealousy held up, when viewed through the lens of attachment theory--broadly, the psychological theory about our tendency to foster intimate relationships with other people--both men and women with secure emotional histories were more likely to experience jealousy over emotional infidelity, and those who were insecure or dismissing, were more likely to be vexed by sexual cheating. To tackle the issue, researchers recruited 416 college students from New York City, whose attachment styles were assessed through questionnaires containing a series of vignettes (short descriptions or pictures)--each reflecting either secure, fearful, preoccupied, or dismissing attachment styles. Participants were instructed to select the story that most accurately reflected their own attitude about romantic relationships, and were categorized accordingly. In a subsequent questionnaire, participants were asked whether they would be more upset by their partner "having passionate sexual intercourse with another person," or "forming a deep emotional attachment to another person." They found that, regardless of gender, 77.3% of securely attached participants viewed emotional infidelity as more upsetting, while 64.8% of insecure or dismissing participants thought sexual cheating was worse. These findings, the authors say, shed light on the intricate psychological nature of jealousy, and may help to develop techniques to determine the underlying dynamics of sexual jeaiousy--a well-documented cause of spousal abuse, beating and even murder. The authors suggest that, gaining a better understanding of not only the broad differ ences in jealousy between the sexes, but of the differences in jealousy within genders, may help to identify methods for interrupting abuse by fostering stable, secure attachments.

单选题We may infer from the passage that dreaming ______.

单选题With a series of well-timed deals, private-equity firms are giving traditional mediamanagers cause to be envious, The Warner Music transaction, in which Edgar Bronfman junior and three private-equity firms paid Time Warner $ 2.6 billion for the unit in 2003, is already judged a financial triumph for the buyers. Their success is likely to draw still more private-equity into the industry. And the investments are likely to get bigger: individual privateequity funds are growing—a $10 billion fund is likely this year—so even the biggest media firms could come within range, especially ff private-equity investors club together, Some private-equity firms have long put money in media assets, but mostly reliable, relatively obscure businesses with stable cash flows. Now, some of them are placing big strategic bets on the more volatile bits, such as music and movies. And they are currently far more confident than the media old guard that the advertising cycle is about to turn sharply upwards. One reason why private-equity is making its presence felt in media is that it has a lot of money to invest. Other industries are feeling its weight too. But private-equity's buying spree (狂购乱买) reveals a lot about the media business in particular. Media conglomerates (联合公司) lack the confidence to make big acquisitions, after the last wave of deals went wrong. Executives at Time Warner, for instance, which disastrously merged with AOL in 2000, wanted to buy MGM, a movie studio, but the board (it is said) were too nervous. Instead, private-equity firms combined with Sony, a consumer-electronics giant, to buy MGM late last year. Private-equity's interest also reflects the fact that revenue growth in media businesses such as broadcast TV and radio is now hard to come by. The average annual growth rate for 12 categories of established American media businesses in 1998-2003, excluding the internet, was just 3.4% , says Veronis Suhler Stevenson, an investment bank. Private-equity puts a higher value on low-growth, high cashflow assets than the public stockmarket, says Jonathan Nelson, founder of Providence Equity Partners, a media-focused private-equity firm. What private-equity men now bring to the media business, they like to think, is financial discipline plus an enthusiastic attitude towards new technology. Old-style media managers, claim the newcomers, are still in denial about how technology is transforming their industry. Traditional media managers grudgingly agree that, so far, private-equity investors are doing very nicely indeed from their entertainment deals. The buyers of Warner Music have already got back most of their $ 2.6 billion from the farm by cutting costs, issuing debt and making special payouts to shareholders. This year, its investors are expected to launch an initial public offering, which could bring them hundreds of millions more.

单选题What does the author mean by "Aviation has been incompletely deregulated .... "(Par

单选题In eyes of the writer, the best solution to the traffic problem in Atlanta seems to lie in ______.

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. Advances in computers and data networks inspire visions of a future "information economy" in which everyone will have {{U}}(1) {{/U}} to gigabytes of all kinds of information anywhere and anytime. {{U}}(2) {{/U}} information has always been a {{U}}(3) {{/U}} difficult commodity to deal with, and, in some ways, computers and high-speed networks make the problems of buying, {{U}}(4) {{/U}} , and distributing information goods worse {{U}}(5) {{/U}} better. The evolution of the Internet itself {{U}}(6) {{/U}}serious problems. {{U}}(7) {{/U}} the Internet has been privatized, several companies are {{U}}(8) {{/U}} to provide the backbones that will carry traffic {{U}}(9) {{/U}} local networks, but {{U}}(10) {{/U}} business models for interconnection—who pays how much for each packet {{U}}(11) {{/U}} , for example—have {{U}}(12) {{/U}} to be developed. {{U}}(13) {{/U}} interconnection standards are developed that make {{U}}(14) {{/U}} cheap and easy to transmit information across independent networks, competition will {{U}}(15) {{/U}} . If technical or economic {{U}}(16) {{/U}} make interconnection difficult, {{U}}(17) {{/U}} transmitting data across multiple networks is expensive or too slow, the {{U}}(18) {{/U}} suppliers can offer a significant performance {{U}}(19) {{/U}} ; they may be able to use this edge to drive out competitors and {{U}}(20) {{/U}} the market.

单选题 Lots of creatures already reproduce without sex. Since the birth of Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby, in 1978, {{U}}(1) {{/U}} of human beings {{U}}(2) {{/U}} in laboratory glassware rather than in bed. If human cloning becomes possible—and since the birth of a sheep called Dolly, {{U}}(3) {{/U}} doubt that it will be feasible to clone a person by 2025—even the link between sex organs and reproduction {{U}}(4) {{/U}}. You will then be able to take a cutting from your body and grow a new person, {{U}}(5) {{/U}} you were a willow tree. {{U}} (6) {{/U}}, we have already divorced sex from reproduction. In the 1960s, the contraceptive pill freed women to enjoy sex for its own sake. {{U}}(7) {{/U}}, greater tolerance of homosexuality signaled society's acceptance of nonreproductive sex of another sort. These changes are only continuations of a {{U}}(8) {{/U}} that started perhaps a million years ago. Human beings {{U}}(9) {{/U}} the interest in infertile, social sex with a few other species: dolphins, apes and some birds. But {{U}}(10) {{/U}} sex is too good for human beings to {{U}}(11) {{/U}}, more and more people will abandon it as a {{U}}(12) {{/U}} of reproduction. In the modern world, you can {{U}}(13) {{/U}} have sex and parenthood without suffering the bit {{U}}(14) {{/U}}. Some Hollywood actresses {{U}}(15) {{/U}} the urge for mothering by electing to adopt children {{U}}(16) {{/U}} spoil their figures (as they see it) by childbearing. For people as beautiful as this, the temptation to {{U}}(17) {{/U}} a clone (reared in a surrogate womb) could one day be {{U}}(18) {{/U}}. However, human cloning and designer babies are probably not {{U}}(19) {{/U}}. Even assuming that the procedures are judged safe and efficient in farm animals, still a long way off, they will be heavily {{U}}(20) {{/U}}, if not banned, by many governments for human beings.

单选题Hippies were members of a youth movement of the 1960's and 1970's that started in the United States and spread to Canada, Great Britain, and many other countries. The hippies rejected the customs, traditions, and life styles of society and tried to develop those of their own. Most hippies came from white middle-class families and ranged in age from 15 to 25 years old. They thought too many adults cared about making money and little else. The term hippie may come from the word hip, which means "turned-in" or aware. Hippies wanted a world based on love of humanity and peace. Many believed that wonderful, magical changes were about to take place. They thought these changes would happen as soon as people learned to express their feelings honestly and to behave naturally at all times. Hippies strongly opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Many hippies lived together in small groups, working with one another and sharing possessions. Others refused to be tied down to a fixed job or home. They wandered from place to place seeking part-time work and temporary shelter. Some begged for spare change and lived in the streets or camped in parks or other public lands. Hippies were sometimes called "flower children" because they gave people flowers to communicate gentleness and love. They let their hair grow long and walked barefoot or in sandals. Hippies attracted public attention by wearing clothing that featured unusual combinations of colors and textures. A large number of hippies used marijuana, LSD, and other drugs. Drug experiences shaped many of their symbols and ideas. The Beatles, a popular English rock group, helped spread the hippie movement with their song. Hippie favorites included such other rock groups as the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane, singers Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, poet Allen Ginsberg, and novelist Ken Kesey. Many hippies admired Timothy Leary, a psychologist who preached salvation through the use of drugs. In time, most hippies realized it was not easy to reform society by "dropping'out" of it. Some joined more organized political movements to work for specific social causes. Others turned to spirituality or religion. The majority simply left the hippie stage of their lives behind while trying to hold on to at least a few of the ideals that once inspired them.

单选题Human greenhouse gas emissions which cause low-lying places to disappear are mainly let out by