单选题From the context the word "quagmire" means______.

单选题The example of "Apollo Creed" is mentioned to show that

单选题Success, it is often said, has many fathers--and one of the many fathers of computing, that most successful of industries, was Charles Babbage, a 19th-century British mathematician. Exasperated by errors in the mathematical tables that were widely used as calculation aids at the time, Babbage dreamed of building a mechanical engine that could produce flawless tables automatically. But his attempts to make such a machine in the 1920s failed, and the significance of his work was only rediscovered this century. Next year, at last, the first set of printed tables should emerge from a calculating "difference engine" built to Babbage's design. Babbage will have been vindicated. But the realization of his dream will also underscore the extent to which he was a man born ahead of his time. The effort to prove that Babbage's designs were logically and practically sound began in 1985, when a team of researchers at the Science Museum in London set out to build a difference engine in time for the 200th anniversary of Babbage's birth in 1992. The team, led by the museum's curator of computing, Doron Swade, constructed a monstrous device of bronze, iron and steel. It was 11 feet long, seven feet tall, weighed three tons, cost around $500 000 and took a year to piece together. And it worked perfectly, cranking out successive values of seventh-order polynomial equations to :31 significant figures. But it was incomplete. To save money, an entire section of the machine, the printer, was omitted. To Babbage, the printer was a vital part of design. Even if the engine produced the correct answers, there was still the risk that a transcription or typesetting error would result in the finished mathematical tables being inaccurate. The only way to guarantee error-free tables was to automate the printing process as well. So his plans included specifications for a printer almost as complicated as the calculating engine itself, with adjustable margins, two separate fonts, and the ability to print in two, three or four columns. In January, after years of searching for a sponsor for the printer, the Science Museum announced that a backer had been found. Nathan Myhrvold, the chief technology officer at Microsoft, agreed to pay for its construction (which is expected to cost $373 000 with one Proviso: that the Science Museum team would build him an identical calculating engine and printer to decorate his new home on Lake Washington, near Seattle). Construction of the printer will begin--in full view of the public--at the Science Museum later this month. The full machine will be completed next year. It is a nice irony that Babbage's plans should be realized only thanks to an infusion of cash from a man who got rich in the computer revolution that Babbage helped to foment. More striking still, even using 20th-century manufacturing technology the engine will have cost over $830 000 to build. Allowing for inflation, this is roughly a third of what it might have cost to build in Babbage's day-in contrast to the cost of electronic-computer technology, which halves in price every 18 months. That suggests that, even had Babbage succeeded, a Victorian computer revolution based on mechanical technology would not necessarily have followed.

单选题Who should pay for the expenses of the meetings and why?______

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Although recent years have seen substantial reductions in noxious pollutants from individual motor vehicles, the number of such vehicles has been steadily increasing. Consequently more than 100 cities in the United States still have levels of carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and ozone (generated by photochemical reactions with hydrocarbons from vehicle exhaust) that exceed legally established limits. There is a growing realization that the only effective way to achieve further reductions in vehicle emissions--short of a massive shift away from the private automobile—is to replace conventional diesel fuel and gasoline with cleaner-burning fuels such as compressed natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, ethanol, or methanol. All of these alternatives are carbon-based fuels whose molecules are smaller and simpler than those of gasoline. These molecules burn mom cleanly than gasoline, in part because they have fewer, if any, carbon-carbon bonds, and the hydrocarbons they do emit are less likely to generate ozone. The combustion of larger molecules, which have multiple carbon-carbon bonds, involves a more complex series of reaction. These reactions increase the probability of incomplete combustion and are more likely to release un-combusted and photo-chemically active hydrocarbon compounds into the atmosphere. On the other hand, alternative fuels do have drawbacks. Compressed natural gas would require that vehicles have a set of heavy fuel tanks—a serious liability in terms of performance and fuel efficiency-and liquefied petroleum gas faces fundamental limits in supply. Ethanol and methanol, on the other hand, have important advantages over other carbon based alternative fuels: they have a higher energy content per volume and would require minimal changes in the existing network for distributing motor fuel. Ethanol is commonly used as a gasoline supplement, but k is currently about twice as expensive as methanol, the low cost of which is one of its attractive features. Methanol's most attractive feature, however, is that it can reduce by about 90 percent the vehicle emissions that form ozone, the most serious urban air pollutant. Like any alternative fuel, methan61 has its critics. Yet much of the criticism is based on the use of "gasoline done" vehicles that do not incorporate even the simplest design improvements that are made possible with the use of methanol. It is true, for example, that a given volume of methanol provides only about one-half of the energy that gasoline and diesel fuel do; other things being equal, the fuel tank would have to be somewhat larger and heavier. However, since methanol-fueled vehicles could be designed to be much more efficient than "gasoline clone" vehicles fueled with methanol, they would need comparatively less fuel Vehicles incorporating only the simplest of the engine improvements that methanol makes feasible would still contribute to an immediate lessening of urban air pollution.

单选题The domestic economy in the United States expanded in a remarkably vigorous and steady fashion. The revival in consumer confidence was reflected in the higher proportion of incomes spent for goods and services and the marked increase in consumer willingness to take on installment debt. A parallel strengthening in business psychology was manifested in a stepped-up rate of plant and equipment spending and a gradual pickup in expenses for inventory. Confidence in the economy was also reflected in the strength of the stock market and in the stability of the bond market. For the year as a whole, consumer and business sentiment benefited from the ease in East-West tensions. The bases of the business expansion were to be found mainly in the stimulative monetary and fiscal policies that had been pursued. Moreover, the restoration of sounder liquidity positions and tighter management control of production efficiency had also helped lay the groundwork for a strong expansion. In addition, the economic policy moves made by the President had served to renew optimism on the business outlook while boosting hopes that inflation would be brought under more effective control. Finally, of course, the economy was able to grow as vigorously as it did because sufficient leeway existed in terms of idle men and machines. The United States balance of payments deficit declined sharply. Nevertheless, by any other test, the deficit remained very large, and there was actually a substantial deterioration in our trade account to a sizable deficit, almost two-thirds of which was with Japan. While the overall trade performance proved disappointing, there are still good reasons for expecting the delayed impact of devaluation to produce in time a significant strengthening in our trade picture. Given the size of the Japanese component of our trade deficit, however, the outcome will depend importantly on the extent of the corrective measures undertaken by Japan. Also important will be our own efforts in the United States to fashion internal policies consistent with an improvement in our external balance. The underlying task of public policy for the year ahead--and indeed for the longer run--remained a familiar one: to strike the right balance between encouraging healthy economic growth and avoiding inflationary pressures. With the economy showing sustained and vigorous growth, and with the currency crisis highlighting the need to improve our Competitive posture internationally, the emphasis seemed to be shifting to the problem of inflation. The Phase Three program of wage and price restraint can contribute to reducing inflation. Unless productivity growth is unexpectedly large, however, the expansion of real output must eventually begin to slow down to the economy's larger run growth potential if generalized demand pressures on prices are to be avoided. (449 words)Notes: inventory n.存货。East-West tensions 东西方紧张局势。fiscal (与国库的钱有关的)财务的(常指税收)。liquidity 周转率，清偿力。leeway n.回旋，余地。given 鉴于，由于。the Phase Three program 第三个阶段计划。

单选题During recent years we have heard much about "race": how this race does certain things and that race believes certain things and so on. Yet, the (1) phenomenon of race consists of a few surface indications. We judge race usually (2) the coloring of the skin: a white race, a brown race, a yellow race and a black race. But (3) you were to remove the skin you could not (4) anything about the race to which the individual belonged. There is (5) in physical structure, the brain or the internal organs to (6) a difference. There are four types of blood. (7) types are found in every race, and no type is distinct to any race. Human brains are the (8) . No scientists could examine a brain and tell you the race to which the individual belonged. Brains win (9) in size, but this occurs within every race. (10) does size have anything to do with intelligence. The largest brain (11) examined belonged to a person of weak (12) . On the other hand, some of our most distinguished people have had (13) brains. Mental tests which are reasonably (14) show no differences in intelligence between races. High and low test results both can be recorded by different members of any race. (15) equal educational advantages, there will be no difference in average standings, either on account of race or geographical location. Individuals of every race (16) civilization to go backward or forward. Training and education can change the response of groups of people, (17) enable them to behave in a (18) way. The behavior and ideals of people change according to circumstances, but they can always go back or go on to something new (19) is better and higher than anything (20) the past.

单选题"Making money is a dirty game," says the Institute of Economic Affairs. summing up the attitude of British novelists towards business. The IEA. a free market think-tank, has just published a collection of essays (The Representation of Business in English Literature) by five academics chronicling the hostility of the country's men and women of letters to the sordid business of making money. The implication is that Britain's economic performance Is retarded by an anti-industrial culture. Rather than blaming rebellious workers and incompetent managers for Britain's economic worries. then, we can put George Orwell and Martin Amis in the dock instead. From Dickens's Scrooge to Amis's John Self in his 1980s novel Money, novelists have conjured up a rogue's gallery of mean. greedy, amoral money-men that has alienated their impressionable readers from the noble pursuit of capitalism. The argument has been well made before, most famously in 1981 by Martin Wiener. an American academic, in his English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit. Lady Thatcher was an admirer of Mr. Wiener's. and she led a crusade to revive the "entrepreneurial culture" which the liberal elite had allegedly trampled underfoot. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, sounds as though he agrees with her. At a recent speech to the Confederation of British Industry, he declared that it should be the duty of every teacher in the country to "communicate the virtues of business and enterprise". Certainly, most novelists are hostile to capitalism, but this refrain risks scapegoating writers for failings for which they are not to blame. Britain's culture is no more anti-business than that of other countries. The Romantic Movement. which started as a reaction against the industrial revolution of the 21st century, was born and flourished in Germany, but has not stopped the Germans from being Europe's most successful entreprcneurs and industrialists. Even the Americans are guilty of blackening business's name. SMERSH and SPECTRE went our with the cold war, James Bond now takes on international media magnates rather than Rosa Kleb. His films such as Erin Brockovich have pitched downtrodden, moral heroes against the evil of faceless corporatism. Yet none of this seems to have dented America's lust for free enterprise. The irony is that the novel flourished as an art form only after, and as a result of. the creation of the new commercial classes of Victorian England, just as the modem Hollywood film can exist only in an era of mass consumerism. Perhaps the moral is that capitalist societies consume literature and film to let off steam rather than to change the world.

单选题The author organizes the passage by

单选题Which of the following inferences CANNOT be made from the information in paragraph one?

单选题The biggest danger facing the global airline industry is not the effects of terrorism, war, SARS and economic downturn. It is that these blows, which have helped ground three national flag carriers and force two American airlines into bankruptcy, will divert attention from the inherent weaknesses of aviation, which they have exacerbated. As in the crisis that attended the first Gulf War, many airlines hope that traffic will soon bounce back, and a few catastrophic years will be followed by fuller planes, happier passengers and a return to profitability. Yet the industry's problems are deeper--and older--than the trauma of the past two years implies. As the centenary of the first powered flight approaches in December, the industry it launched is still remarkably primitive. The car industry, created not long after the Wright Brothers made history, is now a global industry dominated by a dozen firms, at least half of which make good profits. Yet commercial aviation consists of 267 international carriers and another 500-plus domestic ones. The world's biggest carrier, American Airlines, has barely 7% of the global market, whereas the world's biggest carmaker, General Motors, has (with its associated firms) about a quarter of the world's automobile market. Aviation has been incompletely deregulated, and in only two markets: America and Europe. Everywhere else, governments dictate who flies under what rules. These aim to preserve state-owned national flag-carriers, run for prestige rather than profit. And numerous restrictions on foreign ownership impede cross-border airline mergers. In America, the big network carriers face barriers to exit, which have kept their route networks too large. Trade unions resisting job cuts and Congressmen opposing route closures in their territory conspire to block change. In Europe, liberalization is limited by bilateral deals that prevent, for instance, British Airways (BA) flying to America from Frankfurt or Paris, or Lufthansa offering transatlantic flights from London's Heathrow. To use the car industry analogy, it is as if only Renaults were allowed to drive on French motorways. In airlines, the optimists are those who think that things are now so had that the industry has no option but to evolve. Frederick Reid, president of Delta Air Lines, said earlier this year that events since the September 11th attacks are the equivalent of a meteor strike, changing the climate, creating a sort of nuclear winter and leading to a "compressed evolutionary cycle". So how, looking on the bright side, might the industry look after five years of accelerated development?