单选题Women often (1) that dating is like a cattle (2) , and a paper just published in Biology Letters by Thomas Pollet and Daniel Nettle of Newcastle University, in England, suggests they are (3) . They have little cause for complaint, however, because the paper also suggests that in this particular market, it is (4) who are the buyers. Mr. Pollet and Dr. Nettle were looking for (5) to support the contention that women choose men of (6) status and resources, as well as good looks. That may sound common sense, but it was often (7) by social scientists until a group of researchers who called themselves evolutionary psychologists started investigating the matter two decades ago. Since then, a series of experiments in laboratories have supported the contention. But as all zoologists know, (8) can only tell you so much. Eventually, you have to look at (9) populations. And that is what Mr. Pollet and Dr. Nettle have done. They have examined data from the 19t0 census of the United States of America and discovered that marriage is, indeed, a market. Moreover, as in any market, a (10) of buyers means the sellers have to have particularly attractive goods on (11) if they are to make the exchange. The advantage of picking 1910 was that America had not yet settled down, demographically speaking. Though the long-colonized eastern states had a sex (12) of one man to one woman, or thereabouts, in the rest of the country the old adage "go west, young man" had resulted in a (13) of males. Mr. Pollet and Dr Nettle were thus able to see just how picky women are, (14) the chance. (15) looking at the whole census, the two researchers relied on a sample of one person in 250. They then (16) the men in the sample a socioeconomic status score between zero and 96, on a scale drawn up in 1950 (which was as close to 1910 as they could get). They showed that in states where the sexes were equal in number, 56% of low status men were married by the age of 30, (17) 60% of high status men were. Even in this case, then, there are women who would prefer to remain (18) rather than marry a deadbeat. When there were 110 men for every 100 women (as, for example, in Arizona), the women got really (19) . In that case only 24% of low-status men were married by 30 compared with 46% of high-status men. As the men went west, then, so did their (20) opportunities.

单选题Jeffrey Sachs described the situation in Malawi in order to

单选题 Fears of "mad cow" disease spread {{U}}(1) {{/U}} the globe last week {{U}}(2) {{/U}} South Africa, New Zealand and Singapore joining most of Britain' s European Union partners in {{U}}(3) {{/U}} imports of British beef. In London, steak restaurants were empty follwing the March 20 announcement by scientists that they had found a {{U}}(4) {{/U}} link between mad cow disease from British beef and its human {{U}}(5) {{/U}}, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease(CJD) . Efforts to reassure consumers and governments proved {{U}}(6) {{/U}}. France, Germany, Italy, Finland and Greece were among countries which announced bans {{U}}(7) {{/U}} British beef shipments. A committee of EU veterinary experts, meeting in Brussels, {{U}}(8) {{/U}} new protective measures but said transmission of the disease from cattle to humans was unproven and did not {{U}}(9) {{/U}} a general ban on British beef exports. Britain's own main consumer group advised people to {{U}}(10) {{/U}} beef if they wanted to be absolutely sure of not {{U}}(11) {{/U}} CJD which destroys the brain and is always {{U}}(12) {{/U}}. "Could it be worse than AIDS?" The stark headline in Friday's Daily mail newspaper encapsulated the fear and uncertainty {{U}}(13) {{/U}} Britain. CJD {{U}}(14) {{/U}} humans in the same way that BSE makes cows mad—by eating away nerve cells in the brain {{U}}(15) {{/U}} it looks like a spongy Swiss cheese. The disease is incurable. Victims show {{U}}(16) {{/U}} of dementia and memory loss and usually die {{U}}(17) {{/U}} six months. Little is known {{U}}(18) {{/U}} sure about the group of diseases known collectively as spongiform encephalopathies, which explains {{U}}(19) {{/U}} some eminent scientists are not prepared to {{U}}(20) {{/U}} a human epidemic of AIDS-like proportions.

单选题Free education for all is not enough because______.

单选题Walt Disney could have built his biggest theme park anywhere. He chose Florida. The weather is balmy, and when it gets too hot there are lots of pools to cool off in, says. Meg Crofton, Walt Disney World's CEO'. Florida also offers plenty of space to expand. Disney World, which was first carved out of wild woodland in 1971, has swollen to four parks covering 40 square miles ( 104 sq km) and employing 60 000 "cast members". Contrary to the stereotype of rapid flow in the service sector, the average full-time employee sticks around for nine years. Florida's business climate is sunny, too. The Milken Institute, a think-tank in California, compiles an index of "best-performing cities" in America, a composite measure of such things as job creation, wage growth and whether businesses are thriving. In the most recent index, six of the top ten metropolitan areas are in Florida. ( Orlando-Kissimmee is sixth. ) And 18 of the top 30 are in the South. For a long time the South's weather got in the way of its development. Richard Pillsbury, a geography professor at Georgia State University, describes traditional life in the lowland South, a region stretching from northern Virginia down to the Gulf coast of Texas: "Smallish barren farms almost lost in the white heat of a hot and humid summer sun as the owners and their help fought swarms of mosquitoes to plant, cultivate and harvest the meagre cotton crop for market." Then air-conditioning came. As it spread after the World War Ⅱ, the South became suddenly more comfortable to live and work in. From the 1940s until the 1980s the region boomed. In his book Old South, New South, Gavin Wright lists four reasons why Federal defence spending stimulated growth. Sunshine attracted skilled professionals. The South, having developed so little in the past, was a "clean slate", without strong labour unions, entrenched bureaucracies, restrictive laws or outdated machinery. Lastly, given how much catching up the South had to do, the potential returns were higher than in the north. Southerners have prospered in part by playing to their traditional strengths. The fame of southern hospitality has bolstered the region's hotel chains, such as Holiday Inn. That of southern cuisine helps local restaurants, such as Waffle House, Cracker Barrel and KFC. Arkansas-based Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, has kept costs low by refusing to recognize unions. And Coca-Cola owes at least some of its success to its southern origins.

单选题 The effect of the baby boom on the schools helped to make possible a shift in thinking about the role of public education in the 1920's. In the 1920's, but especially{{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}the Depression of the 1930's, the United States experienced a{{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}birth rate. Then with the prosperity{{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}on by the Second World War and the economic boom that followed it, young people married and{{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}households earlier and began to{{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}}larger families than had their{{U}} {{U}} 6 {{/U}} {{/U}}during the Depression. Birth rates rose to 102 per thousand in 1946, 106.2 in 1950, and 118 in 1955.{{U}} {{U}} 7 {{/U}} {{/U}}economics was probably the most important{{U}} {{U}} 8 {{/U}} {{/U}}, it is not the only explanation for the baby boom. The increased value placed{{U}} {{U}} 9 {{/U}} {{/U}}the idea of the family also helps to{{U}} {{U}} 10 {{/U}} {{/U}}this rise in birth rates. The baby boomers began streaming{{U}} {{U}} 11 {{/U}} {{/U}}the first grade by the mid-1940's and became a{{U}} {{U}} 12 {{/U}} {{/U}}by 1950. The public school system suddenly found itself{{U}} {{U}} 13 {{/U}} {{/U}}The wartime economy meant that few new schools were buih between 1940 and 1945.{{U}} {{U}} 14 {{/U}} {{/U}}, large numbers of teachers left their profession during that period for better-paying jobs elsewhere. {{U}} {{U}} 15 {{/U}} {{/U}}, in the 1950's, the baby boom hit an antiquated and inadequate school system. Consequently, the custodial rhetoric of the 1930's no longer made{{U}} {{U}} 16 {{/U}} {{/U}}; keeping youths ages sixteen and older out of the labor market by keeping them in school could no longer be a high{{U}} {{U}} 17 {{/U}} {{/U}}for an institution unable to find space and staff to teach younger children. With the baby boom, the focus of educators{{U}} {{U}} 18 {{/U}} {{/U}}turned toward the lower grades and back to basic academic skills and{{U}} {{U}} 19 {{/U}} {{/U}}. The system no longer had much{{U}} {{U}} 20 {{/U}} {{/U}}in offering nontraditional, new, and extra services to older youths.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Whether work should be placed among the causes of happiness or among the causes of unhappiness may perhaps be regarded as a doubtful question. There is certainly much work which is exceedingly weary and an excess of work is always very painful. I think, however, that, provided work is not excessive in amount, even the dullest work is to most people less painful than idleness. There are in work all grades, from mere relief of tedium up to the profoundest delights, according to the nature of the work and the abilities of the worker. Most of the work that most people have to do is not in itself interesting, but even such work has certain great advantages. To begin with, it fills a good many hours of the day without the need of deciding what one shall do. Most people, when they are left free to fill their own time according to their own choice, are at a loss to think of anything sufficiently pleasant to be worth doing. And whatever they decide, they are troubled by the feeling that something else would have been pleasanter. To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level. Moreover the exercise of choice is in itself tiresome. Except to people with unusual initiative it is positively agreeable to be told what to do at each hour of the day, provided the orders are not too unpleasant. Most of the idle rich suffer unspeakable boredom as the price of their freedom from toil. At times they may find relief by hunting big game in Africa, or by flying round the world, but the number of such sensations is limited, especially after youth is past, Accordingly the more intelligent rich men work nearly as hard as if they were poor, while rich women for the most part keep themselves busy with innumerable trifles of those earth-shaking importance they are firmly persuaded. Work therefore is desirable, first and foremost, as a preventive of boredom, for the boredom that a man feels when he is doing necessary though uninteresting work is as nothing in comparison with the boredom that he feels when he has nothing to do with his days. With this advantage of work another is associated, namely that it makes holidays much more delicious when they come. Provided a man does not have to work so hard as to impair his vigor, he is likely to find far more zest in his free time than an idle man could possibly find. The second advantage of most paid work and of some unpaid work is that it gives chances of success and opportunities for ambition. In most work success is measured by income, and while our capitalistic society continues, this is inevitable. It is only where the best work is concerned that this measure ceases to be the natural one to apply. The desire than men feel to increase their income is quite as much a desire for success as for the extra comforts that a higher income can acquire. However dull work may be, it becomes bearable if it is a means of building up a reputation, whether in the world at large or only in one's own circle.

单选题One hundred years ago, people were ______.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} When two of the world's richest and mightiest men pledge to destroy an enemy, it is time to pay attention. Bill Gates, the former boss of Microsoft who now devotes all his time to his charitable foundation, travelled this week to New York, the city run by Michael Bloomberg, to join his fellow billionaire's campaign to stamp out smoking. Have the two potentates met their match? Despite decades of work by health campaigners, more than one billion people still smoke today. Smoking kills up to half of those who fail to quit puffing, reducing their lives by an average of 10 to 15 years. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says more than 5 million people a year die early from the effects (direct or indirect) of tobacco. That exceeds the combined toll of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Despite that dismal situation, there are three reasons to give the latest pair of campaigners a slim chance of success: money, methods and motivation. Messrs Gates and Bloomberg vowed to spend a combined total of $ 500 million on discouraging the weed. Since Mr. Bloomberg's charity had already announced an award of $125 million earlier, the new money pledged this week totalled a "mere" $ 375 million: $ 250 million from the mayor, and a fresh $ 125 million from the software magnate's philanthropic outfit. How will this cash be spent? In quite innovative ways, and that is a second reason for optimism. Hitherto, most anti-smoking funds have been channelled through a few large bureaucracies. But Mr. Bloomberg's charity wants to let a thousand flowers bloom: in other words, to lend a hand to many initiatives, both public and private, to see what works. There will be a competitive grant scheme for poor countries where the tobacco habit is spreading. The very fact that two giants are teaming up is a landmark in American philanthropy- comparable to Warren Buffett's decision, two years ago, to put his fortune at the disposal of Mr. Gates' foundation. As part of their joint commitment, Mr. Gates is giving some of his $ 125 million directly to Mr. Bloomberg's charity; the rest will go to carefully monitored projects in India, China and other places where the number of smokers is rising relentlessly. Then there is motivation. There are other big players in this cause, and that should induce every new entrant to try bringing something fresh to the party. Earlier this year the WHO started a campaign against tobacco known as MPower. One of its selling points was that in contrast with many other projects, it had a fairly clear idea about what was needed. WHO experts have listed a series of tactics, ranging from aggressive public education to a rise in tobacco taxes, that deliver results. (Even if high taxes lead to some smuggling and diversion, studies done in Brazil, for example, show that fiscal measures do curb consumption. ) The World Bank, which funded that research, is also thought to be ready to join the anti-smoking scrum after years of paying little attention. A crowded field, indeed. But having an extra $ 500 million from two hard-driven billionaires surely won't hurt.

单选题The example of the publicist is used to show most people's

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} This election year, the debate over cloning technology has become a circus -- and hardly anybody has noticed the gorilla hiding in the tent. Even while President Bush has endorsed throwing scientists in jail to stop '"reckless experiments", it's just possible the First Amendment will protect researchers who want to perform cloning research. Dr. Leon Kass, the chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, would like to keep that a secret. "I don't want to encourage such thinking," he said. But the notion that the First Amendment creates a "right to research" has been around for a long time, and Kass knows it. In 1977, four eminent legal scholars -- Thomas Emerson, Jerome Barron, Walter Berns and Harold P. Green -- were asked to testify before the House Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space. At the time, there was alarm in the country over recombinant DNA. Some people feared clones, designer babies, a plague of superbacteria. The committee wanted to know if the federal government should, or could, restrict the science. "Certainly the overwhelming tenor of the testimony was in favor of protecting it," Barron, who now teaches at George Washington University, recalls. Barns, a conservative political scientist, was forced to agree. He didn't like this conclusion, be- cause he feared the consequences of tinkering with nature, but even after consulting with Kass before his testimony, he told Congress that "the First Amendment protected this kind of research." Today, he believes it protects cloning experiments as well. Law-review articles written at the time supported Barns, and so would a report issued by Congress's Office of Technology Assessment (O. T. A. ). But the courts never got the chance to face the right-to-research issue squarely. An oversight body called the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, formed by the National Institutes of Health, essentially allowed science to police itself. So the discussion was submerged. Until now. Why legal scholars would defend the right to research is hardly mysterious. The founding fathers passionately defended scientific and academic freedom, and the Supreme Court has traditionally had a high regard for it. But why would the right to read, write and speak as you please extend to the tight to experiment in the lab? Neoconservatives like Kass have emphasized the need to maintain a fixed conception of human nature. But the O. T.A. directly addressed this in a 1981 report. "Even if the rationale.., were expanded to include situations where knowledge threatens fundamental cultural values about the nature of man, control of research for such a reason probably would not be constitutionally permissible," The government can restrict speech if it can prove a "compelling interest," like public safety or national security. But courts have set that bar very high. Unlike, say, an experiment that releases smallpox into the wind to study how it spreads, which could be banned, embryo research presents no readily apparent danger to public health or security. And if that's the case, scientists who wish to create stem cells by cloning might have a new source of succor: the U.S. Constitution.

单选题The author's main concern with young adults traveling more is______.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} In recent years, Microsoft has focused on three big tasks: building robust security into its software, resolving numerous antitrust complaints against it and upgrading its Windows operating system. These three tasks are now starting to collide. On August 27th the firm said that the successor to its Windows XP operating system, code-named Longhorn, will go on sale in 2007 without one of its most impressive features, a technique to integrate elaborate search capabilities into nearly all desktop applications. (On the bright side, Longhorn will contain advances in rendering images and enabling different computing platforms to exchange data directly between applications. ) It is a big setback for Microsoft, which considers search technology a pillar of its future growth -not least as it competes against Google. The firm's focus on security championed by Bill Gates himself--took resources away from Longhorn, admits Greg Sullivan, a lead product manager in the Windows client division. Programmers have been fixing Windows XP rather than working on Longhorn. In mid- August, Microsoft released Service Pack 2, a huge set of free software patches and enhancements to make Windows XP more secure. Though some of the fixes turned out to have vulnerabilities of their own, the patches have mostly been welcomed. Microsoft's decision to forgo new features in return for better security is one that most computer users will probably applaud. Yet ironically, as Microsoft slowly improves the security of its products---by, for instance, incorporating firewall technology, anti-virus systems and spam filters its actions increasingly start to resemble those that, in the past, have got the firm into trouble with regulators. Is security software an "adjacent software market", in which case Microsoft may be leveraging its dominance of the operating system into it? Integrating security products into Windows might be considered "bundling" which, with regard to web browsing, so excited America's trustbusters in the 1990s. And building security directly into the operating system seems a lot like "commingling" software code, on which basis the European Commission ruled earlier this year that Microsoft abused its market power through the Windows Media Player. Microsoft is appealing against that decision, and on September 30th it will argue for a suspension of the commission's remedies, such as the requirement that it license its code to rivals. Just last month, the European Union's competition directorate began an investigation into Microsoft and Time Warner, a large media firm, on the grounds that their proposed joint acquisition of ContentGuard, a software firm whose products protect digital media files, might provide Microsoft with, undue market power over digital media standards. The commission will rule by January 2005. Microsoft, it seems, in security as elsewhere, is going to have to get used to being punished for its success. Its Windows monopoly lets it enjoy excessive profits but the resulting monoculture makes it an obvious target for viruses and regulators alike.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} In 1575--over 400 years ago the French scholar Louis Le Roy published a learned book in which he voiced despair over the changes caused by the social and technological innovations of his time, what we now call the Renaissance. We, also, feel that our times are out of joint; we even have reason to believe that our descendants will be worse off than we are. The earth will soon be overcrowded and its resources exhausted. Pollution will ruin the environment, upset the climate and endanger human health. The gap in living standards between the rich and the poor will widen and lead the angry, hungry people of the world to acts of desperation including the use of nuclear weapons as blackmail. Such are the inevitable consequences of population and technological growth if present trends continue. The future is never a projection of the past. Animals probably have no chance to escape from the tyranny of biological evolution, but human beings are blessed with the freedom of social evolution. For us, trend is not destiny (fate). The escape from existing trends is now facilitated by the fact that societies anticipate future dangers and take preventive steps against expected changes. Despite the widespread belief that the world has become too complex for comprehension by the human brain; modern societies have often responded effectively to critical situations. The decrease in birth rates, the partial prohibition of pesticides and the rethinking of technologies for the production and use of energy are but a few examples illustrating a sudden reversal of trends caused not by political upsets or scientific breakthroughs, but by public awareness of consequences. Even more striking are the situations in which social attitudes concerning future difficulties undergo rapid changes before the problems have come to pass--witness the heated arguments about the problems of behavior control and of genetic engineering even though there is as yet no proof that effective methods can be developed to manipulate behavior and genes on a population scale. One of the characteristics of our times is thus the rapidity with which steps can be taken to change the orientation of certain trends and even to reverse them. Such changes usually emerge from grass root movements rather than from official directives. {{B}}Notes:{{/B}} Renaissance (14--15 世纪欧洲)文艺复兴(时期)。tyranny 暴虐统治；暴虐行为。are blessed with幸有；有幸得到。but a few 只是几个。come to pass 发生，实现。as yet 至今。grass root 群众。