With the development of the global economy, many companies state their basic objective of engaging in a worldwide manufacturing business and claim that they are or are becoming a multinational company. Some economists (1)_____ between the international firm and the multinational company in the following way: the "international firm" is a term that (2)_____ enterprises with various degrees of world orientation in their business; (3)_____, the "multinational company" is one type of international firm. The international firm engages in any activity or (4)_____ of activities from exporting, importing and licensing to full scale manufacturing in a number of countries. The international (5)_____ of such a company varies from the point at which overseas sales and profits take on importance and top management begins to (6)_____ some attention to them to the stage (7)_____ the company is globally oriented in its marketing, production, (8)_____, and other decisions and considers alternative opportunities around the world. When a company reaches the latter stage, it becomes (9)_____. Thus, the multinational company is one type of international company. It is a (10)_____ developed international company with a deep worldwide involvement and a global (11)_____ in its management and decision making. More (12)_____, the multinational company in manufacturing does business in a number of countries; it has a substantial commitment of its resources in international business; it (13)_____ international production in a number of countries; and it has a (14)_____ perspective in its management. Significant (15)_____ exist among multinational companies. First, such a company may not (16)_____ do business in every region and country in the world, (17)_____ it considers opportunities throughout the world. Second, it has a (18)_____ portion of its assets invested in international business; (19)_____ it makes a substantial part of its sales and earns a considerable part of its (20)_____ overseas.

Operating a single currency is not going to be easy. European economic and (1)_____ union will not function (2)_____ hitches. (3)_____, signs of (4)_____ have already appeared. And these political, economic and social pressures will almost certainly (5)_____ in the years to come. (6)_____ EMU failure is a topic generally (7)_____ in continental Europe. And for good reason. The (8)_____ of monetary union would almost certainly slam the European Union (9)_____ political (10)_____ and the world into (11)_____ crisis. "It would be almost as bad as a (12)_____ in Europe," says Uwe Angenendt, chief economist (13)_____ BHF-Bank in Frankfurt. The (14)_____ contend EMU failure is not possible. They (15)_____ insist that the political (16)_____ in Europe for monetary union is simply (17)_____ strong to allow (18)_____ to fail. But they (19)_____ a simple fact: European (20)_____ concocted monetary union, and therefore they can unconcoct it.

The history of modern pollution problems shows that most have resulted from negligence and ignorance. We have an appalling tendency to interfere with nature before all of the possible consequences of our actions have been studied in depth. We produce and distribute radioactive substances, synthetic chemicals and many other potent compounds before fully comprehending their effects on living organisms. Our education is dangerously incomplete. It will be argued that the purpose of science is to move into unknown territory, to explore, and to discover. It can be said that similar risks have been taken before, and that these risks are necessary to technological progress. These arguments overlook an important element. In the past, risks taken in the name of scientific progress were restricted to a small place and brief period of time. The effects of the processes we now strive to master are neither localized nor brief. Air pollution covers vast urban areas. Ocean pollutants have been discovered in nearly every part of the world. Synthetic chemicals spread over huge stretches of forest and farmland may remain in the soil for decades and years to come. Radioactive pollutants will be found in the biosphere for generations. The size and persistence of these problems have grown with the expanding power of modern science. One might also argue that the hazards of modern pollutants are small compared with the dangers associated with other human activity. No estimate of the actual harm done by smog, fallout, or chemical residues can obscure the reality that the risks are being taken before being fully understood. The importance of these issues lies in the failure of science to predict and control human intervention into natural processes. The true measure of the danger is represented by the hazards we will encounter if we enter the new age of technology without first evaluating our responsibility to environment.

BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B

Everybody loves a fat pay rise. Yet pleasure at your own can vanish if you learn that a colleague has been given a bigger one. Indeed, if he has a reputation for slacking, you might even be outraged. Such behaviour is regarded as "all too human," with the underlying assumption that other animals would not be capable of this finely developed sense of grievance. But a study by Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, which has just been published in Nature, suggests that it is all too monkey , as well. The researchers studied the behaviour of female brown capuchin monkeys. They look cute. They are good-natured, co-operative creatures, and they share their food readily. Above all, like their female human counterparts, they tend to pay much closer attention to the value of "goods and services" than males. Such characteristics make them perfect candidates for Dr. Brosnan' s and Dr. de Waal' s study. The researchers spent two years teaching their monkeys to exchange tokens for food. Normally, the monkeys were happy enough to exchange pieces of rock for slices of cucumber. However, when two monkeys were placed in separate but adjoining chambers, so that each could observe what the other was getting in return for its rock, their behaviour became markedly different. In the world of capuchins, grapes are luxury goods(and much preferable to cucumbers). So when one monkey was handed a grape in exchange for her token, the second was reluctant to hand hers over for a mere piece of cucumber. And if one received a grape without having to provide her token in exchange at all, the other either tossed her own token at the researcher or out of the chamber, or refused to accept the slice of cucumber. Indeed, the mere presence of a grape in the other chamber(without an actual monkey to eat it)was enough to induce resentment in a female capuchin. The researchers suggest that capuchin monkeys, like humans, are guided by social emotions. In the wild, they are a co-operative, group-living species. Such cooperation is likely to be stable only when each animal feels it is not being cheated. Feelings of righteous indignation, it seems, are not the preserve of people alone. Refusing a lesser reward completely makes these feelings abundantly clear to other members of the group. However, whether such a sense of fairness evolved independently in capuchins and humans, or whether it stems from the common ancestor that the species had 35 million years ago, is, as yet, an unanswered question.

It has wormed its way into almost every sphere of life, and the law is no exception. Artificial intelligence can now handle a lot of the drudgery of legal work; screening mountains of documents for relevant titbits, for example, or automatically drafting and checking boilerplate contracts. There's even a "superintelligent attorney" app, ROSS, powered by IBM's Watson supercomputer, that fields legal queries by speed-reading legislation and other resources. But what does it mean for the law when an algorithm, rather than a person, calls the shots? Frank Levy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dana Remus at the University of North Carolina School of Law have been on the case, exploring the potential implications of robotic legal assistants. In a report published online last month ,they found that A.I. poses less of a threat to legal jobs than some fear. But they also suggest that computers, left unchecked, can have a detrimental impact on the law. Still, A. I. will introduce new uncertainties by dint of its ability to reveal legal trends or precedents, for example. Fed the right data, machine learning algorithms can tell us how individual judges ruled, how individual companies or lawyers fared in past litigation, or how much money was involved in lawsuits. Pop details of a current case in, and the computer will forecast your chances of success. This approach might be more efficient, but it could slow the evolution of the law, the pair warn. Take the predictions too seriously, too often, and lawyers could be more reluctant to take on cases with the potential to break new ground, making it less likely that landmark judgements will be passed. By the same token, if A.I. spots a pattern of discrimination—say, that women are more likely to lose in certain types of case—it might sway lawyers' decisions and so perpetuate the problem rather than bringing it to light. Legal A.I. doesn't exist just to save lawyers time and money: it also promises to help close the "justice gap," by offering digital advice to those who can't afford a lawyer. Online dispute resolution platforms already help mediate between users on eBay and PayPal, for example. But Levy and Remus suggest that A.I. could also soon be counselling people how best to skirt the law, rather than abide by it.

Menorca or Majorca? It is that time of the year again. The brochures are piling up in travel agents while newspapers and magazines bulge with advice about where to go. But the traditional packaged holiday, a British innovation that provided many timid natives with their first experience of warm sand, is not what it was. Indeed, the industry is anxiously awaiting a High Court ruling to find out exactly what it now is. Two things have changed the way Britons research and book their holidays: low-cost airlines and the Internet. Instead of buying a ready-made package consisting of a flight, hotel, car hire and assorted entertainment from a tour operator"s brochure, it is now easy to put together a trip using an online travel agent like Expedia or Travelocity, which last July bought Lastminute. com for ￡ 577 million ($1 billion), or from the proliferating websites of airlines, hotels and car-rental firms. This has led some to sound the death knell for high-street travel agents and tour operators. There have been upheavals and closures, but the traditional firms are starting to fight back, in part by moving more of their business online. First Choice Holidays, for instance, saw its pre-tax profit rise by 16% to ￡ 114 million ($195 million) in the year to the end of October. Although the overall number of holidays booked has fallen, the company is concentrating on more valuable long-haul and adventure trips. First Choice now sells more than half its trips directly, either via the Internet, over the telephone or from its own travel shops. It wants that to reach 75% within a few years. Other tour operators are showing similar hustle. MyTravel managed to cut its loss by almost half in 2005. Thomas Cook and Thomson Holidays, now both German owned, are also bullish about the coming holiday season. Highstreet travel agents are having a tougher time, though, not least because many leading tour operations have cut the commissions they pay. Some high-street travel agents are also learning to live with the Internet, helping people book complicated trips that they have researched online, providing advice and tacking on other services. This is seen as a growth area. But if an agent puts together separate flights and hotel accommodation, is that a package, too? The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) says it is and the agent should hold an Air Travel Organisers Licence, which provides financial guarantees to repatriate people and provide refunds. The scheme dates from the early 1970s, when some large British travel firms went bust, stranding customers on the Costas. Although such failures are less common these days, the CAA had to help out some 30,000 people last year. The Association of British Travel Agents went to the High Court in November to argue such bookings are not traditional packages and so do not require agents to acquire the costly licences. While the court decides, millions of Britons will happily click away buying online holidays, unaware of the difference.

IllegalCookingOilIsEverywhereWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

One of the least appreciated but most remarkable developments of the past 60 years is the extraordinary growth of American agriculture. Farming now accounts for about one tenth of the gross domestic product yet employs less than 1 percent of all workers. It has accomplished this feat through exceptionally high growth in productivity, which has kept prices of food low and therebycontributed to rising standards of living. Furthermore, the exportable surplus has kept the trade deficit from reaching unsupportable levels. Agriculture not only has one of the highest rates of productivity growth of all industries, but this growth appears to have accelerated during the past two decades. Over the period 1948 to 2004, total farm production went up by 166 percent. The land used for farming dropped by one quarter over the 56-year period, and investment in heavy farm equipment and other capital expenditures decreased by 12 percent. Several developments drove these changes, beginning with the replacement of the remaining horses by tractors immediately after World War II and with the expanding use of fertilizers and pesticides. Later came the adoption of hybrid seeds, genetic engineering of plants and improved livestock breeding.A key element was the U.S. Department of Agriculture"s (USDA) extension service. Operating through land-grant universities and other organizations, it educated farmers on biotechnology, pest management and conservation. For many years, critics have claimed that modern agriculture is not sustainable, one of the major assertions being that it encourages erosion, which will eventually wash away most of the topsoil Lost topsoil, the argument goes, is virtually irreplaceable because it takes up to 300 years for one inch of soil to form. But a detailed study of two large areas, the Southern Piedmont and the Northern Mississippi Valley Loess Hills, showed that based on 1982 data, soil loss has dropped sharply from the very high rates of the 1930s. The study attributed the decrease in soil erosion to the USDA, which urged farmers after World War Ⅱ to adopt conservation practices such as strip cropping, whereby alternating rows are planted, and leaving plant residues in the fields year-round to inhibit water runoff. Despite being a robust contributor to the U.S. economy, modem agriculture is not without a dark side. Runoff of fertilizers, antibiotics and hormones degrade the environment and can upset the local ecology. If not grown properly, genetically modified crops could spread their DNA to conventional species.

The term "disruptive technology" is popular, but is widely misused. It refers not simply to a clever new technology, hut to one that undermines an existing technology—and which therefore makes life very difficult for the many businesses which depend on the existing way of doing things. Twenty years ago, the personal computer was a classic example. It swept aside an older mainframe-based style of computing, and eventually brought IBM, one of the world"s mightiest firms at the time, to its knees. This week has been a coming-out party of sorts for another disruptive technology, "voice over internet protocol" (VOIP), which promises to be even more disruptive, and of even greater benefit to consumers, than personal computers. VOIP"s leading proponent is Skype, a small firm whose software allows people to make free calls to other Skype users over the internet, and very cheap calls to traditional telephones—all of which spells trouble for incumbent telecoms operators. On September 12th, eBay, the leading online auction house, announced that it was buying Skype for $2.6 billion, plus an additional $1.5 billion if Skype hits certain performance targets in coming years. This seems a vast sum to pay for a company that has only $60m in revenues and has yet to turn a profit. Yet eBay was not the only company interested in buying Skype. Microsoft, Yahoo!, News Corporation and Google were all said to have also considered the idea. Perhaps eBay, rather like some over-excited bidder in one of its own auctions, has paid too much. The company says it plans to use Skype"s technology to make it easier for buyers and sellers to communicate, and to offer new "click to call" advertisements, but many analysts are sceptical that eBay is the best owner of Skype. Whatever the merits of the deal, however, the fuss over Skype in recent weeks has highlighted the significance of VOIP, and the enormous threat it poses to incumbent telecoms operators. For the rise of Skype and other VOIP services means nothing less than the death of the traditional telephone business, established over a century ago. Skype is merely the most visible manifestation of a dramatic shift in the telecoms industry, as voice Galling becomes just another data service delivered via high-speed internet connections. Skype, which has over 54m users, has received the most attention, but other firms routing calls partially or entirely over the internet have also signed up millions of customers.

That' s nothing less than a miracle.

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

Title: Speed vs. Safety in Riding a Bicycle Outline: Is low speed the only guarantee of safety in riding a bicycle? Why? Is it the same in other things in our life? You should write about 160～200 words neatly.

Individuals can make the world a better place by considering everyone is an individual and accepting the diversities in this world. Consideration of others is a major component in communication. Communicating our wishes to others, without demanding or feeling we are owed something. Humility is another virtue used to enable people to coexist without hostility and bigotry. Consider, everyone in the world has the same basic needs and wants. We all wish to have approval and succeed at the things we do. Be courteous in your dealings with every individual and always be respectful towards them, this will aid in making the world a better place. Random acts of kindness to perfect strangers would certainly enhance how we feel about each other. Speak to others as you pass them on the street. We can turn this trend around and it does start with just one individual. Start with thanking people for any small favor. Don"t hesitate to help someone if you can. The results are remarkable and contagious. Tell a friend and soon those friends will tell other friends to be kinder and gentler. Positive trains of thoughts, really do stop at most stops. Invite people to get on board. Hopefully soon the train will be crowded. Wouldn"t that be a better place to live? A basic principle taught to us by most religions is "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". I want someone to be kind to me. That is my cue to be kind to them also. We can all have a hand in making this world a better place. Respect our planet. Everyone wants to attend nice clean beaches and walk down a street without trash strewn everywhere. Disciplining our individual characters will enhance how we treat others and how we feel about ourselves. In Australia, a popular greeting is "Good day mate". It"s clever, quaint, and sounds nice too. The first and very last thing we can do is pray for one another. That woman you just passed on the street, you don"t need to know her name. You can just ask God to bless her. Wouldn"t it be wonderful, if strangers you met, gave you their blessings? What a wonderful world this could be. We can start by saying this simple phrase, "May God Bless you". Louis Armstrong sings in his song, "what a wonderful world this could be". He imagined it and sang about it. So can I. These are all conscious efforts. Every individual can make.

Greater efforts should be made to increase agricultural production if food shortage is to be avoided.

Millions of dollars often depend on the choice of which commercial to use in launching a new product. So you show the commercials to a (1)_____ of typical consumers and ask their opinion. The answers you get can sometimes lead you into a big (2)_____. Respondents may lie just to be polite. Now some companies and major advertising (3)_____ have been hiring voice detectives who test your normal voice and then record you on tape (4)_____ commenting on a product. A computer analyzes the degree and direction of change (5)_____ normal. One kind of divergence of pitch means the subject (6)_____ Another kind means he was really enthusiastic. In a testing of two commercials (7)_____ children, they were, vocally, about equally (8)_____ of both, but the computer reported their emotional (9)_____ in the two was totally different. Most major commercials are sent for resting-to theaters (10)_____ with various electronic measuring devices. People regarded as (11)_____ are brought in off the street. Viewers can push buttons to (12)_____ whether they are interested or bored. Newspaper and magazine groups became intensely interested in testing their ads for a product (13)_____ TV ads for the same product. They were interested because the main (14)_____ of evidence shows that people (15)_____ a lot more mental activity when they read (16)_____ when they sit in front of the TV set. TV began to be (17)_____ "a low-involvement" (18)_____. It is contended that low involvement means that there is less (19)_____ that the ad message will be (20)_____.Notes: commercial广告。pitch音调

September 11th. 2001 drew the transatlantic alliance together; but the mood did not last, and over the five years since it has pulled ever further apart. A recent poll for the German Marshall Fund shows that 57% of Europeans regard American leadership in world affairs as "undesirable". The Iraq war is mainly to blame. But there is another and more intractable reason for the growing division; God. Europeans worry that American foreign policy under George Bush is too influenced by religion. The "holy warriors" who hijacked the planes on September 11th reintroduced God into international affairs in the most dramatic of ways. It seems that George Bush is replying in kind, encouraging a clash of religions that could spell global catastrophe. Dominique Moisi, a special adviser at the French Institute for International Relations, argues that "the combination of religion and nationalism in America is frightening. We feel betrayed by God and by nationalism, which is why we are building the European Union as a barrier to religious warfare. " Josef Braml, of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, complains that in America "religious attitudes have more of an influence on political choices than in any other western democracy. " The notion that America is too influenced by religion is not confined to the elites. Three in five French people and nearly as many Dutch think that Americans are too religious—and that religion skews what should be secular decisions. Europeans who think that America is "too religious" are more inclined to anti-Americanism than their fellow countrymen. 38% of Britons have an unfavourable view of America, but that number rises to 50% among people who are wary of American religiosity. Is America engaged in a faith-based foreign policy? Religion certainly exerts a growing influence on its actions in the world, but in ways more subtle and complicated than Europeans imagine. It is true that America is undergoing a religious revival. "Hot" religions such as evangelical Protestantism and hardline Catholicism are growing rapidly while "cool" mainline versions of Christianity are declining. It is also true that the Republican Party is being reshaped by this revival. Self-identified evangelicals provided almost 40% of Mr. Bush"s vote in 2004; if you add in other theological conservatives, such as Mormons and traditional Catholics, that number rises closer to 60%. All six top Republican leaders in the Senate have earned 100% ratings from the Christian Coalition. It is also true that Mr. Bush frequently uses religious rhetoric when talking of foreign affairs. On September 12th he was at it again, telling a group of conservative journalists that he sees the war on terror as "a confrontation between good and evil", and remarking, "It seems to me that there"s a Third Awakening" (in other words, an outbreak of Christian evangelical fervour, of the sort that has swept across America at least twice before). And Christian America overall is taking a bigger interest in foreign policy. New voices are being heard, such as Sam Brownback, a conservative senator from Kansas who has led the fight against genocide in Darfur, and Rick Warren, the author of a bestseller called "The Purpose-Driven Life", who is sending 2,000 missionaries to Rwanda. Finally, it is true that religious figures have done some pretty outrageous things. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Hugo Ch vez, the president of Venezuela. Lieutenant-General William "Jerry" Boykin, deputy under-secretary of defence for intelligence, toured the country telling Christian groups that radical Muslims hate America "because we"re a Christian nation and the enemy is a guy named Satan". He often wore uniform.

On Living the SOHO Lifestyle A. Title: On Living the SOHO Lifestyle B. Word limit: 160-200 words (not including the given opening sentence) C. Your composition should be based on the OUTLINE below and should start with the given opening sentence: "With the advancement of society, SOHO, referring to working at home by utilizing modern facilities, has emerged and is thriving, accompanied by controversies." OUTLINE: 1. The emergence of SOHO and its controversies 2. People's different views on it 3. My opinion

Many people consider the wider use of biofuels a promising way of reducing the amount of surplus carbon dioxide (C02) being pumped into the air by the world"s mechanized transport. The theory is that plants such as sugar cane, maize (corn, to Americans), oilseed rape and wheat take up C02 during their growth, so burning fuels made from them should have no net effect on the amount of that gas in the atmosphere. Theory, though, does not always translate into practice, and just as governments have committed themselves to the greater use of biofuels, questions are being raised about how green this form of energy really is. The latest comes from the International Council for Science (ICSU) based in Paris. The ICSU report concludes that, so far, the production of biofuels has aggravated rather than ameliorated global warming. In particular, it supports some controversial findings published in 2007 by Paul Crutzen of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany. Dr. Crutzen concluded that most analyses had underestimated the importance to global warming of a gas called nitrous oxide (N20). The amount of this gas released by farming biofuel crops such as maize and rape probably negates by itself any advantage offered by reduced emissions of C02. Although N20 is not common in the Earth"s atmosphere, it is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 and it hangs around longer. The result is that, over the course of a century, its ability to warm the planet is almost 300 times that of an equivalent mass of C02. N2O is made by bacteria that live in soil and water and, these days, their raw material is often the nitrogen-rich fertiliser that modern farming requires. Since the 1960s the amount of fertiliser used by farmers has increased sixfold, and not all of that extra nitrogen ends up in their crops. Maize, in particular, is described by experts in the field as a "nitrogen-leaky" plant because it has shallow roots and takes up nitrogen for only a few months of the year. This would make maize (which is one of the main sources of biofuel) a particularly bad contributor to global N20 emissions. But it is not just biofuels that are to blame. The ICSU report suggests N20 emissions in general are probably more important than had been realised. Previous studies, including those by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations-appointed body of experts, may have miscalculated their significance — and according to Adrian Williams of Cranfield University, in Britain, even the IPCC"s approach suggests that the global-warming potential of most of Britain"s annual crops is dominated by N20 emissions.

Aimlessness has hardly been typical of the postwar Japan whose productivity and social harmony are the envy of the United States and Europe. But increasingly the Japanese are seeing a decline of the traditional work-moral values. Ten years ago young people were hardworking and saw their jobs as their primary reason for being, but now Japan has largely fulfilled its economic needs, and young people don't know where they should go next. The coming of age of the postwar baby boom and an entry of women into the male-dominated job market have limited the opportunities of teenagers who are already questioning the heavy personal sacrifices involved in climbing Japan's rigid social ladder to good schools and jobs. In a recent survey, it was found that only 24.5 percent of Japanese students were fully satisfied with school life, compared with 67.2 percent of students in the United States. In addition, far more Japanese workers expressed dissatisfaction with their jobs than did their counterparts in the 10 other countries surveyed. While often praised by foreigners for its emphasis on the basics, Japanese education tends to stress test taking and mechanical learning over creativity and self-expression. "Those things that do not show up in the test scores—personality, ability, courage or humanity are completely ignored," says Toshiki Kaifu, chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's education committee. "Frustration against this kind of thing leads kids to drop out and run wild." Last year Japan experienced 2125 incidents of school violence, including 929 assaults on teachers. Amid the outcry, many conservative leaders are seeking a return to the prewar emphasis on moral education. Last year Mitsuo Setoyama, who was then education minister, raised eyebrows when he argued that liberal reforms introduced by the American occupation authorities after World War II had weakened the "Japanese morality of respect for parents". But that may have more to do with Japanese life-styles. "In Japan," says educator Yoko Muro, "it's never a question of whether you enjoy your job and your life, but only how much you can endure." With economic growth has come centralization; fully 76 percent of Japan's 119 million citizens live in cities where community and the extended family have been abandoned in favor of isolated, two-generation households. Urban Japanese have long endured lengthy commutes (travels to and from work) and crowded living conditions, but as the old group and family values weaken, the discomfort is beginning to tell. In the past decade, the Japanese divorce rate, while still well below that of the United States, has increased by more than 50 percent, and suicides have increased by nearly one-quarter.