单选题A new examination of urban policies has been carded out recently by Patricia Romero Lankao. She is a sociologist specializing in climate change and 1 development. She warns that many of the world"s fast-growing urban areas, 2 in developing countries, will likely suffer from the impacts of changing climate. Her work also concludes that most cities are failing to 3 emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse 4 These gases are known to have great 5 on the atmosphere. "Climate change is a deeply local issue and 6 profound threats to the growing cities of the world," says Romero Lankao, "But too few cities are developing effective strategies to 7 their residents. " Cities are 8 sources of greenhouse gases. And urban populations are likely to be among those most severely affected by future climate change. Lankao"s findings highlight ways in which city-residents are particularly vulnerable, and suggest policy interventions that could offer immediate and longer-term 9 . The locations and dense construction patterns of cities often place their populations at greater risk for natural disasters. Potential 10 associated with climate include storm surges and prolonged hot weather. Storm surges can flood coastal areas and prolonged hot weather can heat 11 paved cities more than surrounding areas. The impacts of such natural events can be 12 serious in an urban environment. For example, a prolonged heat wave can increase existing levels of air pollution, causing widespread health problems. Poorer neighborhoods that may 13 basic facilities such as drinking water or a dependable network of roads, are especially vulnerable to natural disasters. Many residents in poorer countries live in substandard housing 14 access to reliable drinking water, roads and basic services. Local governments, 15 , should take measures to protect their residents. "Unfortunately, they tend to move towards rhetoric 16 meaningful responses," Romero Lankao writes, "They don"t impose construction standards 17 could reduce heating and air conditioning needs. They don"t emphasize mass transit and reduce 18 use. In fact, many local governments are taking a hands-off approach (不插手的政策)." Thus, she urges them to change their 19 policies and to take strong steps to prevent the harmful effects of climate change 20 cities.

单选题Wild Bill Donovan would have loved the Internet. The American spymaster who built the Office of Strategic Services in the World War II and later laid the roots for the CIA was fascinated with information. Donovan believed in using whatever tools came to hand in the "great game" of espionage—spying as a "profession. " These days the Net, which has already re-made such everyday pastimes as buying books and sending mail, is reshaping Donovan"s vocation as well. The latest revolution isn"t simply a matter of gentlemen reading other gentlemen"s e-mail. That kind of electronic spying has been going on for decades. In the past three or four years, the World Wide Web has given birth to a whole industry of point-and-click spying. The spooks call it "open-source intelligence," and as the Net grows, it is becoming increasingly influential. In 1995 the CIA held a contest to see who could compile the most data about Burundi. The winner, by a large margin, was a tiny Virginia company called Open Source Solutions, whose clear advantage was its mastery of the electronic world. Among the firms making the biggest splash in this new world is Straitford, Inc., a private intelligence-analysis firm based in Austin, Texas. Straitford makes money by selling the results of spying (covering nations from Chile to Russia) to corporations like energy-services firm McDermott International. Many of its predictions are available online at www. straitford. com. Straitford president George Friedman says he sees the online world as a kind of mutually reinforcing tool for both information collection and distribution, a spymaster"s dream. Last week his firm was busy vacuuming up data bits from the far corners of the world and predicting a crisis in Ukraine. "As soon as that report runs, we"ll suddenly get 500 new Internet sign-ups from Ukraine," says Friedman, a former political science professor. "And we"ll hear back from some of them. " Open-source spying does have its risks, of course, since it can be difficult to tell good information from bad. That"s where Straitford earns its keep. Friedman relies on a lean staff of 20 in Austin. Several of his staff members have military- intelligence backgrounds. He sees the farm"s outsider status as the key to its success. Straitford"s briefs don"t sound like the usual Washington back-and-forthing, whereby agencies avoid dramatic declarations on the chance they might be wrong. Straitford, says Friedman, takes pride in its independent voice.

单选题While western governments worry over the threat of Ebola, a more pervasive but far less harmful 1 is spreading through their populations like a winter sniffle: mobile personal technology. The similarity between disease organisms and personal devices is 2 . Viruses and other parasites control larger organisms, 3 resources in order to multiply and spread. Smartphones and other gadgets do the same thing, 4 ever-increasing amounts of human attention and electricity supplied 5 wire umbilici. It is tempting to 5 a "strategy" to both phages and phablets, neither of which is sentient. 6 , the process is evolutionary, consisting of many random evolutions, 7 experimented with by many product designers. This makes it all the more powerful. Tech 8 occurs through actively-learnt responses, or "operant conditioning" as animal behaviourists call it. The scientific parallel here also involves a rodent, typically a rat, which occupies a 9 cage called a Skinner Box. The animal is 10 with a food pellet for solving puzzles and punished with an electric shock when it fails. "Are we getting a positive boost of hormones when we 11 look at our phone, seeking rewards?" asks David Shuker, an animal behaviourist at St Andrews university, sounding a little like a man withholding serious scientific endorsement 13 an idea that a journalist had in the shower. Research is needed, he says. Tech tycoons would meanwhile 14 that the popularity of mobile devices is attributed to the brilliance of their designs. This is precisely what people whose thought processes have been 12 by an invasive pseudo-organism would believe. 13 , mobile technology causes symptoms less severe than physiological diseases. There are even benefits to 14 sufferers for shortened attention spans and the caffeine overload triggered by visits to Starbucks for the free Wi-Fi. Most importantly, you can 15 the Financial Times in places as remote as Alaska or Sidcup. In this 16 , a mobile device is closer to a symbiotic organism than a parasite. This would make it 17 to an intestinal bacterium that helps a person to stay alive, rather than a virus that may kill you.

单选题Yawning can be a problem at the office for Lindsay Eierman, which makes her embarrassed. "I"ve explained, "I"m sorry, I didn"t get much sleep last night,"" says Ms Eierman, a 26-year-old social worker from Durham, North Carolina. But a lack of sleep may not be the problem. Researchers are starting to unravel the mystery surrounding the yawn, one of the most common and often embarrassing behaviours. Yawning, they have discovered, is much more complicated than previously thought. Although all yawns look the same, they appear to have many different causes and to serve a variety of functions. Yawning is believed to be a means to keep our brains alert in times of stress. Contagious yawning appears to have evolved in many animal species as a way to protect family and friends, by keeping everyone in the group vigilant. Changes in brain chemistry trigger yawns, which typically last about six seconds and often occur in clusters. To unravel the mystery of yawning, scientists built upon early, observed clues. Yawning tends to occur more in summer. Most people yawn upon seeing someone else do it, but infants and people with autism or schizophrenia aren"t so affected by this contagion effect. And certain people yawn at surprising times, like parachutists who are about to jump out of a plane or Olympic athletes getting ready to compete. A leading hypothesis is that yawning plays an important role in keeping the brain at its cool, optimal working temperature. The brain is particularly sensitive to overheating, according to Andrew Gallup, an assistant professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Oneonta. Reaction times slow and memory wanes when the brain"s temperature varies even less than a degree from the ideal 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. There are some practical applications. Dr. Gallup said managers might want to keep in mind the brain-cooling role of yawning when a meeting is long and boring. "One way to diminish yawning frequency in an office would be to keep it air-conditioned. If it"s very cold in the room, yawning rates are going to be quite low," Dr. Gallup said.

单选题 Pictures in the British papers this week of Prince William, Prince Charles's 18-year-old son, cleaning toilets overseas, have led to a surge of altruism (利他主义). Raleigh International, the charity that organized his trip, has seen inquiries about voluntary work abroad rise by 30%. But the image of idealistic youth that William presents no longer reflects the reality of the volunteer force. It's getting older and older. Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) has about 2000 volunteers in the field around the world. After a dip in interest in the mid-1990s, applications to work abroad are at record levels. Last year 7645 people submitted applications, and 920 successfully negotiated the VSO selection process and were sent abroad. When the organization was founded in 1959, the average volunteer was in his early 20s. Now, the average age is 35, and set to rise further. Partly, that is because there are more older people who want to do VSO. More people take early retirement; more, says the ehief executive of VSO, "still feel that they have more to give and are in good health" . And the demands of the African and Asian countries where most of the volunteers go are changing, too. Their educational standards have risen over the past couple of decades, so they want people with more qualifications, skills and experience. BESO (British Executive Service Overseas) recruits executives and businessmen with at least 15 years' experience for short-term contract work overseas. It organizes 500 placements (工作安置) a year, and at the moment supply is surpassing demand. A BESO spokesman said that the organization is "limited by funding rather than a lack of volunteers" Enthusiastic but unqualified students do not impress as much as they once did alongside accountants, managers and doctors. The typical volunteer, these days, has been in full-time employment for at least five years and is highly qualified. And the profession which provides the biggest portion of volunteers is education--headmasters and school inspectors as well as classroom teachers.

单选题I can tap my smartphone and a cab will arrive almost immediately. Another tap will tell me the latest news, value my share portfolio or give me route directions to my next meeting. As a result, I do not need to stand on a street corner vainly trying to hail a taxi to the theatre, lose myself in London streets. The changes that have occurred in the past decade have, from an economic perspective, increased at virtually no cost the efficiency of household production. The data framework within which economic analysis is conducted is largely the product of the second world war. In the 1930s American economist Simon Kuznets began to elaborate a system of national accounts. That work was given impetus when the war led governments to take control of important sectors of economic activity. It was soon realized that this required far better data than had previously existed, which in turn raised the challenge of how best to structure such information. Household production—women"s work as homemakers—did not have much of a look-in; that was not the front line against fascism. The joke about the man who reduced national income by marrying his housekeeper, so that a market transaction became part of household production, was once a mandatory part of every introductory course on national income accounting but has succumbed to political correctness. Technological advance has always enhanced household as well as business efficiency. Our domestic productivity has benefited from washing machines, vacuum cleaners and central heating, and before that from electric light and automobiles. But at least these things were partially accounted for: from an economic perspective a car is a faster and cheaper horse. Statisticians in principle incorporated these improvements in the efficiency of consumer goods into their measurement of productivity, though in practice they did not try very hard. But the technological advances of the past decade seem to have increased the efficiency of households, rather than the efficiency of businesses, to an unusual extent. An ereader in the pocket replaces a roomful of books, and all the world"s music is streamed to my computer. We look at aggregate statistics and worry about the slowdown in growth and productivity. But the evidence of our eyes seems to tell a different story.

单选题The idea that some groups of people may be more intelligent than others is one of those hypotheses that dare not speak its name. But Gregory Cochran is (1) to say it anyway. He is that (2) bird, a scientist who works independently (3) any institution. He helped popularize the idea that some diseases not (4) thought to have a bacterial cause were actually infections, which aroused much controversy when it was first suggested. (5) he, however, might tremble at the (6) of what he is about to do. Together with another two scientists, he is publishing a paper which not only (7) that one group of humanity is more intelligent than the others, but explains the process that has brought this about. The group in (8) are a particular people originated from central Europe. The process is natural selection. This group generally do well in IQ test, (9) 12-15 points above the (10) value of 100, and have contributed (11) to the intellectual and cultural life of the West, as the (12) of their elites, including several world renowned scientists, (13) . They also suffer more often than most people from a number of nasty genetic diseases, such as breast cancer. These facts, (14) , have previously been thought unrelated. The former has been (15) to social effects, such as a strong tradition of (16) education. The latter was seen as a (an) (17) of genetic isolation. Dr. Coehran suggests that the intelligence and diseases are intimately (18) . His argument is that the unusual history of these people has (19) them to unique evolutionary pressures that have resulted in this (20) state of affairs.

单选题How best to solve the pollution problems of a city sunk so deep within sulfurous clouds that it was described as hell on earth? Simply answered: Relocate all urban smoke-creating industry and encircle the metropolis of London with sweetly scented flowers and elegant hedges. In fact, as Christine L. Corton, a Cambridge scholar, reveals in her new book, London Fog, this fragrant anti-smoke scheme was the brainchild of John Evelyn, the 17th-century diarist. King Charles Ⅱ was said to be much pleased with Evelyn"s idea, and a bill against the smoky nuisance was duly drafted. Then nothing was done. Nobody at the time, and nobody right up to the middle of the 20th century, was willing to put public health above business interests. And yet it"s a surprise to discover how beloved a feature of London life these multicolored fogs became. A painter, Claude Monet, fleeing besieged Paris in 1870, fell in love with London"s vaporous, mutating clouds. He looked upon the familiar mist as his reliable collaborator. Visitors from abroad may have delighted in the fog, but homegrown artists lit candles and vainly scrubbed the grime from their gloom-filled studio windows. "Give us light!" Frederic Leighton pleaded to the guests at a Lord Mayor"s banquet in 1882, begging them to have pity on the poor painter. The more serious side of Corton"s book documents how business has taken precedence over humanity where London"s history of pollution is concerned. A prevailing westerly wind meant that those dwelling to the east were always at most risk. Those who could afford it lived elsewhere. The east was abandoned to the underclass. Lord Palmerston spoke up for choking East Enders in the 1850s, pointing a finger at the interests of the furnace owners. A bill was passed, but there was little change. Eventually, another connection was established: between London"s perpetual veil of smog and its citizens" cozily smoldering grates. Sadly, popular World War I songs like "Keep the Home Fires Burning" didn"t do much to encourage the adoption of smokeless fuel. It wasn"t until what came to be known as the "Great Killer Fog" of 1952 that the casualty rate became impossible to ignore and the British press finally took up the cause. It was left to a Member of Parliament to steer the Clean Air Act into law in 1956. Within a few years, even as the war against pollution was still in its infancy, the dreaded fog began to fade. Corton"s book combines meticulous social history with a wealth of eccentric detail. Thus we learn that London"s ubiquitous plane trees were chosen for their shiny, fog-resistant foliage. It"s discoveries like these that make reading London Fog such an unusual and enlightening experience.

单选题Directions: Read the following text. Choose the best word (s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D. The notion of using a management degree to do good while doing well has grown in popularity on today's business school campuses. And an ever-increasing number of students plan on putting their talent to use within the {{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}sector. The recession has led many applicants to reevaluate their priorities and {{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}what they want to do with their lives, often trading jobs with status and huge paychecks for careers with a (n) {{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}social impact. In order to keep and develop the competitive {{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}needed to survive in today's uncertain economy, non-profits must run themselves just like any other successful business. What you need to {{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}}a company well, as is often the {{U}} {{U}} 6 {{/U}} {{/U}}within this sector, business skills are essential. {{U}} {{U}} 7 {{/U}} {{/U}}are people skills, management skills, financial-analysis skills, IT skills—the list goes on. That's {{U}} {{U}} 8 {{/U}} {{/U}}the MBA degree comes in. While at business school, social enterprise-minded students can take {{U}} {{U}} 9 {{/U}} {{/U}}of numerous clubs, competitions, global experiences, and centers. And the centers are {{U}} {{U}} 10 {{/U}} {{/U}}to teach students about topics ranging from nonprofit management to starting businesses that {{U}} {{U}} 11 {{/U}} {{/U}}underrepresented communities. The Social Enterprise Initiative is a big part of MBA experience at Harvard Business School, which {{U}} {{U}} 12 {{/U}} {{/U}}mort than 500 books and cases published on the subject since 1993 and more than 90 HBS {{U}} {{U}} 13 {{/U}} {{/U}}engaged in social enterprise research and teaching. {{U}} {{U}} 14 {{/U}} {{/U}}the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford Graduate School of Business, MBA students can earn a certificate in the Public Management Program as they focus their academic efforts in {{U}} {{U}} 15 {{/U}} {{/U}}such as the environment, international development, health care, and education. Across the pond, the Skoll Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford's Said Business School {{U}} {{U}} 16 {{/U}} {{/U}}for its variety of social entrepreneurship electives, MBA projects on social innovation, and cocurricular activities. It was {{U}} {{U}} 17 {{/U}} {{/U}}in 2003 with a ￡4.4 million investment by the Skoll Foundation, the largest {{U}} {{U}} 18 {{/U}} {{/U}}center offers up to five fully funded MBA scholarships to {{U}} {{U}} 19 {{/U}} {{/U}}impressive candidates, named Skoll Skollars, who plan to {{U}} {{U}} 20 {{/U}} {{/U}}entrepreneurial solution for urgent social and environmental challenges.

单选题In August, environmentalists in the Philippines vandalized a field of Golden Rice, an experimental grain whose genes had been modified. Its seeds will be handed out free to farmers. The aim is to improve the health of children in poor countries by reducing vitamin A deficiency, which contributes to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths and cases of blindness each year. Environmentalists claim that these sorts of actions are justified because genetically modified crops pose health risks. Now the main ground for those claims has crumbled. Last year a paper which was published in a respected journal found that unusual rates of tumours and deaths in rats that had been fed upon a variety of genetic modification (GM) corn. Other studies found no such effects. But this one enabled campaigners to make a health-and-safety argument against GM crops— one persuasive enough to influence governments. After the study appeared, Russia suspended imports of the grain in question. Kenya banned all GM crops. And the French prime minister said that if the results were confirmed he would press for a Europe-wide ban on the GM maize. There is now no serious scientific evidence that GM crops do any harm to the health of human beings. There is plenty of evidence, though, that they benefit the health of the planet. One of the biggest challenges facing mankind is to feed the 9 billion-10 billion people who will be alive and richer in 2050. This will require doubling food production on roughly the same area of land, using less water and fewer chemicals. It will also mean making food crops more resistant to the droughts and floods that seem likely if climate change is as bad as scientists fear. If the Green revolution had never happened, and yields had stayed at 1960 levels, the world could not produce its current food output even if it ploughed up every last acre of cultivable land. In contrast, GM crops boost yields, protecting wild habitat from the plough. They are more resistant to the vagaries of climate change, and to diseases and pests, reducing the need for agrochemicals. Genetic research holds out the possibility of breakthroughs that could vastly increase the productivity of farming, such as grains that fix their own nitrogen. Vandalizing GM field trials is a bit like the campaign of some religious leaders to prevent smallpox inoculations: it causes misery, even death, in the name of obscurantism and unscientific belief.

单选题Robots have been the stuff of science fiction for so long that it is surprisingly hard to see them as the stuff of management fact. It is time for management thinkers to catch up with science-fiction writers. Robots have been doing menial jobs on production lines since the 1960s. The world already has more than 1 million industrial robots. There is now an acceleration in the rates at which they are becoming both cleverer and cheaper: an explosive combination. Robots are learning to interact with the world around them. Their ability to see things is getting ever closer to that of humans, as is their capacity to ingest information and act on it. Tomorrow"s robots will increasingly take on delicate, complex tasks. And instead of being imprisoned in cages to stop them colliding with people and machines, they will be free to wander. Until now executives have largely ignored robots, regarding them as an engineering rather than a management problem. This cannot go on: robots are becoming too powerful and ubiquitous . Companies certainly need to rethink their human-resources policies—starting by questioning whether they should have departments devoted to purely human resources. The first issue is how to manage the robots themselves. An American writer, Isaac Asimov laid down the basic rule in 1942: no robot should harm a human. This rule has been reinforced by recent technological improvements: robots are now much more sensitive to their surroundings and can be instructed to avoid hitting people. A second question is how to manage the homo side of homo-robo relations. Workers have always worried that new technologies will take away their livelihoods, ever since the original Luddites" fears about mechanised looms. Now, the arrival of increasingly humanoid automatons in workplaces, in an era of high unemployment, is bound to provoke a reaction. Two principles—don"t let robots hurt or frighten people—are relatively simple. Robot scientists are tackling more complicated problems as robots become more sophisticated. They are keen to avoid hierarchies among rescue-robots (because the loss of the leader would render the rest redundant). They are keen to avoid duplication between robots and their human handlers. This suggests that the world could be on the verge of a great management revolution: making robots behave like humans rather than the 20th century"s preferred option, making humans behave like robots.

单选题We can see how the product life cycle works by looking at the introduction of instant coffee. When it was introduced, most people did not like it as well as "regular" coffee, and it took several years to gain general acceptance (introduction stage). At one point, though, instant coffee grew rapidly in popularity, and many brands were introduced (stage of rapid growth). After a while, people became attached to one brand and sales leveled off (stage of maturity). Sales went into a slight decline (衰退) when freeze-dried coffees were introduced (stage of decline). The importance of the product life cycle to marketers is this: Different stages in the product life cycle call for different strategies. The goal is to extend product life so that sales and profits do not decline. One strategy is called market modification. It means that marketing managers look for new users and market sections. Did you know, for example, that the backpacks that so many students carry today were originally designed for the military? Market modification also means searching for increased usage among present customers or going for a different market, such as senior citizens. A marketer may re-position the product to appeal to new market sections. Another product extension strategy is called product modification. It involves changing product quality, features, or style to attract new users or more usage from present users. American auto manufacturers are using quality improvement as one way to recapture world markets. Note, also, how auto manufacturers once changed styles dramatically from year to year to keep demand from falling.

单选题As a wise man once said, we are all ultimately alone. But an increasing number of Europeans are choosing to be so at an ever earlier age. This isn"t the stuff of gloomy philosophical contemplations, but a fact of Europe"s new economic landscape, embraced by sociologists, real-estate developers and ad executives alike. The shift away from family life to solo lifestyle, observes a French sociologist, is part of the "irresistible momentum of individualism" over the last century. The communications revolution, the shift from a business culture of stability to one of mobility and the mass entry of women into the workforce have greatly wreaked havoc on Europeans private lives. Europe"s new economic climate has largely fostered the trend toward independence. The current generation of home-aloners came of age during Europe"s shift from social democracy to the sharper, more individualistic climate of American-style capitalism. Raised in an era of privatization and increased consumer choice, today"s tech-savvy workers have embraced a free market in love as well as economics. Modern Europeans are rich enough to afford to live alone, and temperamentally independent enough to want to do so. Once upon a time, people who lived alone tended to be those on either side of marriage twenty something professionals or widowed senior citizens. While pensioners, particularly elderly women, make up a large proportion of those living alone, the newest crop of singles are high earners in their 30s and 40s who increasingly view living alone as a lifestyle choice. Living alone was conceived to be negative—dark and cold, while being together suggested warmth and light. But then came along the idea of singles. They were young, beautiful, strong! Now, young people want to live alone. The booming economy means people are working harder than ever. And that doesn"t leave much room for relationships. Pimpi Arroyo, a 35-year-old composer who lives alone in a house in Paris, says he hasn"t got time to get lonely because he has too much work. "I have deadlines which would make life with someone else fairly difficult." Only an Ideal Woman would make him change his lifestyle, he says. Kaufmann, author of a recent book called "The Single Woman and Prince Chaming" thinks this fierce new individualism means that people expect more and more of mates, so relationships don"t last long—if they start at all. Eppendorf, a blond Berliner with a deep tan, teaches grade school in the mornings. In the afternoon she sunbathes or sleeps, resting up for going dancing. Just shy of 50, she says she"d never have wanted to do what her mother did—give up a career to raise a family. Instead, "I"ve always done what I wanted to do: live a self-determined life."

单选题Google is talking to auto makers about how to bring its self-driving-car technology to market, executives said Tuesday. Project director Chris Urmson said a self-driving car is probably still six years away. But, he added, "We are thinking now about how to bring this car to market." There is a lot of "debate internally about how automobiles can use this technology," said Sebastian Thrun, the original leader of Google"s autonomous car project. "There will be a time when a significant number of cars will carry Google technology." Google"s co-founder Sergey Brin—Urmson"s boss—said roughly a year and a half ago that Google"s self-driving car was about five years away. Urmson said on Tuesday that he is working on a six-year timeline, based on when his 10-year-old son turns 16 and will be able to drive in California. Bryant Walker Smith, a fellow at Stanford University"s Center for Automotive Research, said it can take up to six years to design and build a new car. Smith said any self-driving car ready in six years would likely be "limited in terms of capability, availability , or geography." Google"s car looks like a regular vehicle but it uses multiple sensors and map data in real time to understand where it is and maneuver through streets and highways without human intervention. The project started in 2009 and became an early part of Google X, the company"s research lab for risky, long-term initiatives. Some on Wall Street are concerned about Google"s increased focus on these projects; however, they also give the company a chance to expand into huge new markets, such as autos. Urmson said Google"s autonomous cars are expensive, but he declined to be specific. That"s partly due to the laser sensor perched on top of the vehicles, which is made by Silicon Valley-based Company Velodyne. About 150 of these laser devices are produced a year, which increases the price of the component, Urmson explained. Besides, Arturo Corral, one of Google"s test drivers, said weather is a serious challenge. In heavy rain, the system asks drivers to take back control of the car, Corral said. Google has not tested the vehicles in snow yet. "We still have a long way to go," he added.

单选题Directions: Read the following text. Choose the best word (s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C, D. In theory, annual performance review are constructive and positive interactions between managers and employees working together to attain {{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}performance and strengthen the organization. In reality, they often create division, {{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}morale (士气), and spark anger and jealousy. {{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}, although the object of the annual performance review is to improve performance, it often has the {{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}result. A programmer at a brokerage (经济) firm was {{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}}to learn at her annual performance review that she was denied a promotion {{U}} {{U}} 6 {{/U}} {{/U}}she wasn't a "team player" . What were the data used to make this {{U}} {{U}} 7 {{/U}} {{/U}}? She didn't smile in the company photo. {{U}} {{U}} 8 {{/U}} {{/U}}this story might sound as if it came straight out of a comic strip, it is a true {{U}} {{U}} 9 {{/U}} {{/U}}of one woman's experience. By {{U}} {{U}} 10 {{/U}} {{/U}}a few tips and guidelines (准则) from industry analysis, this kind of ordeal (厄运) can be avoided. To end the year {{U}} {{U}} 11 {{/U}} {{/U}}a positive and useful performance review, managers and employees must start the year by working together to {{U}} {{U}} 12 {{/U}} {{/U}}clear goals and expectations. It may be helpful to allow employees to submit a list of people {{U}} {{U}} 13 {{/U}} {{/U}}with the company who will be in a good position to {{U}} {{U}} 14 {{/U}} {{/U}}their performance at the end of the year is out. These people may be coworkers, suppliers, or even customers. By checking {{U}} {{U}} 15 {{/U}} {{/U}}progress at about nine months, managers can give them a chance to correct mistakes and provide {{U}} {{U}} 16 {{/U}} {{/U}}to those who need it before the year is ont. When conducting the review, managers should {{U}} {{U}} 17 {{/U}} {{/U}}strengths and weaknesses during the past year and discuss future responsibilities, avoiding punishment or blame. {{U}} {{U}} 18 {{/U}} {{/U}}, when employees leave their performance reviews, they should be focusing on {{U}} {{U}} 19 {{/U}} {{/U}}they can do in the year {{U}} {{U}} 20 {{/U}} {{/U}}, not worrying about what went into their files about the past.

单选题Could the bad old days of economic decline be about to return? Since OPEC agreed to supply-cuts in March, the price of crude oil has jumped to almost $26 a barrel, up from less than $10 last December. This near-tripling of oil prices calls up scary memories of the 1973 oil shocks resulted in double-digit inflation and global economic decline. So where are the headlines warning of gloom and doom this time? The oil price was given another push up this week when Iraq suspended oil exports. Strengthening economic growth, at the same time as winter grips the northern hemisphere, could push the price higher still in the short term. Yet there are good reasons to expect the economic consequences now to be less severe than in the 1970s. In most countries the cost of crude oil now accounts for a smaller share of the price of petrol than it did in the 1970s. In Europe, taxes account for up to four-fifths of the retail price, so even quite big changes in the price of crude have a more muted effect on pump prices than in the past. Rich economies are also less dependent on oil than they were, and so less sensitive to swings in the oil price. Energy conservation, a shift to other fuels and a decline in the importance of heavy, energy-intensive industries have reduced oil consumption. Software, consultancy and mobile telephones use far less oil than steel or car production. For each dollar of GDP (in constant prices) rich economies now use nearly 50% less oil than in 1973. The OECD estimates in its latest Economic Outlook that, if oil prices averaged $22 a barrel for a full year, compared with $13 in 1998, this would increase the oil import bill in rich economies by only 0.25%～0.5% of GDP. That is less than one-quarter of the income loss in 1974 or 1980. On the other hand, oil-importing emerging economies—to which heavy industry has shifted—have become more energy-intensive, and so could be more seriously squeezed. One more reason not to lose sleep over the rise in oil prices is that, unlike the rises in the 1970s, it has not occurred against the background of general commodity-price inflation and global excess demand. A sizable portion of the world is only just emerging from economic decline. The Economist"s commodity price index is broadly unchanging from a year ago. In 1973 commodity prices jumped by 70%, and in 1979 by almost 30%.

单选题Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C, or D. At the heart of the debate over illegal immigration lies one key question: are immigrants good or bad for the economy? The American public overwhelmingly thinks they're bad. Yet the consensus among most economists is that immigration, both legal and illegal, provides a small net boost to the economy. Immigrants provide cheap labor, lower the prices of everything from farm produce to new homes, and leave consumers with a little more money in their pockets. So why is there such a discrepancy between the perception of immigrants'impact on the economy and the reality7 There are a number of familiar theories. Some argue that people are anxious and feel threatened by an inflow of new workers. Others highlight the strain that undocumented immigrants place on public services, like schools, hospitals, and jails. Still others emphasize the role of race, arguing that foreigners add to the nation's fears and insecurities. There's some truth to all these explanations, but they aren't quite sufficient. To get a better understanding of what's going on, consider the way immigration's impact is felt. Though its overall effect may be positive, its costs and benefits are distributed unevenly. David Card, an economist at UC Berkeley, notes that the ones who profit most directly from immigrants'lowcost labor are businesses and employers-meatpacking plants in Nebraska, for instance, or agricultural businesses in California. Granted, these producers'savings probably translate into lower prices at the grocery store, but how many consumers make that mental connection at the checkout counter7 As for the drawbacks of illegal immigration, these, too, are concentrated. Native low-skilled workers suffer most from the competition of foreign labor. According to a study by George Borjas, a Harvard economist, immigration reduced the wages of American high-school dropouts by 9% between 1980-2000. Among high-skilled, better-educated employees, however, opposition was strongest in states with both high numbers of immigrants and relatively generous social services. What worried them most, in other words, was the fiscal (财政的) burden of immigration. That conclusion was reinforced by another finding: that their opposition appeared to soften when that fiscal burden decreased, as occurred with welfare reform in the 1990s, which curbed immigrants'access to certain benefits. The irony is that for all the overexcited debate, the net effect of immigration is minimal. Even for those most acutely affected-say, low-skilled workers, or California residents-the impact isn't all that dramatic. "The unpleasant voices have tended to dominate our perceptions," says Daniel Tichenor, a political science professor at the University of Oregon. "But when all those factors are put together and the economists calculate the numbers, it ends up being a net positive, but a small one. " Too bad most people don't realize it.

单选题In the world of entertainment, TV talk shows have undoubtedly flooded every inch of space on daytime television. And anyone who watches them regularly knows that each one varies in style and format. But no two shows are more profoundly opposite in content, while at the same time standing out above the rest, than the Jerry Springer and the Oprah Winfrey shows. Jerry Springer could easily be considered the king of "trash talk (废话)". The topics on his show are as shocking as shocking can be. For example, the show takes the ever-common talk show themes of love, sex, cheating, guilt, hate, conflict and morality to a different level. Clearly, the Jerry Springer show is a display and exploitation of society"s moral catastrophes (灾难), yet people are willing to eat up the intriguing predicaments (困境) of other people"s lives. Like Jerry Springer, Oprah Winfrey takes TV talk show to its extreme, but Oprah goes in the opposite direction. The show focuses on the improvement of society and an individual"s quality of life. Topics range from teaching your children responsibility, managing your work week, to getting to know your neighbors. Compared to Oprah, the Jerry Springer show looks like poisonous waste being dumped on society. Jerry ends every show with a "final word". He makes a small speech that sums up the entire moral of the show. Hopefully, this is the part where most people will learn something very valuable. Clean as it is, the Oprah show is not for everyone. The show"s main target audiences are middle-class Americans. Most of these people have the time, money, and stability to deal with life"s tougher problems. Jerry Springer, on the other hand, has more of an association with the young adults of society. These are 18-to-21-year-olds whose main troubles in life involve love, relationship, sex, money and peers. They are the ones who see some value and lessons to be learned underneath the show"s exploitation. While the two shows are as different as night and day, both have ruled the talk show circuit for many years now. Each one caters to a different audience while both have a strong following from large groups of fans. Ironically, both could also be considered pioneers in the talk show world.

单选题Robots have been the stuff of science fiction for so long that it is surprisingly hard to see them as the stuff of management fact. It is time for management thinkers to catch up with science-fiction writers. Robots have been doing menial jobs on production lines since the 1960s. The world already has more than 1 million industrial robots. There is now an acceleration in the rates at which they are becoming both cleverer and cheaper: an explosive combination. Robots are learning to interact with the world around them. Their ability to see things is getting ever closer to that of humans, as is their capacity to ingest information and act on it. Tomorrow"s robots will increasingly take on delicate, complex tasks. And instead of being imprisoned in cages to stop them colliding with people and machines, they will be free to wander. Until now executives have largely ignored robots, regarding them as an engineering rather than a management problem. This cannot go on: robots are becoming too powerful and ubiquitous. Companies certainly need to rethink their human-resources policies—starting by questioning whether they should have departments devoted to purely human resources. The first issue is how to manage the robots themselves. An American writer, Isaac Asimov laid down the basic rule in 1942: no robot should harm a human. This rule has been reinforced by recent technological improvements: robots are now much more sensitive to their surroundings and can be instructed to avoid hitting people. A second question is how to manage the homo side of homo-robo relations. Workers have always worried that new technologies will take away their livelihoods, ever since the original Luddites" fears about mechanised looms. Now, the arrival of increasingly humanoid automatons in workplaces, in an era of high unemployment, is bound to provoke a reaction. Two principles—don"t let robots hurt or frighten people—are relatively simple. Robot scientists are tackling more complicated problems as robots become more sophisticated. They are keen to avoid hierarchies among rescue-robots (because the loss of the leader would render the rest redundant). They are keen to avoid duplication between robots and their human handlers. This suggests that the world could be on the verge of a great management revolution: making robots behave like humans rather than the 20th century"s preferred option, making humans behave like robots.

单选题If you watched a certain swimmer"s Rio Games debut on Sunday night, when he propelled the United States 4×l00-meter relay team to a gold medal, you know the answer: Michael Phelps. While it may look like the athletes have been in a bar fight, the purple dots actually are signs of "cupping," an ancient Chinese healing practice that is experiencing an Olympic moment. In cupping, practitioners of the healing technique—or sometimes the athletes themselves— place specialized cups on the skin. Then they use either heat or an air pump to create suction between the cup and the skin, pulling the skin slightly up and away from the underlying muscles. The suction typically lasts for only a few minutes, but it"s enough time to cause the capillaries just beneath the surface to rupture, creating the circular, eye-catching bruises that have been so visible on Phelps as well as members of the United States men"s gymnastics team. Physiologically, cupping is thought to draw blood to the affected area, reducing soreness and speeding healing of overworked muscles. Athletes who use it swear by it, saying it keeps them injury free and speeds recovery. Phelps posted an Instagram photo showing himself stretched on a table as his Olympic swimming teammate Allison Schmitt placed several cups along the back of his thighs. "Thanks for my cupping today!" he wrote. While there"s no question that many athletes, coaches and trainers believe in the treatment, there"s not much science to determine whether cupping offers a real physiological benefit or whether the athletes simply are enjoying a placebo effect. "A placebo effect is present in all treatments, and I am sure that it is substantial in the case of cupping as well," said Leonid Kalichman, a senior lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. "A patient can feel the treatment and has marks after it, and this can contribute to a placebo effect." One 2012 study of 61 people with chronic neck pain compared cupping to a technique called progressive muscle relaxation, or PMR, during which a patient deliberately tenses his muscles and then focuses on relaxing them. About half the patients used cupping while the other half used PMR. Both patient groups reported similar reductions in pain after 12 weeks of treatment. Notably, the patients who had used cupping scored higher on measurements of well-being and felt less pain when pressure was applied to the area. Even so, the researchers noted that more study is needed to determine the potential benefits of cupping.