单选题The list of famous companies founded during economic downturns is long and varied. A 2009 study found that over half of Fortune 500 companies got their start during a downturn or a bear market. A recession, it seems, may not be an entirely bad time to start a company. Indeed, busts (and booms) cast a longer shadow on the business landscape than is commonly realised, because they influence both the rate of business formation and how existing firms are run. Some argue that recessions speed up the process of economic restructuring—what Joseph Schumpeter called " creative destruction ". The destruction part is easy to see: downturns kill businesses, leaving boarded-up windows on the high street as their gravestones. But recessions may also spur the creation of new businesses. When people suddenly have less money to spend, clever entrepreneurs may see an opportunity to set up businesses that give them what they want more cheaply or efficiently. Downturns may also swell the ranks of potential firm creators, because many who might otherwise have sought a stable salary will reinvent themselves as entrepreneurs. Tough times do not suddenly prompt everyone to start a business. The vast majority of people who reach working age during a downturn still look for a job. But research also suggests that recessions have lasting effects on how executives manage businesses. Antoinette Schoar and Luo Zuo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that those who began their management careers during a bust were substantially more risk-averse, took on less debt and generally were more conservative managers than the rest of the sample, even many decades later. That will strike critics of the over-leveraged company as thoroughly good news, but it is hard to say whether this effect is entirely benign. Bosses whose careers began in a recession also tend to be so concerned about cost-effectiveness that the companies they go on to run spend less on research and development. They may thus be too conservative: firms with bosses whose professional baptism came in a weak economy have lower returns on assets than those run by other managers. Why should this be? One plausible explanation is that recessions affect the way people take decisions. Whether they were set up during a boom or a bust, today"s firms are deeply affected by the economic fluctuations of the past.

单选题Low speed bicycle crashes can badly injure or even kill children if they fall onto the ends of the handlebars so a team of engineers is redesigning the humble handlebar in a bid to make it safer. Kristy Arbogast, a bioengineer at the Children"s Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, began the project with her colleagues after a study of serious abdominal (腹部的) injuries in children in the past 30 years showing that more than a third were caused by bicycle accidents. "The task was to identify how the injuries occurred and come up with some countermeasures," she says. By interviewing the children and their parents, Arbogast and her team were able to reconstruct many of the accidents and identified a common mechanism responsible for serious injures. They discovered that most occur when children hit an obstacle at a slow speed, causing them to topple over. To maintain their balance they turn the handlebars through 90 degrees—but their momentum (冲力) forces them into the end of the handlebars. The bike then falls over and the other end of the handlebars hits the ground, ramming it into their abdomen. The solution the group came up with is a handgrip (握柄) fitted with a spring and damping (缓冲的) system. The spring absorbs up to 50 per cent of the forces transmitted through the handlebars in an impact. The group hopes to commercialize the device, which should add only a few dollars to the cost of a bike. "But our task has been one of education because up until now, bicycle manufacturer were unaware of the problem," says Arbogast. The team has also approached the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to try to persuade manufacturers to adopt the new design. A decision is expected later this year.

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

单选题 The rough guide to marketing success used to be that you got what you paid for. No longer. While traditional "paid" media-such as television commercials and print advertisements-still play a major role, companies today can exploit many alternative forms of media. Consumers passionate about a product may create "owned" media by sending E-mail alerts about products and sales to customers registered with its Web site. The way consumers now approach the broad range of factors beyond conventional paid media. Paid and owned media are controlled by marketers promoting their own products. For earned media, such marketers act as the initiator for users'responses. But in some cases, one marketer's owned media become another marketer's paid media-for instance, when an e-commerce retailer sells ad space on its Web site. We define such sold media as owned media whose traffic is so strong that other organizations place their content or e-commerce engines within that environment. This trend, which we believe is still in its infancy, effectively began with retailers and travel providers such as airlines and hotels and will no doubt go further. Johnson & Johnson, for example, has created BabyCenter, a stand-alone media property that promotes complementary and even competitive products. Besides generating income, the presence of other marketers makes the site seem objective, gives companies opportunities to learn valuable information about the appeal of other companies'marketing, and may help expand user traffic for all companies concerned. The same dramatic technological changes that have provided marketers with more (and more diverse) communications choices have also increased the risk that passionate consumers will voice their opinions in quicker, more visible, and much more damaging ways. Such hijacked media are the opposite of earned media: an asset or campaign becomes hostage to consumers, other stakeholders, or activists who make negative allegations about a brand or product. Members of social networks, for instance, are learning that they can hijack media to apply pressure on the businesses that originally created them. If that happens, passionate consumers would try to persuade others to boycott products, putting the reputation of the target company at risk. In such a case, the company's response may not be sufficiently quick or thoughtful, and the learning curve has been steep. Toyota Motor, for example, alleviated some of the damage from its recall crisis earlier this year with a relatively quick and wellorchestrated social-media response campaign, which included efforts to engage with consumers directly on sites such as Twitter and the social-news site Digg.

单选题The guy in the next cubicle is yammering away on the phone. Across the room, someone begins cursing loudly at a jammed copy machine. The headphones on the other end of your desk suddenly look very appealing. Would anyone mind if you tapped into your iTunes playlist for a while? Some workers like to listen to music when they find themselves losing focus. They may also plug in their earbuds to escape an environment that"s too noisy—or too quiet—or to make a repetitive job feel more lively. In biological terms, melodious sounds help encourage the release of dopamine (a chemical found in brain) in the reward area of the brain, as would eating a delicacy, looking at something appealing or smelling a pleasant aroma, said Dr. Amit Seed, a physician of integrative medicine with the Mayo Clinic. People"s minds tend to wander, "and we know that a wandering mind is unhappy," Dr. Seed said. "Most of that time, we are focusing on the imperfections of life." Music can bring us back to the present moment. "It breaks you out of just thinking one way," said Teresa Lesiuk, an assistant professor in the music therapy program at the University of Miami. Dr. Lesiuk"s research focuses on how music affects workplace performance. In one study involving information technology specialists, she found that those who listened to music completed their tasks more quickly and came up with better ideas than those who didn"t, because the music improved their mood. Dr. Lesiuk found that personal choice in music was very important. She allowed participants in her study to select whatever music they liked and to listen as long as they wanted. Those who were moderately skilled at their jobs benefited the most, while experts saw little or no effect. And some novices regarded the music as distracting. Dr. Lesiuk has also found that the older people are, the less time they spend listening to music at work. Few companies have policies about music listening, said Paul Flaharty, a regional vice president at a staffing agency. But it is still a good idea to check with your manager, even if you see others wearing headphones in the office. For those who choose to listen to music, it"s best to set limits, because wearing headphones for an entire shift can be perceived as rude by those nearby.

单选题 Two decades ago only spies and systems administrators had to worry about passwords. But today you have to enter one even to do humdrum things like turning on your computer, downloading an album or buying a book online. No wonder many people use a single, simple password for everything. Analysis of password databases, often stolen from websites, shows that the most common choices include "password", "123456" and "abc123" . But using these, or any word that appears in a dictionary, is insecure. Even changing some letters to numbers ("e" to "3", "i" to "1" and so forth) does little to reduce the vulnerability of such passwords to an automated "dictionary attack", because these substitutions are so common. The fundamental probldm is that secure passwords tend to be hard to remember, and memorable passwords tend to be insecure. Weak passwords open the door to fraud, identity theft and breaches of privacy. An analysis by Verizon, an American telecoms firm, found that the biggest reason for successful security breaches was easily guessable passwords. Some viruses spread by trying common passwords. The solution, say security researchers, is to upgrade the software in people's heads, by teaching them to choose more secure passwords. One approach is to use passphrases containing unrelated words, such as "correct horse battery staple ", linked by a mental image. Passphrases are, on average, several orders of magnitude harder to crack than passwords. But a new study by researchers at the University of Cambridge finds that people tend to choose phrases made up not of unrelated words but of words that already occur together, such as "dead poets society" . Such phrases are vulnerable to a dictionary attack based on common phrases taken from the Internet. And many systems limit the length of passwords, making a long phrase impractical. An alternative approach, championed by Bruce Schneier, a security guru, is to turn a sentence into a password, taking the first letter of each word and substituting numbers and punctuation marks where possible. "Too much food and wine will make you sick" thus becomes "2mf&wwmUs" . This is no panacea: the danger with this "mnemonic password" approach is tbat people will use a proverb, or a line from a film or a song, as the starting point, whieh makes it vulnerable to attack. Some websites make an effort to enhanee seeurity by indicating how easily guessed a password is likely to be, rejecting weak passwords, ensuring that password databases are kept properly eoded and limiting the rate at which login attempts can be made. More should do so. But don' t rely on it happening. Instead, beef up your own security by upgrading your brain to use mnemonic passwords.

单选题The United States is a country made up of many different races. Usually they are mixed together and can't be told from one another. But many of them still talk about where their ancestors came from. It is something they are proud of. The original Americans, of course were the Indians. The so-called white men who then came were mostly from England. But many came from other countries like Germany and France. One problem the United States has always had is discrimination. As new groups came to the United States they found they were discriminated against. First it was the Irish and Italians. Later it was the blacks. Almost every group has been able to finally escape this discrimination. The only immigrants who have not are the blacks. Surprisingly enough the worst discrimination today is shown towards the Indians. One reason the Indians are discriminated against is that they have tried so hard to keep their identity. Of course they are not the only ones who have done so. The Japanese have their Little Tokyo in Los Angeles and the Chinese a Chinatown in New York. The Dutch settlement in Pennsylvania also stays separate from other people. Their towns are like something from the 19th century. They have a different reason from the other groups for staying separately. They live separately for religious reasons rather than keep together in a racial group. Although some groups have kept themselves separate and others have been discriminated against, all groups have helped make the United States a great country. There is no group that has not helped in some way. And there is no group that can say they have done the most to make it a great country. Many people still come from other countries to help the United States grow. A good example is the American project that let a man walk on the moon. It was a scientist from Germany who was most responsible for doing that. It is certain that in the future the United States will still need the help of people from all racial groups to remain a great country.

单选题Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. We have known for a long time that the organization of any particular society is influenced by the definition of the sexes and the distinction drawn between them. But we have realized only recently that the identity of each sex is not so easy to pin down, and that definitions evolve in accordance with different types of culture known to us, that is, scientific discoveries and ideological revolutions. Our nature is not considered as immutable, either socially or biologically. As we approach the beginning of the 21st century, the substantial progress made in biology and genetics is radically challenging the roles, responsibilities and specific characteristics attributed to each sex, and yet, scarcely twenty years ago, these were thought to be "beyond dispute" We can safely say, with a few minor exceptions, that the definition of the sexes and their respective functions remained unchanged in the West from the beginning of the 19th century to the 1960s. The role distinction, raised in some cases to the status of uncompromising dualism on a strongly hierarchical model, lasted throughout this period, appealing for its justification to nature, religion and customs alleged to have existed since the dawn of time. The woman bore children and took care of the home. The man set out to conquer the world and was responsible for the survival of his family, by satisfying their needs in peacetime and going to war when necessary. The entire world order rested on the divergence of the sexes. Any overlapping or confusion between the roles was seen as a threat to the timehonored order of things. It was felt to be against nature, a deviation from the norm. Sex roles were determined according to the "place" appropriate to each. Women's place was, first and foremost, in the home. The outside world, i. e. workshops, factories and business firms, belonged to men. This sex-based division of the world (private and public) gave rise to a strict dichotomy between the attitudes, which conferred on each its special identity. The woman, sequestered at home, "cared, nurtured and conserved" . To do this, she had no need to be daring, ambitious, tough or competitive. The man, on the other hand, competing with his fellow men, was caught up every day in the struggle for survival, and hence developed those characteristics which were thought natural in a man. Today, many women go out to work, and their reasons for doing so have changed considerably. Besides the traditional financial incentives, we find ambition and personal fulfillment motivating those in the most favorable circumstances, and the wish to have a social life and to get out of their domestic isolation influencing others. Above all, for all women, work is invariably connected with the desire for independence.

单选题Simply switching Chinese drivers from burning oil to using electricity 1 is created by burning coal—responsible 2 more than 70 percent of such power presently in the Middle Kingdom—may not 3 greenhouse gas emissions enough. "Electric vehicles only make 4 if you are also committed 5 decarbonizing electricity," Sperling notes. And globally, it will take a long time for electric vehicles to displace the internal combustion engine. "It would 6 until 2029 to swap to all electric vehicles 7 all new vehicle sales from today forward 8 electric vehicles," notes chemical engineer David Rogers. The Toyota Prius and ears like it—hybrid electric vehicles, 9 rely on conventional motors in conjunction 10 electric ones—grew to only as 11 as 5 percent of new vehicle sales in the last 10 years. "This thing is going to take a long time." It may be buses and taxis 12 lead the change 13 their circumscribed routes and return to fixed locations. "Buses are big 14 to hold batteries," Wang notes, and they are 15 purchased by big-pockets governments 16 ordinary citizens. One thing seems clear: most driving will be done with internal combustion engines, at 17 for the near future, whether in China, the U. S. or elsewhere. "Under current conditions, only 1 18 2 percent of Chinese consumers 19 willing to buy hybrid vehicles," Wang says. "Consumers are not yet 20 to be willing to pay for the environment out of their own pocket."

单选题 People find it hard to like businesses once they grow beyond a certain size. Banks that were "too big to fail" sparked a global economic crisis and burned bundles of taxpayers' cash. Big retailers such as Walmart and Tesco squeeze suppliers and crush small rivals. Some big British firms minimize their tax bills so aggressively that they provoke outrage. It is shrewd politics to champion the little guy. But the popular fetish for small business is at odds with economic reality. Big firms are generally more productive, offer higher wages and pay more taxes than small ones. Economies dominated by small firms are often sluggish. Countries such as Greece, Italy and Portugal have lots of small firms which, thanks to burdensome regulations, have failed to grow. Firms with at least 250 workers account for less than half the share of manufacturing jobs in these countries than they do in Germany, the euro zone's strongest economy. For all the support around small business, it is economies with lots of biggish companies that have been able to sustain the highest living standards. Big firms can reap economies of scale. A big factory uses far less cash and labor to make each car or steel pipe than a small workshop. Big supermarkets such as the Walmart offer a wider range of highquality goods at lower prices than any corner store. Size allows specialization, which fosters innovation. Big firms have their flaws, of course. They can be slow to respond to customers' needs, changing tastes or innovative technology. To idolize big firms would be as unwise as to idolize small ones. Rather than focusing on size, policymakers should look at growth. One of the reasons why everyone loves small firms is that they create more jobs than big ones. But many small businesses stay small indefinitely. The link between small firms and jobs growth relies entirely on new start-ups, which are usually small, and which by definition create new jobs. Rather than spooning out subsidies and regulatory favors to small firms, governments should concentrate on removing barriers to expansion. In parts of Europe, for example, small firms are exemptedfrom the most burdensome social regulations. {{U}}This{{/U}} gives them an incentive to stay small. Far better to abolish burdensome rules for all firms. The same goes for differential tax rates, such as Britain's, and the separate bureaucracy America maintains to deal with small businesses. In a healthy economy, entrepreneurs with ideas can easily start companies, the best of which grow fast and the worst of which are quickly swept aside. Size doesn't matter. Growth does.

单选题Directions: There are 4 passages in this part . Each of the passages is followed by 5 questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are 4 choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best one and mark your answer. They are among the 250,000 people under the age of 25 who are out of work in the Netherlands, a group that accounts for 40 percent of the nation's unemployed. A storm of anger boils up at the government-sponsored (政府资助的) youth center, even among those who are continuing their studies. "We study for jobs that don't exist. " Nicollete Steggerda, 23, said. After three decades of prosperity, unemployment among 10 member nations of the European Community has exceeded 11 percent, affecting a total of 12.3 million people, and the number is climbing. The bitter disappointment long expressed by British youths is spreading across the Continent. The title of a rock song " No Future" can now be seen written on the brick walls of closed factories in Belgium and France. Recent surveys have found that the increasing argument in the last few years over the deployment (布局) in Europe of North Atlantic Treaty Organization missiles and the possibility of nuclear war have clouded European youths' confidence in the future. One form of protest tends to put the responsibility for a country's economic troubles on the large numbers of "guest workers" from Third World nations, people welcomed in Western Europe in the years of prosperity. Young Europeans, brought up in an extended period of economic success and general stability, seem to resemble Americans more than they do their own parents. Material enjoyment has given them a sense of expectation, each the right, to a standard of living that they see around them. "And so we pass the days at the discos, or meet people at the café, and sit and stare. Said Isabella Gcuit. "There is usually not much conversation. You look for happiness. Sometimes you even find it. "

单选题Ausubel of Rockefeller University says the key renewable energy sources, including sun, wind and biofuels, would all require vast 1 of land if developed up to large scale production unlike nuclear power. That land would be far better left alone, he says. Renewables look attractive when they are quite 2 . But 3 we start producing renewable energy on a large scale, the fallout (结果) is going to be horrible. Instead, Ausubel argues 4 renewed development of nuclear. Ausubel 5 his conclusions by analyzing the amount of energy renewables, natural gas and nuclear that can produce in terms of power per square meter of land used. Moreover, he claims that as renewable energy use increases, this measure of efficiency will 6 as the best land for wind, biofuels, and solar power gets used up. Using biofuels to obtain the 7 amount of energy as a 1000 megawatt (兆瓦) nuclear power plant would require 2500 square kilometers of farm 8 , Ausubel says. "We should be sparing land for nature, not using it as pasture (牧场，草地) for cars and trucks," he adds. Solar power is 9 more efficient than biofuel in terms of the area of land 10 , but it would still require 150 square kilometers of photovoltaic (光电的) cells to 11 the energy production of the 1000 MW nuclear plant. In another example, he says meeting the 2005 US electricity demand 12 wind power alone would need 780, 000 square kilometers, an area the size of Texas. However, several experts are highly critical 13 Ausubel"s conclusions. John Turner of the US government"s National Renewable Energy Laboratory says that 14 the US got all of its power from solar energy, it would still need less than half the amount of land that has been paved over for highways. Further, it need not 15 additional land. The US could get a quarter of its energy just from covering rooftops of 16 buildings, he says. According to Turner, the same "dual use" also 17 to wind power. The footprint for wind is only 5% of the land that it 18 . Farmers can still farm the land that the turbines (涡轮机) are on. Turner says looking solely at land use is an oversimplification of the 19 "I"m not sure I"d want to build one of these nuclear plants in Afghanistan, but we could 19 put in wind and solar power," he adds.

单选题Ittooksometimetofigureoutjusttherightshoppingcomplex,offjusttherighthighwayinterchangeandjusttherightdistancefromSeoul,thatcouldaccommodatea624,000-square-footstore—thatistosay,onemorethanthreetimesthesizeoftheaverageWal-MartSupercenter.Ittookmoretimetosolvecertainmysteries,likehowbigtomakethestore"schildren"ssectioninacountrywherekidsareoftengivenamplespaceinthefamilylivingquarters.Ittookmoretimetofigureouthowtoshowcasekitchensthatincorporatekimchirefrigerators,auniquelyKoreanappliance—andevenmoretimetountanglenuancesofthemarket,liketheSouthKorean"spreferenceformetalchopsticks.Inall,ittookaboutsixyearsforIkeatounveilitsinauguralstoreinSouthKorea,inGwangmyeong,startingfromthefirstscoutingtrip.ThelagwastypicallyIkean.Butsixyears?"Themoreglobal,themorecomplexitgets,"repliesMikaelPalmquist,theregionalmanagerofretailforAsiaPacific."Weneedtogetthesethingsrightorwewillneverbetakenseriously."TodaytheGwangmyeongstore,whichisthecompany"slargestintheworldbyshoppingarea,isontracktobecomeoneofIkea"stop-performingoutletsfor2015.Thesuccessishardlyafluke.Ikea,itseems,isageniusatsellingIkea—flatpacking,transporting,andreassemblingitsquirkySwedishstylingallacrosstheplanet.ThefurnitureandfurnishingsbrandisinmorecountriesthanWal-MartandCarrefour.China,whereIkeahaseightofits10biggeststores,isthecompany"sfastest-growingmarket.AnoutletinMoroccoiscomingsoon,andtherearehintsthatBrazilmaynotbefaroff.Meanwhile,IkeaisgoingmeatballsoutinIndia,whereitplanstoinvestabout$2billionoveradecadetoopen10stores.GettingitrightinemergingmarketslikeChinaandIndia,whereIkeaiswell-positionedtocapitalizeonagrowingmiddleclass,isakeyfactorinitsgoalofhitting50billioninsalesby2020.That"supfrom28.7billioninitsfiscal2014andalmostdoubleits2005saleslevel.TodaytheIkeaGrouphas318stores,notincludingthebrand"ssomefourdozenfranchisedlocations;it"saimingforaround500by2020.

单选题It"s true that high-school coding classes aren"t essential for learning computer science in college. Students without experience can catch up after a few introductory courses, said Tom Cortina, the assistant dean at Carnegie Mellon"s School of Computer Science. However, Cortina said, early exposure is beneficial. When younger kids learn computer science, they learn that it"s not just a confusing, endless string of letters and numbers—but a tool to build apps, or create artwork, or test hypotheses. It"s not as hard for them to transform their thought processes as it is for older students. Breaking down problems into bite-sized chunks and using code to solve them becomes normal. Giving more children this training could increase the number of people interested in the field and help fill the jobs gap, Cortina said. Students also benefit from learning something about coding before they get to college, where introductory computer-science classes are packed to the brim, which can drive the less-experienced or-determined students away. The Flatiron School, where people pay to learn programming, started as one of the many coding bootcamps that"s become popular for adults looking for a career change. The high-schoolers get the same curriculum, but "we try to gear lessons toward things they"re interested in," said Victoria Friedman, an instructor. For instance, one of the apps the students are developing suggests movies based on your mood. The students in the Flatiron class probably won"t drop out of high school and build the next Facebook. Programming languages have a quick turnover, so the "Ruby on Rails" language they learned may not even be relevant by the time they enter the job market. But the skills they learn—how to think logically through a problem and organize the results—apply to any coding language, said Deborah Seehorn, an education consultant for the state of North Carolina. Indeed, the Flatiron students might not go into IT at all. But creating a future army of coders is not the sole purpose of the classes. These kids are going to be surrounded by computers—in their pockets, in their offices, in their homes—for the rest of their lives. The younger they learn how computers think, how to coax the machine into producing what they want—the earlier they learn that they have the power to do that—the better.

单选题Two decades ago only spies and systems administrators had to worry about passwords. But today you have to enter one even to do humdrum things like turning on your computer, downloading an album or buying a book online. No wonder many people use a single, simple password for everything. Analysis of password databases, often stolen from websites, shows that the most common choices include "password", "123456" and "abc123". But using these, or any word that appears in a dictionary, is insecure. Even changing some letters to numbers ("e" to "3", "i" to "1" and so forth) does little to reduce the vulnerability of such passwords to an automated "dictionary attack", because these substitutions are so common. The fundamental problem is that secure passwords tend to be hard to remember, and memorable passwords tend to be insecure. Weak passwords open the door to fraud, identity theft and breaches of privacy. An analysis by Verizon, an American telecoms firm, found that the biggest reason for successful security breaches was easily guessable passwords. Some viruses spread by trying common passwords. The solution, say security researchers, is to upgrade the software in people's heads, by teaching them to choose more secure passwords. One approach is to use passphrases containing unrelated words, such as "correct horse battery staple", linked by a mental image. Passphrases are, on average, several orders of magnitude harder to crack than passwords. But a new study by researchers at the University of Cambridge finds that people tend to choose phrases made up not of unrelated words but of words that already occur together, such as "dead poets society" . Such phrases are vulnerable to a dictionary attack based on common phrases taken from the Internet. And many systems limit the length of passwords, making a long phrase impractical. An alternative approach, championed by Bruce Schneier, a security guru, is to turn a sentence into a password, taking the first letter of each word and substituting numbers and punctuation marks where possible. "Too much food and wine will make you sick" thus becomes "2mf&wwmUs". This is no panacea: the danger with this "mnemonic password" approach is that people will use a proverb, or a line from a film or a song, as the starting point, which makes it vulnerable to attack. Some websites make an effort to enhance security by indicating how easily guessed a password is likely to be, rejecting weak passwords, ensuring that password databases are kept properly coded and limiting the rate at which login attempts can be made. More should do so. But don't rely on it happening. Instead, beef up your own security by upgrading your brain to use mnemonic passwords.

单选题The rise of multinational corporations, global marketing, new communications technologies, and shrinking cultural differences have led to an unparalleled increase in global public relations or PR. Surprisingly, since modern PR was largely an American invention, the U.S. leadership in public relations is being threatened by PR efforts in other countries. Ten years ago, for example, the world"s top five public relations agencies were American-owned. In 1991, only one was. The British in particular are becoming more sophisticated and creative. A recent survey found that more than half of all British companies include PR as part of their corporate planning activities, compared to about one-third of U.S. companies. It may not be long before London replaces New York as the capital of PR. Why is America lagging behind in the global PR race? Firstly, Americans as a whole tend to be fairly provincial and take more of an interest in local affairs. Knowledge of world geography, for example, has never been strong in this country. Secondly, American lags behind their European and Asian counterparts in knowing a second language. Less than 5 percent of Burson-Marshall"s U. S. employees know two languages. Ogilvy and Mather has about the same percentage. Conversely, some European firms have half or more of their employees fluent in a second language. Finally, people involved in PR abroad tend to keep a closer eye on international affairs. In the financial PR area, for instance, most Americans read the Wall Street Journal . Overseas, their counterparts read the Journal as well as the Financial Times of London and The Economist , publications not often read in this country. Perhaps the PR industry might take a lesson from Ted Turner of CNN (Cable News Network). Turner recently announced that the word "foreign" would no longer be used on CNN news broadcasts. According to Turner, global communications have made the nations of the world so interdependent that there is no longer any such thing as foreign.

单选题Nuclear power"s danger to health, safety, and even life itself can be summed up in one word: radiation. Nuclear radiation has a certain mystery about it, partly because it cannot be detected by human senses. It can"t be seen or heard, or touched or tasted, even though it may be all around us. There are other things like that. For example, radio waves are all around us but we can"t sense radioactivity without a radiation detector. But unlike common radio waves, nuclear radiation is not harmless to human beings and other living things. At very high levels, radiation can kill an animal or human being outright by killing masses of cell in vital organs. But even the lowest levels can do serious damage. There is no level of radiation that is completely safe. If the radiation does not hit anything important, the damage may not be significant. This is the case when only a few cells are hit, and if they are killed outright. Your body will replace the dead cells with healthy ones. But if the few cells arc only damaged, and if they reproduce themselves, you may be in trouble. They reproduce themselves in a deformed way. They can grow into cancer. Sometimes this does not show up for many years. This is another reason for some of the mystery about nuclear radiation. Serious damage can be done without the victim being aware at the time that damage has occurred. A person can be irradiated and feel fine, then die of cancer five, ten, or twenty years later as a result. Or a child can be born weak or liable to serious illness as a result of radiation absorbed by its grandparents. It is not too careful to prevent from the radiation. Radiation can hurt us. We must know the truth.

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 6 a "strategy" to both phages and phablets, neither of which is sentient. 7 , the process is evolutionary, consisting of many random evolutions, 8 experimented with by many product designers. This makes it all the more powerful. Tech 9 occurs through actively-learnt responses, or "operant conditioning" as animal be haviourists call it. The scientific parallel here also involves a rodent, typically a rat, which occupies a 10 cage called a Skinner Box. The animal is 11 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 12 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 15 by an invasive pseudo-organism would believe. 16 , mobile technology causes symptoms less severe than physiological diseases. There are even benefits to 17 sufferers for shortened attention spans and the caffeine overload triggered by visits to Starbucks for the free Wi-Fi. Most importantly, you can 18 the Financial Times in places as remote as Alaska or Sidcup. In this 19 , a mobile device is closer to a symbiotic organism than a parasite. This would make it 20 to an intestinal bacterium that helps a person to stay alive, rather than a virus that may kill you.

单选题The battle between Apple and law enforcement officials over unlocking a terrorist"s smart-phone is the climax of a slow turning of the tables between the technology industry and the United States government. On the one side, you have the United States government"s mighty legal and security apparatus fighting for data of the most sympathetic sort: the secrets buried in a dead mass murderer"s phone. The action stems from a federal court order issued on Tuesday requiring Apple to help the F.B.I. unlock an iPhone used by one of the two attackers who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., in December. In the other corner is the world"s most valuable company, whose chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, has said he will appeal the court"s order. Apple argues that it is fighting to preserve a principle that most of us who are addicted to our smartphones can defend: Weaken a single iPhone so that its contents can be viewed by the American government and you risk weakening all iPhones for any government intruder, anywhere. There will probably be months of legal tussling, and it is not at all clear which side will prevail in court, nor in the battle for public opinion and legislative favor. Yet underlying all of this is a simple dynamic: Apple, Google, Facebook and other companies hold most of the cards in this confrontation. They have our data, and their businesses depend on the global public"s collective belief that they will do everything they can to protect that data. Any crack in that front could be fatal for tech companies that must operate worldwide. If Apple is forced to open up an iPhone for an American law enforcement investigation, what"s to prevent it from doing so for a request from the Chinese or the Iranians? Once armed with a method for gaining access to iPhones, the government could ask to use it proactively, before a suspected terrorist at tack—leaving Apple in a bind as to whether to comply or risk an attack and suffer a public-relations nightmare. Yet it"s worth noting that even if Apple ultimately loses this case, it has plenty of technical means to close a backdoor over time. "If they"re anywhere near worth their salt as engineers, I bet they"re rethinking their threat model as we speak," said Jonathan Zdziarski, who studies the iPhone and its vulnerabilities.

单选题 Office jobs are among the positions hardest hit by compumation (计算机自动化). Word processors and typists will lose about 93,000 jobs over the next few years, while 57,000 secretarial jobs will vanish. Blame the PC: Today, many executives type their own memos and carry their "secretaries" in the palms of their hands. Time is also hard for stock clerks, whose ranks are expected to decrease by 68,000. And employees in manufacturing firms and wholesalers are being replaced with computerized systems. But not everyone who loses a job will end up in the unemployment line. Many will shift to growing positions within their own companies. When new technologies shook up the telecom business, telephone operator Judy Dougherty pursued retraining. She is now a communications technician, earning about $64,000 per year. Of course, if you've been a tollbooth collector for the past 30 years, and you find yourself replaced by an E-ZPass machine, it may be of little consolation (安慰) to know that the telecom field is booming. And that's just it: The service economy is fading; welcome to the expertise (专门知识) economy. To succeed in the new job market, you must be able to handle complex problems. Indeed, all but one of the 50 highest—paying occupations—air-traffic controller—demand at least a bachelors degree. For those with just a high school diploma (毕业证书), it's going to get tougher to find a well-paying job. Since fewer factory and clerical jobs will be available, what's left will be the jobs that compumation can't kill: computers can't clean offices, or care for Alzheimer's patients (老年痴呆病人). But, since most people have the skills to fill those positions, the wages stay painfully low, meaning compumation could drive an even deeper wedge (楔子) between the rich and poor. The best advice now: Never stop learning, and keep up with new technology. For busy adults, of course, that can be tough. The good news is that the very technology that's reducing so many jobs is also making it easier to go back to school—without having to sit in a classroom. So-called Internet distance learning is hot, with more than three million students currently enrolled, and it's gaining credibility with employers. Are you at risk of losing your job to a computer? Check the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook, which is available online at bls.Gov.