单选题(To) the (best of) my knowledge, the climate in Arizona is better all (the) (year-round) than (any) other state.A. ToB. best ofC. year-roundD. any
单选题He has been at the helm (舵)of the Securities and Exchange Commission for only three months, but William Donaldson has given individual investors reason to believe that he will prove to be an effective champion of their interests as a vigilant regulator of the nation's financial markets. The challenges ahead remain daunting, but Mr. Donaldson is steadily restoring the agency's credibility in the wake of its disastrous stewardship by Harvey Pitt. The SEC. chairman passed his first big test by persuading William McDonough, the respected president of the New York Federal Reserve, to run the new accounting oversight board created by Congress last summer. He has also opened an important inquiry into trading practices at the New York Stock Exchange. The commission has issued rules to tighten corporate boards' oversight over financial audits. Mr. Donaldson should now see that more is done to shore up shareholder democracy. A reassuring sign that there is a new sheriff(治安官)on Wall Street came in the aftermath of the recently announced landmark settlement with 10 brokerage(经纪人业务)firms over their tainted stock research. The SEC. chairman sternly rebuked Philip Purcell, the chief executive of Morgan Stanley, for trying to minimize the extent of his firm's involvement in the scandals. Mr. Donaldson, a former Wall Street banker himself, wrote a letter to Mr. Purcell describing concern over his "troubling lack of contrition" , and reminding him that Morgan could face further legal problems if it denied the settled charges. Besides being unusual, Mr. Donaldson's move was a powerful use of his office's bully pulpit (讲坛). With all the talk about whether the SEC. has enough material resources to pursue corporate malfeasance—the agency's budget is being increased significantly—it was easy in the Harvey Pitt era to forget that a strong SEC chairman can wield a great deal of moral authority. This is especially true given financial institutions absolute need to retain public trust. Mr. Donaldson should be ready to use his bully pulpit often. Wall Street is awash in a "troubling lack of contrition" for its past misdeeds.
单选题A: I noticed a copy of Scientific American on your desk. May I borrow it?B: ______
单选题Effective protection of intellectual property rights can benefit from the education on academic ______.
单选题A: The concert set a record for attendance. B: ______
单选题Woman: Why have we stopped? Man: Well, Mrs. Smith, you are not using your mirror enough. You must check in the mirror before you pull out. But after all, this is only your second lesson. You are doing fine. Question: What is the man's job?
单选题Tim is {{U}}dubious{{/U}} about diet pills which advertise quick weigh loss.
单选题Faith in medicine runs deep in America. We spend more per person on health care than any other nation. Whether we eat too much or exercise too little, whether we're turning gray or feeling blue, we look to some pill or procedure to make us better. We assume that devoting ever more dollars to medicine will bring us longer, healthier lives. But there is mounting evidence that each new dollar we devote to the current health care system brings small and diminishing returns to public health. Today the United States spends more than $4 500 per person per year on health care. Costa Rica spends less than $ 300. Yet life expectancy at birth is nearly identical in both countries. Despite the highly publicized" longevity revolution," life expectancy among the elderly in the United States is hardly improving. Yes, we are an aging society, but primarily because of falling birthrates. Younger Americans, meanwhile, are far more likely to be disabled than they were 20 years ago. Most affected are people in their thirties, whose disability rates increased by nearly 130 percent, due primarily to overweight. Why has our huge investment in health care left us so unhealthy? Partly it is because so many promised" miracle cures," from Interferon to gene therapies, have proven to be ineffective or even dangerous. Partly it's because health care dollars are so concentrated on the terminally ill and the very old that even when medical interventions "work,'" the gains to average life expectancy are small. And partly it is because of medical errors and adverse reaction to prescription drugs, which cause more deaths than motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer or AIDS. Each year roughly 200 000 seniors suffer fatal or life-threatening "adverse drug events" due to improper drug use or drug interaction. Why don't Americans live any longer than Costa Ricans? Overwhelmingly, it's because of differences in behavior. Americans exercise less, eat more, drive more, smoke more, and lead more socially isolated lives. Even at its best, modern medicine can do little to promote productive aging, because by the time most people come in contact with it their bodies are already compromised by stress, indulgent habits, environmental dangers and injuries.
单选题A: I just can't stand this class any more!
B: ______ It's required, and you have to sit in it in order to graduate.
单选题Inflation is a period of rapid rises in prices. When your money buys fewer goods so that you get (56) for the same amount of money as before, inflation is the problem. Sometimes people describe inflation as a time when "a dollar is not (57) a dollar anymore". Inflation is a problem for all consumers, especially people who live on a fixed income. Retired people, for instance, cannot (58) on an increase in income as prices rise. They face serious problems in stretching their incomes to (59) their needs in time of inflation. Many retired people must cut their spending to (60) rising prices. In many cases they must stop (61) some necessary items, such as food and clothing. Even (62) working people whose incomes are going up, inflation can also be a problem. The (63) of living goes up, and they must have even more money to maintain their standard of living. When incomes do not keep (64) with rising prices, living standard goes down. People may be earning the same amount of money, but they are not living (65) because they are not able to buy as many goods and services. Government units gather information about prices in our economy and publish it as price indexes (66) the rate of price change can be determined. A price index measures changes in prices using the price for a (67) year as the base. The base price is set (68) 100, and the other prices are reported as a (69) of the base price. A price index makes (70) possible to compare current price with that in previous years.
单选题People expect that ______.
单选题{{B}}Passage Three{{/B}}
Have you ever felt your life go into
slow motion as you realize something bad is happening? You might have just
knocked over a wine glass or noticed a car hurtling towards you, for example.
Now scientists have measured exactly how much these
attention-grabbing(引人注意的)events slow down our perception of the world around
us. Another example of the world appearing to slow down is when
you are hanging on the phone waiting for someone to pick up at the other end. If
your attention wanders while you're waiting, then suddenly switches back,you
will probably hear what seems like a longer than usual silence before hearing
the dialling tone again. For you, time will have momentarily slowed.
To see how our perception of time changes when something new happens,
Vincent Walsh and his colleagues put headphones on volunteers and played eight
beeps to their right ears. The gap between each beep was exactly i second,
except for the gap between the fourth and fifth beeps, which the scientists
could make shorter or longer. They altered the length of this gap until the
volunteers estimated it was the same length as the other gaps. The researchers
found that, on average, people judge a second slightly short, at 955
milliseconds. In the second part of the experiment, the first four
beeps were played to the subjects' right ear, but the other four were then
played to their left. Again, the volunteers were asked to estimate when the gap
between the fourth and fifth beeps was the same as the others. This time they
judged a second to be even shorter at 825 milliseconds long.
Perceiving a second to be much shorter than it is makes you feel as though
the world has gone into slow motion, since less happens in that slice of time.
Walsh thinks the effect could have evolved to give us a fraction more time to
react to potentially threatening events. Last year, Kielan
Yarrow, a British psychologist found a similar effect with vision. When you
glance at a clock, the first second will seem longer than it really
is. Yarrow's results showed that time appeared to slow down by a
similar amount as Walsh found. Previous studies have shown that cooling the body
slows down our perception of time while warming it up has the opposite
effect.
单选题{{B}}Passage Five{{/B}}
One of the most strikingly apparent
instances of extrasensory perception is the precognitive experience, when a
person has a compelling perception of a coming disaster, news of death of a
loved one, or a communication from a long-lost friend, and the predicted event
then happens. Many who have had such experiences report that the emotional
intensity of the precognition and its subsequent verification provide an
overpowering sense of contact with another realm of reality. I have had such an
experience myself. Many years ago, I awoke in the middle of night in a cold
sweat, with a certain knowledge that a close relative had suddenly died. I was
so gripped with the haunting intensity of the experience that I was afraid to
place a long-distance phone call, (for fear that the relative would trip over
the telephone cord or something and make the experience a self-fulfilling
prediction). In fact, the relative is alive and well, and whatever psychological
roots the experience may have, it was not a reflection of an imminent event in
the real world. However, suppose the relative had in fact died
that night. You would have had a difficult time convincing me that it was merely
coincidence. But it is easy to calculate that if each American has such a
premonitory experience a few times in his lifetime, the actual statistics alone
will produce a few apparent precognitive events somewhere in America each year.
We can calculate that this must occur fairly frequently, but to the rare person
who dreams of disaster, followed rapidly by its realization, it is uncanny and
awesome. Such a coincidence must happen to someone every few months. But those
who experience a correct precognition understandably resist its explanation by
coincidence. After my experience I did not write a letter to an
institute of psychology relating a compelling predictive dream that was not
borne out by reality. That is not a memorable letter. But had the death I dreamt
actually occurred, such a letter would have been marked down as evidence for
precognition. The hits are recorded; the misses are not. Thus human nature
unconsciously conspires to produce a biased reporting of the frequency of such
events.
单选题
单选题Imagine a world in which there was suddenly no emotion—a world in which human beings could feel no love or happiness, no terror or hate. Try to imagine the consequences of such a transformation. People might not be able to stay alive: knowing neither joy nor pleasure, anxiety nor fear, they would be as likely to repeat acts that hurt them as acts that were beneficial. They could not learn: they could not benefit from experience because this emotional world would lack rewards and punishments. Society would soon disappear: people would be as likely to harm one another as to provide help and support. Human relationships would not exist: in a world without friends or enemies, there could be no marriage, affection among companions, or bonds among members of groups. Society's economic underpinnings (支柱) would be destroyed: since earning $10 million would be no more pleasant than earning $10, there would be no incentive to work. In fact, there would be no incentives of any kind. For as we will see, incentives imply a capacity to enjoy them. In such a world, the chances that the human species would survive are next to zero, because emotions are the basic instrument of our survival and adaptation. Emotions structure the world for us in implant (嵌入、插入 ) ways. As individuals, we categorize objects on the basis of our emotions. True, we consider the length, shape, size, or texture, but an object's physical aspects are less important than what it has done or can do to us—hurt us, surprise us, anger us or make us joyful. We also use categorizations colored by emotions in our families, communities, and overall society. Out of our emotional experiences with objects and events comes a social feeling of agreement that certain things and actions are "good" and others are "bad", and we apply these categories to every aspect of our social life—from what foods we eat and what clothes we wear to how we keep promises and which people our group will accept. In fact, society exploits our emotional reactions and attitudes, such as loyalty, morality, pride, shame, guilt, fear and greed, in order to maintain itself. It gives high rewards to individuals who perform important tasks such as surgery, makes heroes out of individuals for unusual or dangerous achievements such as flying fighter planes in a war, and uses the legal and penal (刑法的) system to make people afraid to engage in antisocial acts.
单选题Football supporters declare their loyalty through ______
单选题{{B}}Passage Five{{/B}}
Some 23 million additional U.S. residents are
expected to become more regular users of the U.S. health care system in the next
several years, thanks to the passage of health care reform.Digitizing medical
data has been promoted as one way to help the already burdened system manage the
surge in patients. But putting people's health information in databases and
online is going to do more than simply reduce redundancies. It is already
shifting the very way we seek and receive health care. "The
social dynamics of care are changing," says John Gomez, vice president of
Eclipsys, a medical information technology company. Most patients might not yet
be willing to share their latest CT scan images over Facebook, he notes, but
many parents post their babies' ultrasound images, and countless patients
nowadays use social networking sites to share information about conditions,
treatments and doctors. With greater access to individualized
health information-whether that is through a formal electronic medical record,
a self-created personal health record or a quick instant-messaging session
with a physician—the traditional roles of doctors and patients are undergoing a
rapid transition. "For as long as we've known, health care has
been I go to the physician, and they tell me what to do, and I do it,'" says
Nitu Kashyap, a physician and research fellow at the Yale Center for Medical
Informatics. Soon more patients will be arriving at a hospital or doctor's
office,having reviewed their own record, latest test results and recommended
articles about their health concerns. And even more individuals will be able to
skip that visit altogether, instead sending a text message or e-mail to their
care provider or consulting a personal health record or smart phone application
to answer their questions. These changes will be strengthened by
the nationwide shift to electronic medical records,which has already began.
Although the majority of U.S. hospitals and doctors' offices are still
struggling to start the changeover, many patients already have electronic
medical records, and some even have partial access to them. The My Chart
program, in use at Cleveland Clinic, the University of Texas Southwestern
Medical Center at Dallas and other facilities, is a Web portal (门户)through which
patients can see basic medical information as well as some test results.
Medical data is getting a new digital life, and it is
jump-starting a "fundamental change in how care is provided," Gomez says.
单选题One witness ______that he'd seen the suspect run out of the bank after it had been robbed.
单选题{{B}}Passage Two{{/B}}
The bat is a marvel of evolutionary
adaptation. Most of them roost during the day, and are active at night or
twilight for they can avoid objects in the dark. I have seen this phenomenon at
work. In my youth I used to explore old mining shafts in the Randsburg district.
Sometimes my intrusion disturbed clans of bats that were hanging upside down in
the dark caves. They would fly about to evident panic, but the
panic was mine, not theirs. Some flew crazily out into the daylight but some
merely returned to their perches. None ever touched me, much to my
relief. They may exist but I have never seen a stuffed nylon
bat. To children, bats may not be as lovable as koala bears. Perhaps
manufacturers do not regard them as marketable. It is not so much their hideous
faces and winged bodies that have caused us to get rid of bats, but rather the
ancient myths in which dead humans, such as Count Dracula, leave their graves at
night in the form of bats to suck blood from human victims, especially fragile
young woman. As we know from some movies these vampires must return to their
graves before daylight. Endangered young women can frustrate vampire by sleeping
with a string of garlic around their necks. There are actually
three species of bloodsucking bats. They are called vampire bats after the
ancient legends, and their tactics are indeed frightful. Like Count Dracula,
they feed at night. They make a small cut in their sleeping victim with sharp
incisor teeth, usually not even awakening their prey. Then they suck the blood
that sustains them. Should that discourage children from wanting
them as pets? As Mitchell notes from the New Yorker ad, bats are
clean and intelligent. Most of them are insect-eaters, and they serve nature by
destroying crop-damaging insects. They also pollinate (传授花粉) flowers and
spreading seed. Bat Conservation International claims that
without bats a host of insects/pests would multiply unchecked and many of our
planet's most valuable plants would go unpollinated. It is clear
that the bat is our friend, and that, despite its appearance, it is here to
serve humanity. I'd be the first to buy a stuffed nylon bat.
Children's hearts are big, and bats need love,
too.
单选题Man: I've just found a great location to open a new shop. Woman: But you haven't researched the market. Don't you think this is putting the cart before the horse?Question: What does the woman mean?