单选题The heavy snow ______ travel, so he had to stay here for more days. A. impeached B. impelled C. impeded D. imparted

单选题Rachel was the______choice for the job thanks to her communication skills.

单选题Australia began to assume its modem configuration by the Eocene Epoch, some 50 million years ago, when Antarctica broke away and drifted southward.

单选题It tales (the most) cool-headed and (good-tempered) of drivers (to resist) the temptation to revenge (as subjected) to uncivilized behavior.

单选题Which of the following statement about the depression of our ancestors is NOT true?

单选题Which statement is NOT correct?

单选题The reality is that the consumer is at the receiving end of the numerous impacts and ______ generated by regulation.

单选题This month Singapore passed a bill that would give legal teeth to the moral obligation to support one"s parents. Called the Maintenance of Parents Bill, it received the backing of the Singapore Government. That does not mean it hasn"t generated discussion. Several members of the Parliament opposed the measure as un-Asian. Others who acknowledged the problem of the elderly poor believed it a disproportionate response. Still others believe it will subvert relations within the family: cynics dubbed it the "Sue Your Son" law. Those who say that the bill does not promote filial responsibility, of course, are right. It has nothing to do with filial responsibility. It kicks in where filial responsibility fails. The law cannot legislate filial responsibility any more than it can legislate love. All the law can do is to provide a safety net where this morality proves insufficient. Singapore needs this bill not to replace morality, but to provide incentives to shore it up. Like many other developed nations, Singapore faces the problems of an increasing proportion of people over 60 years of age. Demography is inexorable. In 1980, 7.2% of the population was in this bracket. By the end of the century that figure will grow to 11%. By 2030, the proportion is projected to be 26%. The problem is not old age per se. It is that the ratio of economically active people to economically inactive people will decline. But no amount of government exhortation or paternalism will completely eliminate the problem of old people who have insufficient means to make ends meet. Some people will fall through the holes in any safety net. Traditionally, a person"s insurance against poverty in his old age was his family, lifts is not a revolutionary concept. Nor is it uniquely Asian. Care and support for one"s parents is a universal value shared by all civilized societies. The problem in Singapore is that the moral obligation to look after one"s parents is unenforceable. A father can be compelled by law to maintain his children. A husband can be forced to support his wife. But, until now, a son or daughter had no legal obligation to support his or her parents. In 1989, an Advisory Council was set up to look into the problems of the aged. Its report stated with a tinge of complacency that 95% of those who did not have their own income were receiving cash contributions from relations. But what about the 5% who aren"t getting relatives" support? They have several options: (a) get a job and work until they die; (b) apply for public assistance (you have to be destitute to apply); or (c) starve quietly. None of these options is socially acceptable. And what if this 5% figure grows, as it is likely to do, as society ages? The Maintenance of Parents Bill was put forth to encourage the traditional virtues that have so far kept Asian nations from some of the breakdowns encountered in other affluent societies. This legislation will allow a person to apply to the court for maintenance from any or all of his children. The court would have the discretion to refuse to make an order if it is unjust. Those who deride the proposal for opening up the courts to family lawsuits miss the point. Only in extreme cases would any parent take his child to court. If it does indeed become law, the bill"s effect would be far more subtle. First, it will reaffirm the notion that it is each individual"s—not society"s—responsibility to look after his parents. Singapore is still conservative enough that most people will not object to this idea. It reinforces the traditional values and it doesn"t hurt a society now and then to remind itself of its core values. Second, and more important, it will make those who are inclined to shirk their responsibilities think twice. Until now, if a person asked family elders, clergymen or the Ministry of Community Development to help get financial support from his children, the most they could do was to mediate. But mediators have no teeth, and a child could simply ignore their pleas. But to be sued by one"s parents would be a massive loss of face. It would be a public disgrace. Few people would be so thick-skinned as to say, "Sue will be damned." The hand of the conciliator would be immeasurably strengthened. It is far more likely that some sort of amicable settlement would be reached if the recalcitrant son or daughter knows that the alternative is a public trial. It would be nice to think Singapore doesn"t need this kind of law. But that belief ignores the clear demographic trends and the effect of affluence itself on traditional bends. Those of us who pushed for the bill will consider ourselves most successful if it acts as an incentive not to have it invoked in the first place.

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单选题According to the passage, the advertising man must have the ability to ______.

单选题(By the 1980s) more than (two-fifth of) U.S. crop production was exported, (making) U.S. agriculture heavily (dependent) upon international markets.

单选题Most people who developed Lyme disease, a tick-born infection that's endemic in parts of the Northeast and Midwest, are easily cured by taking an antibiotic like doxycycline for a couple of weeks. But for years a debate has raged over what to do about patients whose symptoms(fatigue, mental confusion, joint pain)never seem to clear up. One small but vocal group of doctors and patient advocates believes that Lyme's corkscrew-shaped spirochetes have tunneled deep into their victims' bodies and can be eradicated only with intensive antibiotic treatment over many months. Another group believes, just as adamantly, that further treatment with powerful antibiotics — which can lead to potentially fatal infections or blood clots — positively dangerous. Now comes word of two studies in the New England Journal of Medicine that show that long-term antibiotic treatment is no better than a placebo for folks with chronic Lyme disease. Originally scheduled for publication in July, the research is part of a group of findings made public last week — just in time for the peak Lyme months of June and July. If confirmed by another major study that's looking at chronic Lyme and antibiotics from a slightly different perspective, the results would seem to settle the question once and for all. Researchers from Boston, New Haven, Com. , and Valhalla, N. Y. , followed 129 patients who had previously been treated for well-documented cases of Lyme disease. Sixty-four were given antibiotics directly into their veins for a month, followed by two months of oral antibiotics. The others received dummy medications. A third of the chronic Lyme patients got better while taking the antibiotics. But so did a third of those on the placebo. Indeed, the results were so similar that a monitoring board decided to cut the trials short rather than add more subjects to the test groups. Unfortunately, the debate over chronic Lyme has become so heated that no one expects the controversy to go away. But both sides may take comfort in the other findings that were released by the New England Journal last week. After studying 482 subjects bitten by deer ticks in a part of New York with a lot of Lyme disease, researchers concluded that a singly 200-mg dose of doxycycline dramatically cut the risk of contracting the disease. That good news is tempered somewhat by the fact that 80% of patients who develop the infection don't remember ever being bitten by a tick.(The bugs inject an anesthetic into the skin to mask the pain and in their nymph stage are so small — about the size of a poppy seed — that they are easily overlooked.) There's still plenty you can do to protect yourself in a Lyme-infested neighborhood: tuck your pants in your socks, spray DEET on your clothing, check yourself and your kids for ticks. And if you develop a spreading red rash — particularly if it's accompanied by joint pain, chills or confusion — make sure you see a doctor right away. The trick, as always, is to be vigilant without overreacting.

单选题The ______ era society or club are the records of its doings, especially as published each year.

单选题The typical shoe of the Middle Ages was a soft, clinging moccasin that extended to the ankle. A. close-fitting B. comfortable C. cleverly made D. leather

单选题{{B}}Passage 3{{/B}} "Before, we were too black to be white. Now. we're too white to be black. " Hadija, one of South Africa's 3. 5m Coloured (mixed race) people, sells lace curtains at a street market in a bleak township outside Cape Town. In 1966 she and her family were driven out of District Six, in central Cape Town, by an apartheid government that wanted the area for whites. Most of the old houses and shops were bulldozed but a Methodist church, escaping demolition, has been turned into a little museum, with an old street plan stretched across the floor. On it, families have identified their old houses, writing names and memories in bright felt-tip pen. "We can forgive, but not forget," says one. Up to a point. In the old days, trampled on by whites, they were made to accept a second-class life of scant privileges as a grim reward for being lighter-skinned than the third-class blacks. Today, they feel trampled on by the black majority. The white-led National Party, which still governs the Western Cape, the province where some 80% of Coloureds live, plays on this fear to good electoral effect. With no apparent irony, the party also appeals to the Coloured sense of common culture with fellow Afrikaans-speaking whites, a link the Nats have spent decades denying. This curious.courtship is again in full swing. A municipal election is to be held in the province on May 29th and the Nats need the Coloured vote if they are to win many local councils. By most measures, Coloureds are still better-off than blacks. Their jobless rate is high, 21% according to the most recent figures available. But the black rate is 38%. Their average yearly income is still more than twice that of blacks. But politics turns on fears and aspirations. Most Coloureds fret that affirmative action, the promotion of non-whites into government-related jobs, is leaving them behind. Affirmative action is supposed to help Coloureds (and Indians) too. It often does not. They may get left off a shortlist because, for instance, a job requires the applicant to speak a black African language, such as Xhosa. Some Coloureds think that the only way they will improve their lot is to launch their own. ethnically based, political parties. Last year a group formed the Kleurling Weer-standsbeweging, or Coloured Resistance Movement. But in-fighting caused this to crumble: some members wanted it to promote Coloured interests and culture; others to press for an exclusive "homeland". In fact, the Coloureds' sense of collective identity is undefined, largely imposed by apartheid's twisted logic. They are descended from a mix of races, including the Khoi and San (two indigenous African peoples), Malay slaves imported by the Dutch, and white European settlers. And though they do indeed share much with Afrikaners—many belong to the Dutch Reformed Church and many speak Afrikaans—others speak English or are Muslim or worship spirits. Under apartheid, being Coloured became something to try to escape from. Many tried to pass as white; some succeeded in getting "reclassified". Aspiring to whiteness and fearful of blackness, their identity is hesitant, even defensive. Many Coloureds feel most sure about what they are not. they vigorously resist any attempt to use the term "black" to embrace all nonwhite people. "My people are terrible racists, but not by choice," says Joe Marks, a Coloured member of the Western Cape parliament. "The blacks today have the political power, the whites have economic power. We just have anger. "

单选题Researchers have studied the poor as individuals, as families and households, as members of poor communities, neighborhoods and regions, as products of larger poverty-creating structures. They have been analyzed as victims of crime and criminals, as members of minority cultures, as passive consumers of mass culture and active producers of a "counterculture", as an economic burden and as a reserve army of labor—to mention just some of the preoccupations of poverty research. The elites, who occupy the small upper stratum within the category of the non-poor, and their functions in the emergence and reproduction of poverty are as interesting and important an object for poverty research as the poor themselves. The elites have images of the poor and of poverty which shape their decisions and actions. So far, little is known about those images, except as they are sketchily portrayed in popular stereotypes. The elites may well ignore or deny the external effects of their own actions (and omissions) upon the living conditions of the poor. Many social scientists may take a very different view. As poverty emerged and was reproduced, legal frameworks were created to contain the problems it caused with profound, and largely unknown, consequences for the poor themselves. In general, political, educational and social institutions tend to ignore or even damage the interests of the poor. In constructing a physical infrastructure for transport, industry, trade and tourism, the settlements of the poor are often the first to suffer or to be left standing and exposed to pollution, noise and crowding. Most important are the economic functions of poverty, as, for lack of other options the poor are forced to perform activities considered degrading or unclean. The poor are more likely to buy second-hand goods and leftover foodstuffs, thus prolonging their economic utility. They are likely to use the services of low-quality doctors, teachers and lawyers whom the non-poor shy away from. Poverty and the poor serve an important symbolic function, in reminding citizens of the lot that may befall those who do not heed the values of thrift, diligence and cleanliness, and of the constant threat that the rough, the immoral and the violent represent for the rest of society. Physically, the poor and the non-poor are kept apart, through differential land use and ghettoization. Socially, they are separated through differential participation in the labor market, the consumption economy, and in political, social and cultural institutions. Conceptually, they are divided through stereotyping-and media cliche. This separation is even more pronounced between the elites and the poor.

单选题You really ought to ______; all these late nights are doing you no good.

单选题He failed to carry out some of the provisions of the contract, and now he has to ______the consequences.

单选题Presumably , excessive consumption of fried foods has serious consequences as has been proved.

单选题New technologies continue to be a driving force, as developments in satellites, digital video, and ______ multimedia that have yet to work their way into broadcast or cable are becoming essential to corporate TV operations.