单选题Perhaps I should not have done so, but I changed my mind about the new job even though I was ______ last week.

单选题Reebok executives do not like to hear their stylish athletic shoes called "footwear for yuppies (雅皮士，少壮高薪职业人士)". They contend that Reebok shoes appeal to diverse market segments, especially now that the company offers basketball and children"s shoes for the under-18 set and walking shoes for older customers not interested in aerobics (健身操) or running. The executives also point out that through recent acquisitions they have added hiking boots, dress and casual shoes, and high-performance athletic footwear to their product lines, all of which should attract new and varied groups of customers. Still, despite its emphasis on new markets, Reebok plans few changes in the upmarket (高档消费人群) retailing network that helped push sales to $1 billion annually, ahead of all other sports shoe marketers. Reebok shoes, which are priced from $27 to $85, will continue to be sold only in better specialty, sporting goods, and department stores, in accordance with the company"s view that consumers judge the quality of the brand by the quality of its distribution. In the past few years, the Massachusetts-based company has imposed limits on the number of its distributors (and the number of shoes supplied to stores), partly out of necessity. At times the unexpected demand for Reebok"s exceeded supply, and the company could barely keep up with orders from the dealers it already had. These fulfillment problems seem to be under control now, but the company is still selective about its distributors. At present, Reebok shoes are available in about five thousand retail stores in the United States. Reebok has already anticipated that walking shoes will be the next fitness-related craze, replacing aerobics shoes the same way its brightly colored, soft leather exercise footwear replaced conventional running shoes." Through product diversification and careful market research, Reebok hopes to avoid the distribution problems Nike came across several years ago, when Nike misjudged the strength of the aerobics shoe craze and was forced to unload huge inventories of running shoes through discount stores.

单选题The members of the club______ a plane to lake them on holiday to France.

单选题What does the author mean by "Honeymoon period" in paragraph 3?

单选题For years scholars have contrasted slavery in the United States and in Brazil, stimulated by the fact that racial patterns assumed such different aspects in the two countries after emancipation. Brazil never developed a system of rigid segregation of the sort that replaced slavery in the United States, and its racial system was fluid (a situation that is fluid is likely to change) because its definition of race was based as much on characteristics such as economic status as on skin color. Until recently, the most persuasive explanation for these differences was that Portuguese institutions especially the Roman Catholic church and Roman civil law, promoted recognition of the slave"s humanity. The English colonists, on the other hand, constructed their system of slavery out of whole cloth (whole cloth: pure fabrication usually used in the phrase out of whole cloth). There were simply no precedents in English common law, and separation of church and state barred Protestant clergy from the role that priests assumed in Brazil. But the assumption that institutions alone could so powerfully affect the history of two raw and malleable frontier a new field for exploitative or developmental activity. Countries seem, on reexamination, untenable. Recent studies focus instead on a particular set of contrasting economic circumstances and demographic profiles at significant periods in the histories of the two countries. Persons of mixed race quickly appeared in both countries. In the United States they were considered to be Black, a social definition that was feasible because they were in the minority. In Brazil, it was not feasible. Though intermarriage was illegal in both countries, the laws were unenforceable in Brazil since Whites formed a small minority in an overwhelmingly Black population. Manumission for persons of mixed race was also easier in Brazil, particularly in the nineteenth century when in the United States it was hedged about with difficulties. Furthermore, a shortage of skilled workers in Brazil provided persons of mixed race with the opportunity to learn crafts and trades, even before general emancipation, whereas in the United States entry into these occupations was blocked by Whites sufficiently numerous to fill the posts. The consequence was the development in Brazil of a large class of persons of mixed race, proficient in skilled trades and crafts, who stood waiting as a community for freed slaves to join. There should be no illusion that Brazilian society after emancipation was color-blind. Rather, the large population of persons of mixed race produced a racial system that included a third status, a bridge between the Black caste and the White, which could be traversed by means of economic or intellectual achievement, marriage, or racial heritage. The strict and sharp line between the races so characteristic of the United States in the years immediately after emancipation was simply absent. With the possible exception of New Orleans, no special "place" developed in the United States for persons of mixed race. Sad to say, every pressure of society worked to prevent their attaining anything approximating the economic and social position available to their counterparts in Brazil.

单选题Hawaii's native minority is demanding a greater degree of sovereignty over its own affairs. But much of the archipelago's political establishment, which includes the White Americans who dominated until the Second World War and people of Japanese, Chinese and Filipino origin, is opposed to the idea. The islands were annexed by the US in 1898 and since then Hawaii's native peoples have lived worse than any of its other ethnic groups. They make up over 60 percent of the state's homeless, suffer levels of unemployment and their life span is five years less than the average Hawaiians. They are the only major US native group without some degree of autonomy. But a sovereignty advisory committee set up by Hawaii's frist native governor, John Waihee, has given the natives' cause a major boost be recommending that the Hawaiian natives decide by themselves whether to reestablish a sovereign Hawaiian nation. However, the Hawaiian natives are not united in their demands. Some just want greater autonomy with the state—as enjoyed by many American Indian natives overmatters such as education. This is a position supported by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs(OHA), a state agency set up in 1978 to represent to natives' interests and which has now become the moderate face of the native sovereignty movement. More ambitions in the Ka Lahui group, which declared itself a new nation in 1987 and wants full, official independence from the US. But if Hawaiian natives are given greater autonomy, it is far from clear how many people this will apply to. The state authorities only count as native those people with more than 50 percent Hawaiian blood. Native demands are not just based on political grievances, though. They also want their claim on 660, 000 hectares of Hawaiian crown land to be accepted. It is on this issue that native groups are facing most opposition from the state authorities. In 1933, the state government paid the OHA US $ 136 million in back rent on the crown land and many officials say that by accepting this payment the agency has given up its claims to legally own the land. The OHA has vigorously disputed this.

单选题The Freedom of Information Act gives private citizen______government files.

单选题The department also prepares English and Modern Languages graduates intending to teach in secondary schools on the one year PGCE course, on which drama is offered as a ______ subject.

单选题He should be dismissed for his ______ remarks about his immediate superiors.

单选题If animal parents were judged by human standards, the cuckoo would be one of nature's more creatures, blithely laying its eggs in the nests of other birds, and leaving the incubating and nurturing to them.

单选题The attack on Fort Sumter near Charleston ______ a sharp response from the North, which led to the American Civil War. A. intent on B. provoked C. elated D. pruned

单选题Since the dawn of human ingenuity, people have devised ever more cunning tools to cope with work that is dangerous, boring, burdensome, or just plain nasty. That compulsion has resulted in robotics—the science of conferring various human capabilities on machines. And if scientists have yet to create the mechanical version of science fiction, they have begun to come close. As a result, the modem world is increasingly populated by intelligent gizmos whose presence we barely notice but whose universal existence has removed much human labor. Our factories hum to the rhythm of robot assembly arms. Our banking is done at automated teller terminals that thank us with mechanical politeness for the transaction. Our subway trains are controlled by tireless robot-drivers. And thanks to the continual miniaturization of electronics and micro-mechanics, there are already robot systems that can perform some kinds of brain and bone surgery with submillimetre accuracy—far greater precision than highly skilled physicians can achieve with their hands alone. But if robots are to reach the next stage of laborsaving utility, they will have to operate with less human supervision and be able to make at least a few decisions for themselves—goals that pose a real challenge. "While we know how to tell a robot to handle a specific error," says Dave Lavery, manager of a robotics program at NASA, "we can"t yet give a robot enough "common sense" to reliably interact with a dynamic world." Indeed the quest for true artificial intelligence has produced very mixed results. Despite a spell of initial optimism in the 1960s and 1970s when it appeared that transistor circuits and microprocessors might be able to copy the action of the human brain by the year 2010, researchers lately have begun to extend that forecast by decades if not centuries. What they found, in attempting to model thought, is that the human brain"s roughly one hundred billion nerve cells are much more talented—and human perception far more complicated—than previously imagined. They have built robots that can recognize the error of a machine panel by a fraction of a-millimeter in a controlled factory environment. But the human mind can glimpse a rapidly changing scene and immediately disregard the 98 percent that is irrelevant, instantaneously focusing on the monkey at the side of a winding forest road or the single suspicious face in a big crowd. The most advanced computer systems on Earth can"t approach that kind of ability, and neuroscientists still don"t know quite how we do it.

单选题The exhibition ______ such endangered animals as the giant panda and the Siberian tiger and describes the work being done to protect them.

单选题The burglars ransacked the room taking anything of value they found.

单选题Brunner's ______ to become the second woman ever to hold Cabinet rank was scuttled by the overwhelmingly male parliament, apparently because of sexual politics. A. bet B. bit C. bid D. bat

单选题According to the (literature) in this field, expert (evidences) originally (appeared) in England, and later (got widen used) in the Commonwealth countries.