单选题Since the beginning of last month, she has suffered now and then from a sharp ______ headache for which the doctors are trying to find a cure. A. describable B irrational C. intelligible D. unexplained

单选题What is the major barrier to telesurgery?

单选题______ the First World War, the United States became the dominant force in the motion-picture industry.

单选题For the people who have never traveled across the Atlantic the voyage is a fantasy. But for the people who cross it frequently one crossing of the Atlantic is very much like another, and they do not make the voyage for the (41) of its interest. Most of us are quite happy when we feel (42) to go to bed and pleased when the journey (43) . On the first night this time I felt especially lazy and went to bed (44) earlier than usual. When I (45) my cabin, I was surprised (46) that I was to have a companion during my trip, which made me feel a little unhappy. I had expected (47) but there was a suitcase (48) mine in the opposite comer. I wondered who he could be and what he would be like. Soon afterwards he came in, He was the sort of man you might meet (49) , except that he was wearing (50) good clothes that I made up my mind that we would not (51) whoever he was and did not say (52) . As I had expected, he 'did not talk to me either but went to bed immediately. I suppose I slept for several hours because when I woke up it was already the middle of the night. I felt cold but covered (53) , as well as I could and tries to go back to sleep. Then I realized that a (54) was coming from the window opposite. I thought perhaps I had forgotten (55) the door, so I got up (56) the door but found it already locked from the inside. The cold air was coming from the window opposite, I crossed the room and (57) the moon shone through it on to the other bed (58) . there. It took me a minute or two to (59) the door myself. I realized that my companion (60) through the window into the sea.

单选题The miserable fate of Enron's employees will be a landmark in business history, one of those awful events that everyone agrees must never be allowed to happen again. This urge is understandable and noble: thousands have lost virtually all their retirement savings with the demise of Enron stock. But making sure it never happens again may not be possible, because the sudden impoverishment of those Enron workers represents something even larger than it seems. It's the latest turn in the unwinding of one of the most audacious promise of the 20th century. The promise was assured economic security — even comfort essentially everyone in the developed world. With the explosion of wealth, that began in the 19th century it became possible to think about a possibility no one had dared to dream before. The fear at the center of daily living since caveman days — lack of food warmth, shelter — would at last lose its power to terrify. That remarkable promise became reality in many ways. Governments created welfare systems for anyone in need and separate programs for the elderly(Social Security in the U. S.). Labor unions promised not only better pay for workers but also pensions for retirees. Giant corporations came into being and offered the possibility — in some cases the promise — of lifetime employment plus guaranteed pensions. The cumulative effect was a fundamental change in how millions of people approached life itself, a reversal of attitude that most rank as one of the largest in human history. For millennia the average person's stance toward providing for himself had been. Ultimately I'm on my own. Now it became, ultimately I'll be taken care of... The early hints that this promise might be broken on a large scale came in the 1980s. U. S business had become uncompetitive, globally and began restructuring massively, with huge layoffs. The trend accelerated in the 1990s as the bastions of corporate welfare faced reality. IBM ended its no-layoff policy. AT&T fired thousands, many of whom found such a thing simply incomprehensible, and a few of whom killed themselves. The other supposed guarantors of our economic security were also in decline. Labor -union membership and power fell to their lowest levels in decades. President Clinton signed a historic bill scaling back welfare. Americans realized that Social Security won't provide social security for any of us. A less visible but equally significant trend a affected pensions. To make costs easier to control, companies moved away from defined benefit pension plans, which obligate them to pay out specified amounts years in the future, to define contribution plans, which specify only how much goes into the play today. The most common type of defined-contribution plan is the 401(k). The significance of the 401(k)is that it puts most of the responsibility for a person's economic fate back on the employee. Within limits the employee must decide how much goes into the plan each year and how it gets invested-the two factors that will determine how much it's worth when the employee retires. Which brings us back to Eaton? Those billions of dollars in vaporized retirement savings went in employees' 401(k)accounts. That is, the employees chose how much money to put into those accounts arid then chose bow to invest it. Enron matched a certain proportion of each employee's 401(k)contribution with company stock, so everyone was going to end up with some Eaton ha his or her portfolio, but that could be regarded as a freebie, since nothing compels a company to match employee contributions at all. At least two special features complicate the Eaton case. First, same shareholders charge top management with illegally covering up the company's problems, prompting investors to hang on when they should have sold. Second, Enron's 401(k)accounts were lacked while the company changed plan administrators in October, when the stock was failing, so employees could not have closed their accounts if they wanted to. But by far the largest cause of this human tragedy is that thousands of employees were heavily overweighed in Eaton stock. Many had placed 100% of their 401(k)assets in the stock rather than in the 18 other investment options they were offered. Of course that wasn't prudent, but it's what some of them did. The Enron employees' retirement disaster is part of the larger trend away from guaranteed economic security. That's why preventing such a thing from ever happening again may be impossible. The huge attitudinal shift to I'll-be-taken-care-of took at least a generation. The shift back may take just as long. It won't be complete until a new generation of employees see assured economic comfort as a 20th-century quirk, and understand not just intellectually but in their bones that, like most people in most times and places, they're on their own.

单选题When he realized the true nature of the proposal, he ______ all communication with the group.

单选题What are those of us who have chosen careers in science and engineering able to do about our current problems? First, we can help destroy the false impression that science and engineering have caused the current world trouble. On the contrary, science and engineering have made vast contributions to better living for more people. Second, we can identify the many areas in which science and technology, more considerably used, can be of great service in the future than in the past to improve the quality of life. While we can make many speeches, and pass many laws, the quality of our environment will be improved only through better knowledge and better application of that knowledge. Third, we can recognize that much of the dissatisfaction we suffer today results from our very successes of former years. We have been so greatly successful in attaining material goals that we are deeply dissatisfied that we cannot attain other goals more rapidly. We have achieved a better life for most people, but we are unhappy that we have not spread it to all people. We have reduced many sources of environmental disasters, but we are unhappy that we have not conquered all of them. It is our raised expectations rather than our failures which now cause our distress. Granted that many of our current problems must be cured more by social, political, and economic instruments than science and technology, yet science and technology must still be the tools to make further advances in such things as clean air, clean water, better transportation, better medical care, more adequate welfare programs, purer food, conservation resources, and many other areas.

单选题Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following passage. The main idea of these business-school academics is appealing. In a word wt ere companies must adapt to new technologies and source of competition, it is much harder than it used to be to often good employees job security and an opportunity to climb the corporate ladder. Yet it is also more necessary than ever for employees to invest in better skills and sparkle with bright ideas. How can firms get the most out of people if they can no longer offer them protection and promotion? Many bosses would love to have an answer. Sumantrra Ghoshal of the London Business School and Christopher Bartlett of the Harvard Business School think they have one: " Employability. " If managers offer the right of training and guidance, and change their attitude towards their underlings, they will be able to reassure their employees that they will always have the skills and experience to find a good job--even if it is with a different company. Unfortunately, they promise more than they deliver. Their thoughts on what an ideal organization should accomplish are hard to quarrel with: encourage people to be creative, make sure the gains from creativity are shared with the pains of the business that can make the most of them, keep the organization from getting stale and so forth The real disappointment comes when they attempt to show how firms might actually create such an environment. At its nub is the notion that companies can attain their elusive goals by changing their implicit contract with individual workers, and treating them as a source of value rather than a cog in a machine. The authors offer a few inspiring example of companies--they include Motorola, 3M and ABB--that have managed to go some way towards creating such organizations. But they offer little useful guidance on how to go about it, and leave the biggest questions unanswered. How do you continuously train people, without diverting them from their everyday job of making the business more profitable? How do you train people to be successful elsewhere while still encouraging them to make big commitments to your own firm? How do you get your newly liberated employees to spend their time on ideas that create value, and not simply on those they enjoy? Most of their answers are platitudinous, and when they are not they are unconvincing.

单选题Good leaders recognize that an organization's strategies for success A require B the combining C talents and efforts of many people. Leadership is the catalyst D for transforming the talents into results.

单选题The establishment of Earth Day began with an idea proposed in October 1969 by John McConnell, a San Francisco resident. McConnell approached the San Francisco Board of Supervisors with a resolution to devote one day a year to public awareness dedicated to nature and the weak ecosystem that makes up it. The day's events would emphasize the urgency of all inhabitants of the planet to take responsibility for building a healthy and ecologically sustainable planet for the present and long into the future. The board was impressed with McConnell's idea and declared Earth Day an annual celebration to be held on March 21, the date of the vernal equinox. McConnell stated "This is the moment when night and day are equal throughout the earth — reminding us of Earth's beautiful systems of balance which humanity has partially upset and must restore." Earth Day was established as a national day of celebration in the United States in 1970 and was embraced by the United Nations in 1971 when it declared an Earth Day ceremony to be held each year on the day of the March Equinox. When the first Earth Day was celebrated in the United States on April 22, 1970, twenty million participants nationwide took part in teach-ins, street demonstrations, and workshops in 2,000 communities and 12, 000 college and high school campuses. The major public concern at that time was industrial pollution and its effect on the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the health of the planet we live in. Those celebrations led to powerful public outcries for legislation mandating ecologically sound environmental policies and rigid controls on industrial pollution. Over the years, the issues of concern have expanded greatly into all aspects of air, water, soil, and noise pollution. Whether it comes from vehicles, factories, agriculture, housing, or private property, public concern and activism continue with citizens from around the world involved in efforts to achieve a sustainable and enduring ecosystem. Earth Day activities are supported and sponsored by a large network of organizations, government agencies, businesses, universities, and institutions. They work diligently each year to make Earth day events meaningful and relevant to the inhabitants of Planet Earth. The regular observance of this holiday fixes environmental values into the national consciousness and provides an opportunity to introduce environmental issues into schools, media and public events. It should be noted that Earth Day activities have been instrumental in bringing about many of the significant environmental changes that have taken place in the last three decades.

单选题Since we are good friends, you needn't stand on ______ with us.

单选题Yet beyond thatU tragic /Upicture, there is a revolution at work in world literature and art.

单选题NASA is casting a wider net in the space shuttle investigation as to what caused the spacecraft to swing out control and______moments before it was to land.

单选题As most new buyers soon learn, it is not that easy for a novice to use, particularly when the manuals contain instructions like this ______ from Apple: "This character prevents script from terminating the currently forming output line when it encounters the script command in the input stream. "

单选题The Supreme Court's decisions on physician-assisted suicide carry important implications for how medicine seeks to relieve dying patients of pain and suffering. Although it ruled that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, the Court in effect supported the medical principle of "double effect, "a centuries-old moral principle holding that an action having two effects—a good one that is intended and a harmful one that is foreseen—is permissible if the actor intends only the good effect. Doctors have used that principle in recent years to justify using high doses of morphine to control terminally iii patients' pain, even though increasing dosages will eventually kill the patient. Nancy Dubler, director of Montefiore Medical Center, contends that the principle will shield doctors who "until now have very, very strongly insisted that they could not give patients sufficient mediation to control their pain if that might hasten death." George Annas, chair of the health law department at Boston University, maintains that, as long as a doctor prescribes a drug for a legitimate medical purpose, the doctor has done nothing illegal even if the patient uses the drug to hasten death. "It's like surgery," he says. "We don't call those deaths homicides because the doctors didn't intend to kill their patients, although they risked their death. If you're a physician, you can risk your patient's suicide as long as you don't intend their suicide." On another level, many in the medical community acknowledge that the assisted-suicide debate has been fueled in part by the despair of patients for whom modern medicine has prolonged the physical agony of dying. Just three weeks before the Court's ruling on physician-assisted suicide, the National Academy of Science (NAS) released a two-volume report, Approaching Death: Improving Care at the End of Life. It identifies the under treatment of pain and the aggressive use of "ineffectual an forced medical procedures that may prolong and even dishonor the period of dying" as the twi problems of end-of-life care. The profession is taking steps to require young doctors to train in hospices, to test knowledge of aggressive pain management therapies, to develop a medicare billing code for hospital-base care, and to develop new standards for assessing and treating pain at the end of life. Annas says lawyers can play a key role in insisting that these well-meaning medical initiative translate into better care. "Large numbers of physicians seem unconcerned with the pain their patients are needlessly and predictably suffering", to the extent that it constitutes "systematic patient abuse". He says medical licensing boards "must make it clear.., that painful deaths are presumptively ones that are incompetently managed and should result in license suspension".

单选题Before turning to writing, I spent eight years as a lawyer______about how life would be with a prominent father blazing my trail.

单选题Although most universities in the United States are on a semester system which offers classes in the fall and spring, some schools ______ a quarter system comprised of fall, winter, and summer quarters. A. manipulate B. stipulate C. regulate D. observe