单选题During his lifetime he was lucky to {{U}}accumulate{{/U}} quite a fortune.
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Here's my simple test for a product of
today's technology: I go to the bookstore and check the shelves for remedial
books. The more books, the more my suspicions are raised. If
computers and computer programs supposedly are getting easier to use, why are so
many companies still making a nice living publishing books on how to use
them? Computers manipulate information, but information is
invisible. There's nothing to see or touch. The programmer decides what you see
on the screen. Computers don't have knobs like old radios. They don't have
buttons, not real buttons. Instead, more and more programs display
pictures of buttons, moving even further into abstraction and arbitrariness.
I like computers, but I hope they will disappear, that they will seem as
strange to our descendents as the technologies of our grandparents appear to us.
Today's computers are indeed getting easier to use, but look where they started:
so difficult that almost any improvement was welcome. Computers
have the power to allow people within a company, across a nation or even around
the world to work together. But this power will be wasted if tomorrow's
computers aren't designed around the needs and capabilities of the human beings
who must use them--a people centered philosophy, in other words. That means
retooling computers to mesh with human strengths--observing, communication and
innovating--instead of asking people to conform to the unnatural behavior
computers demand. That just leads to error. Many of today's
machines try to do too much. When a complicated word processor attempts to
double as a desk-top publishing program or a kitchen appliance comes with half a
dozen attachments, the product is bound to be clumsy and burdensome. My favorite
example of a technological product on just the fight scale is an electronic
dictionary. It can be made smaller, lighter and far easier to use than a print
version, not only giving meanings but even pronouncing the words. Today's
electronic dictionaries, with their tiny keys and barely readable displays, are
primitive but they're on the fight track. We would no longer
have to learn the arbitrary ways of the computer. We could simply learn the
tools of our trade--sketchpads, spreadsheets and schedules. How wonderful it
would be to ignore the capricious nature of technology--and get on with our
work.
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It used to be so straightforward. A
team of researchers working together in the laboratory would submit the results
of their research to a journal. A journal editor would then remove the author's
names and affiliations from the paper and send it to their peers for review.
Depending on the comments received, the editor would accept the paper for
publication or decline it. Copyright rested with the journal publisher, and
researchers seeking knowledge of the results would have to subscribe to the
journal. No longer. The Internet and pressure from funding
agencies, who are questioning why commercial publishers are making money from
government-funded research by restricting access to it--is making access to
scientific results a reality. The organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) has just issued a report describing the far-reaching
consequences of this. The report, by John Houghton of Victoria University in
Australia and Graham Vickery of the OECD, makes heavy reading for publishers who
have, so far, made handsome profits. But it goes further than that. It signals a
change in what has, until now, been a key element of scientific
endeavor. The value of knowledge and the return on the public
investment in research depends, in part, upon wide distribution and ready
access. It is big business. In America, the core scientific publishing market is
estimated at between $ 7 billion and $ 11 billion. The International Association
of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers says that there are more than 2,
000 publishers worldwide specializing in these subjects. They publish more than
1.2 million articles each year in some 16, 000 journals. This is
now changing. According to the OECD report, some 75% of scholarly journals are
now online. Entirely new business models are emerging; three main institutional
subscribers pay for access to a collection of online journal rifles through
site-licensing agreements. There is open-access publishing, typically supported
by asking the author (or his employer) to pay for the paper to be published.
Finally, there are open-access archives, where organizations such as
universities or international laboratories support institutional repositories.
Other models exist that are hybrids of these three, such as delayed open-access,
where journals allow only subscribers to read a paper for the first six months,
before making it freely available to everyone who wishes to see it. All this
could change the traditional form of the peer-review process, at least for the
publication of papers.
单选题He expected to lose his job because the boss had had it in for him a long time.
单选题Children are getting so fat they may be the first generation to die before their parents, an expert claimed yesterday. Today"s youngsters are already falling prey to potential killers such as diabetes because of their weight. Fatty fast-food diets combined with sedentary lifestyles dominated by televisions and computers could mean kids will die tragically young, says Professor Andrew Prentice, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
At the same time, the shape of the human body is going through a huge evolutionary shift because adults are getting so fat. Here in Britain, latest research shows that the average waist size for a man is 36-38in and may be 42-44in by 2032. This compares with only 32.6 in in 1972. Women"s waists have grown from an average of 22 inches in 1920 to 24 inches in the Fifties and 30 inches now. One of the major reasons why children now are at greater risk is that we are getting fatter younger. In the UK alone, more than one million under-16s are classed as overweight or obese—double the number in the mid-Eighties. One in ten four-year-olds are also medically classified as obese. The obesity pandemic—an extensive epidemic—which started in the US, has now spread to Europe, Australia, Central America and the Middle East. Many nations now record more than 20 per cent of their population as clinically obese and well over half the population as overweight. Prof Prentice said the change in our shape has been caused by a glut of easily available high-energy foods combined with a dramatic drop in the energy we use as a result of technology developments.
He is not alone in his concern. Only last week one medical journal revealed how obesity was fuelling a rise in cancer cases. Obesity also increases the risk factor for strokes and heart disease. An averagely obese person"s lifespan is shortened by around nine years while a severely obese person by many more.
Prof Prentice said: "So will parents outlive their children, as claimed recently by an American obesity specialist?" The answer is yes—and no. Yes, when the offspring become grossly obese. This is now becoming an alarmingly common occurrence in the US. Such children and adolescents have a greatly reduced quality of life in terms of both their physical and psychosocial health. So say No to that doughnut and burger.
单选题Despite repeated______by educational authorities for concrete measures to reduce student's burdens, little has changed. A. directions B. recommendations C. advice D. calls
单选题The protests were part of their______against the proposed building development in the area. A. commission B. commitment C. convention D. campaign
单选题What our society suffers from most today is the absence of consensus about what it and life in it ought to be; such consensus cannot be gained from society"s present stage, or from fantasies about what it ought to be. For that the present is too close and too diversified, and the future too uncertain, to make believable claims about it. A consensus in the present hence can be achieved only through a shared understanding of the past, as Homer"s epics informed those who lived centuries later what it meant to be Greek, and by what images and ideals they were to live their lives and organize their societies.
Most societies derive consensus from a long history, a language all their own, a common religion, common ancestry. The myths by which they live are based on all of these. But the United States is a country of immigrants, coming from a great variety of nations. Lately, it has been emphasized that an asocial, narcissistic personality has become characteristic of Americans, and that it is this type of personality that makes for the lack of well-being, because it prevents us from achieving consensus that would counteract a tendency to withdraw into private worlds. In this study of narcissism, Christopher Lash says that modern man, "tortured by self-consciousness, turns to new therapies not to free himself of his personal worries but to find meaning and purpose in life, to find something to live for". There is widespread distress because national morale has declined, and we have lost an earlier sense of national vision and purpose.
Contrary to rigid religions or political beliefs, as are found in totalitarian societies, our culture is one of the great individual differences, at least in principle and in theory; but this leads to disunity, even chaos. Americans believe in the value of diversity, but just because our is a society based on individual diversity, it needs consensus about some dominating ideas more than societies based on uniform origin of their citizens. Hence, if we are to have consensus, it must be based on a myth—a vision about a common experience, a conquest that made us Americans, as the myth about the conquest of Troy formed the Greeks. Only a common myth can offer relief from the fear that life is without meaning or purpose. Myths permit us to examine our place in the world by comparing it to a shared idea. Myths are shared fantasies that form the tie that binds the individual to other members of his group. Such myths help to ward off feelings of isolations, guilt, anxiety, and purposelessness—in short, they combat isolation and the breakdown of social standards and values.
单选题With respect to the advances in studying lie detection scientists think highest of ______.
单选题I was ______ to learn that you are going to spend the summer with your parents in Hong Kong.
单选题No woman can be too rich or too thin. This saying often attributed to the late Duchess of Windsor embodies much of the odd spirit of our times. Being thin is deemed as such virtue. The problem with such a view is that some people actually attempt to live by it. I myself have fantasies of slipping into narrow designer clothes. Consequently, I have been on a diet for the better—or worse—part of my life. Being rich wouldn"t be bad either, but that won"t happen unless an unknown relative dies suddenly in some distant land leaving me millions of dollars.
Where did we go off the track? When did eating butter become a sin, and a little bit of extra flesh unappealing. If not repellent? All religions have certain days when people refrain from eating, and excessive eating is one of Christianity"s seven deadly sins. However until quite recently, most people had a problem getting enough to eat. In some religious groups, wealth was a symbol of probable salvation and high morals, and fatness a sign of wealth and well-being.
Today the opposite is true. We have shifted to thinness as our new mark of virtue. The result is that being fat—or even only somewhat overweight—is bad because it implies a tack of moral strength.
Our obsession with thinness is also fueled by health concerns. It is true that in this country we have more overweight people than ever before, and that, in many cases, being overweight correlates with an increased risk of heart and blood vessel diseases. These diseases, however, may have as much to do with our way of life and our high-fat diets as with excess weight. And the associated risk of cancer in the digestive system may be more of a dietary problem—too much fat and a lack of fiber—than a weight problem.
The real concern, then, is not that we weigh too much, but that we neither exercise enough nor eat well. Exercise is necessary for strong bones and both heart and lung health. A balanced diet without a lot of fat can also help the body avoid many diseases. We should surely stop paying so much attention to weight. Simply being thin is not enough. It is actually hazardous if those who get (or already are) thin think they are automatically healthy and thus free from paying attention to their overall lifestyle. Thinness can be pure vainglory.
单选题The machine will
crush
wheat grain to make flour for the market.
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单选题During one's training period, it is important to ______.
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The suclptural legacy that the new
United States {{U}}(21) {{/U}} its colonial predecessors was
{{U}}(22) {{/U}} a rich one, and {{U}}(23) {{/U}} in 1776
sculpture as an art form was {{U}}(24) {{/U}} in the hands of artisans
and craftspeople. Stone carvers engraved their motifs of skulls and crossbones
and other religious icons of death into the gray slabs that we still see
{{U}}(25) {{/U}} today in old bruial grounds. Some skilled craftspeople
made intricately carved wooden ornamentations for furntiture or architectural
decorations, {{U}}(26) {{/U}} carved wooden shop signs and ships
figureheads. {{U}}(27) {{/U}} they often achieved expression and formal
excellence in their generally primitive style, they remained artisans
skilled in the craft of carving and constituted a group {{U}}(28) {{/U}}
from what we normally {{U}}(29) {{/U}} as "sculptors" {{U}}(30)
{{/U}} the word.
单选题In ancient Egyptian paintings, royal figures were differentiated by making them several times larger man other.
单选题When it comes to the slowing economy, Ellen Spero isn't biting her nails just yet. But the 47-year-old manicurist isn't cutting, filling or polishing as many nails as she'd like to, either. Most of her clients spend $ 12 to $ 50 weekly, but last month two longtime customers suddenly stopped showing up. Spero blames the softening economy. "I'm a good economic indicator," she says, "I provide a service that people can do without when they're concerned about saving some dollars. " So Spero is downscaling, shopping at middle-brow Dillard's department store near her suburban Cleveland home, instead of Neiman Marcus. "I don't know if other clients are going to abandon me, too," she says. Even before Alan Greenspan's admission that America's red-hot economy is cooling, lots of working folks had already seen signs of the slowdown themselves. From car dealerships to Gap outlets, sales have been lagging for months as shoppers temper their spending. For retailers, who last year took in 24 percent of their revenue between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the cautious approach is coming at a crucial time. Already, experts say, holiday sales are off 7 percent from last year's pace. But don't sound any alarms just yet. Consumers seem only concerned, not panicked, and many say they remain optimistic about the economy's long-term prospects even as they do some modest belt-tightening. Consumers say they're not in despair because, despite the dreadful headlines, their own fortunes still feel pretty good. Home prices are holding steady in most regions. In Manhattan, "there's a new gold rush happening in the $4 million to $ 10 million range, predominantly fed by Wall Street bonuses," says broker Barbara Corcoran. In San Francisco, prices are still rising even as frenzied overbidding quiets. "Instead of 20 to 30 offers, now maybe you only get two or three," says John Tealdi, a Bay Area real-estate broker. And most folks still feel pretty comfortable about their ability to find and keep a job. Many folks see silver linings to this slowdown. Potential home buyers would cheer for lower interest rates. Employers wouldn't mind a little fewer bubbles in the job market. Many consumers seem to have been influenced by stock-market swings, which investors now view as a necessary ingredient to a sustained boom. Diners might see an upside, too. Getting a table at Manhattan's hot new Alain Ducasse restaurant need to be impossible. Not anymore. For that, Greenspan & Co. may still be worth toasting.
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