单选题{{B}}第二篇{{/B}} {{B}}Credit Card Only Works When Spoken To{{/B}} A credit card that will not work unless it hears its owner's voice could become an important weapon in the fight against fraud (欺骗). The card requires users to give a spoken password that it recognizes using a built-in voice-recognition chip. The idea is to prevent thieves using a stolen card or fraudsters using someone else's credit card details to buy goods online. A model built by engineers at Beepcard in Santa Monica, California, represents the first attempt to pack a microphone, a loudspeaker, a battery and a voice-recognition chip into a standard-sized credit card. They are not quite there yet: the card is the length and width of an ordinary credit card, but it is still about three times as thick. The company now plans to make it thinner. The voice card is based on an earlier Beepcard technology designed to prevent fraud in online transactions. This earlier card has no microphone, but has a built-in loudspeaker that it uses to "squawk" (发出叫声) a voice ID signal via a computer's microphone to an online server. By verifying (证实) that the signal matches the card details, the server can establish that the user is not simply keying in a credit card number but actually has the card to hand. The ID code changes each time the card is used in a pre-ordered sequence that only the server knows. This prevents fraudsters recording the beeps, noting the card details and then playing back the audible ID when they key in the details later. But this earlier technology cannot prevent fraudulent use of stolen cards. The new one can. The new voice card also identifies itself by its ID squawk, but it will not do this until it has verified the legitimate (合法的) user's spoken password. Thieves will be unable to use the card because even if they knew the password they would have to be able to copy the owner's voice with a high degree of accuracy. The challenge for Beepcard has been to develop voice-recognition and audio circuitry that can be powered by a mini battery embedded (嵌入的) in a credit card. To maximize battery life, the electronics are only switched on when the card is being used. Pressing a button on the card's surface prompts it to utter "Say your password" in female voice. If the voice-recognition software proves that the password is authentic (真实的), it sends its ID squawk which the server then identifies, allowing the transaction to proceed.

单选题Reform on the Road Will the reform on the use of government cars really reduce office expenditure 1 this count? There are no reports 2 such an outcome although some local governments have moved in that direction. Hangzhou government 3 its reform last month. Officials below the level of deputy bureau chief cannot use official trips for business trips. Instead they get subsidies between 300 and 2,600 yuan month according to their administrative rank. This reform is supposed to save the government the money involving in 4 a large number of cars. Hangzhou in east China Zhejiang province is not the first to attempt 5 reform. Nanjing, capital of the neighboring Jiangsu province, did so five years ago. Yet there is no report available of how much money the Nanjing government has saved 6 these measures. All that we know about is the fact 7 government officials get monthly subsidies for business trips. The public have a right to 8 for transparency on the results of such reform 9 it is taxpayers" money that is being spent. Transparency is needed because people are 10 about policy, makers making policy against their own interests. Obviously, the subsidies are not based on work needs. Lower level officials usually travel 11 than high-ranking officials. Therefore, the impact of reform appears to be diluted. Transparency alone can tell us 12 the reform measures have indeed reduced government transport expenditure. If there is no disclosure of amounts saved by the reform, the public may have reason to suspect that the reform is actually a ploy 13 the income of officials in the form of a transport subsidy. The way government cars are used needs to be reformed, The government spending on purchase of cars was 80 billion yuan in 2008, and use and maintenance amounts to around 300 billion yuan a year. A study of ancient Chinese dynasties shows that the more reforms of the tax system, the heavier the taxes eventually 14 on subjects. The only way to prevent this vicious cycles from happening with government car reform today is for the higher authorities to have a strict and 15 audit of local finance.

单选题The steadily rising cost of labor on the waterfront has greatly increased the cost of shipping cargo by water.

单选题Today, many countries are

单选题A Great Quake Coming? Everyone who lives in San Francisco knows that earthquakes are common in the bay area and they can be devastating. In 1906, for example, a major quake destroyed about 28,000 buildings and killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. Residents now wonder when the next "Big One" will strike. It"s bound to happen someday. At least seven active fault (断层) lines run through the San Francisco area. Faults are places where pieces of Earth"s crust (地壳) slide past each other. When these pieces slip, the ground shakes. To prepare for that day, scientists are using new techniques to reanalyze the 1906 earthquake and predict how bad the damage might be when the next one happens. One new finding about the 1906 earthquake is that the San Andreas faults split apart faster than scientists had assumed at the time. During small earthquakes, faults rupture (断裂) at about 2.7 kilometers per second. During bigger quakes, however, ruptures can happen at rates faster than 3.5 kilometers per second. At such high speeds, massive amounts of pressure build up, generating underground waves that can cause more damage than the quake itself. Lucky for San Francisco, these pressure pulses (脉冲) travel away from the city during the 1906 event. As bad as the damage was, it could have been far worse. Looking ahead, scientists are trying to predict when the next major quake will occur. Records show that earthquakes were common before 1906. Since then, the earthquake has been relatively quiet. Patterns in the data, however, suggest that the probability of a major earthquake striking the Bay Area before 2032 is at least 62 percent. New buildings in San Francisco are quite safe in case of future quakes. Still, more than 84 percent of the city"s buildings are old and weak. Analysts suggest that another massive earthquake would cause extensive damage. People who live there tend to feel safe because San Francisco has remained pretty quiet for a while. According to the new research, however, it"s not a matter of if the Big One will hit. It"s just a matter of when.

单选题How to Be a Successful Businessperson Have you ever wondered why some people are successful in business and others are not? Here's a story about one successful businessperson. He started out washing dishes and today he owns 168 restaurants. Zubair Kazi was born in Bhatkal, a small town in southwest India. His dream was to be an airplane pilot, and when he was 16 years old, he learned to fly a small plane. At the age of 23 and with just a little money in his pocket, Mr. Kazi moved to the United States. He hoped to get a job in the airplane industry in California. Instead, he ended up working for a company that rented cars. While Mr. Kazi was working at the car rental (租赁的) company, he frequently ate at a nearby KFC restaurant. To save money on food, he decided to get a job with KFC. For two months, he worked as cook's assistant. His job was to clean the kitchen and help the cook. "I didn't like it, " Mr. Kazi says, "but I always did the best I could. " One day, Mr. Kazi's two co-workers failed to come to work. That day, Mr. Kazi did the work of all three people in the kitchen. This really impressed the owners of the restaurant. A few months later, the owners needed a manager for a new restaurant. They gave the job to Mr. Kazi. He worked hard as the manager and soon the restaurant was making a profit. A few years later, Mr. Kazi heard about a restaurant that was losing money. The restaurant was dirty inside and the food was terrible. Mr. Kazi borrowed money from a bank and bought the restaurant. For the first six months, Mr. Kazi worked in the restaurant from 8 a. m. to 10 p. m. , seven days a week. He and his wife cleaned up the restaurant, remodeled the front of the building, and improved the cooking. They also tried hard to please the customers. If someone had to wait more than ten minutes for their food, Mrs. Kazi gave them a free soda. Before long the restaurant was making a profit. A year later, Mr. Kazi sold his restaurant for a profit. With the money he earned, he bought three more restaurants that were losing money. Again, he cleaned them up, improved the food, and retrained the employees. Before long these restaurants were making a profit, too. Today Mr. Kazi owns 168 restaurants, but he isn't planning to stop there. He's looking for more poorly managed restaurants to buy. "I love it when I go to buy a restaurant and find it's a mess, " Mr. Kazi says. "The only way it can go is up. /

单选题This is a subject that has now moved into the political {{U}}domain{{/U}}.

单选题He hasn"t the funds to carry out his design.

单选题{{B}}第三篇{{/B}} Black Holes Trigger Stars to Self-Destruct Scientists have long understood that super massive black holes weighing millions or billions of suns can tear apart stars that come too close. The black hole's gravity pulls harder on the nearest part of the star, an imbalance that pulls 'the star apart over a period of minutes or hours, once it gets close enough. Scientists say this uneven pulling is not the only hazard facing the star. The strain of these unbalanced forces can also trigger a nuclear explosion powerful enough to destroy the star from within. Matthieu Brassart and Jean-Pierre Luminet of the Observatoire de Paris in Meudon, Francel, carried out computer simulations of the final moments of such an unfortunate star's life, as it veered towards a super massive black hole. When the star gets close enough, the uneven forces flatten it into a pancake shape. Some previous studies had suggested this flattening would increase the density and temperature inside the star enough to trigger intense nuclear reactions that would tear it apart. But other studies had suggested that the picture would be complicated by shock waves generated during the flattening process and that no nuclear explosion should occur. The new simulations investigated the effects of shock waves in detail, and found that even when their effects are included, the conditions favor a nuclear explosion. "There will be an explosion of the star—it will be completely destroyed," Brassart says. Although the explosion obliterates the star, it saves some of the star's matter from being devoured by the black hole. The explosion is powerful enough to hurl much of the star's matter out of the black hole's reach, he says. The devouring of stars by black holes may already have been observed, although at a much later stage. It is thought that several months after the event that rips the star apart, its matter starts swirling into the hole itself. It heats up as it does so, releasing ultraviolet light and X-rays. If stars disrupted near black holes really do explode, then they could in principle allow these events to be detected at a much earlier stage, says Jules Halpern of Columbia University in New York, US2. "It may make it possible to see the disruption of that star immediately if it gets hot enough," he says. Brassart agrees. "Perhaps it can be observed in the X-rays and gamma rays, but it's something that needs to be more studied," he says. Supernova researcher Chris Fryer of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, US3, says the deaths of these stars are difficult to simulate, and he is not sure whether the researchers have proven their case that they explode in the process.

单选题Technology Transfer in Germany When it comes to translating basic research into industrial success, few nations can match Germany. Since the 1940s, the nation's vast industrial base has been fed with a constant stream of new ideas and expertise from science. And though German prosperity (繁荣) has faltered (衰退) over the past decade because of the huge cost of unifying east and west as well as the global economic decline, it still has an enviable (令人羡慕的) record for turning ideas into profit. Much of the reason for that success is the Fraunhofer Society, a network of research institutes that exists solely to solve industrial problems and create sought-after technologies. But today the Fraunhofer institutes have competition. Universities are taking an ever larger role in technology transfer, and technology parks are springing up all over. These efforts are being complemented by the federal programmes for pumping money into start-up companies. Such a strategy may sound like a recipe for economic success, but it is not without its critics. These people worry that favouring applied research will mean neglecting basic science, eventually starving industry of fresh ideas. If every scientist starts thinking like an entrepreneur (企业家), the argument goes, then the traditional principles of university research being curiosity-driven, free and widely available will suffer. Others claim that many of the programmes to promote technology transfer are a waste of money because half the small businesses that are promoted are bound to go bankrupt within a few years. While this debate continues, new ideas flow at a steady rate from Germany's research networks, which bear famous names such as Helmholtz, Max Planck and Leibniz. Yet it is the fourth network, the Fraunhofer Society, that plays the greatest role in technology transfer. Founded in 1949, the Fraunhofer Society is now Europe's largest organisation for applied technology, and has 59 institutes employing 12,000 people. It continues to grow. Last year, it swallowed up the Heinrich Hertz Institute for Communication Technology in Berlin. Today, there are even Fraunhofers in the U.S. and Asia.

单选题This valve regulates the flow of water.

单选题 "Life Form Found" on Saturn's Titan Scientists say they have discovered hints of alien life on the Saturn's moon. The discovery of a sort of life was announced after researchers at the U. S. space agency, NASA, analyzed data from spacecraft Cassini, which pointed to the existence of methane-based form of life on Saturn's biggest moon. Scientists have reportedly discovered clues showing primitive alien beings are "breathing" in Titan's dense atmosphere filled with hydrogen. They argue that hydrogen gets absorbed before hitting Titan's planet-like surface covered with methane lakes and rivers. This, they say, points to the existence of some "bugs" consuming the hydrogen at the surface of the moon less than half the size of the Earth. "We suggested hydrogen consumption because it's the obvious gas for life to consume on Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth," says NASA scientist Chris McKay. "If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth. " To date, scientists have not yet detected this form of life anywhere, though there are liquid-water- based microorganisms on Earth that grow well on methane or produce it as a waste product. On Titan, where temperatures are around 90 Kelvin (minus 290 degrees Farenheit), a methanebased organism would have to use a substance that is liquid as its medium for living processes, but not water itself. Water is frozen solid on Titan's surface and much too cold to support life as we know it. Scientists had expected the Sun's interactions with chemicals in the atmosphere to produce a coating of acetylene on Titan's surface. But Cassini detected no acetylene on the surface. The absence of detectable acetylene on the Titan's surface can very well have a non-biological explanation, said Mark Allen, a principal investigator of the NASA Titan team. "Scientific conservatism suggests that a biological explanation should be the last choice after all non-biological explanations are addressed," Allen said. "We have a lot of work to do to rule out possible non-biological explanations. It is more likely that a chemical process, without biology, can explain these results."

单选题Interior Design Although interior design has existed since the beginning of architecture, its development into a specialized field is really quite recent. Interior designers have become important partly because of the many functions that might be (51) in a single large building. The importance of interior design becomes (52) when we realize how much time we (53) surrounded by four walls. Whenever we need to be indoors, we want our surroundings to be (54) attractive and comfortable as possible. We also expect (55) place to be appropriate to its use. You would be (56) if the inside of your bedroom were suddenly changed to look (57) the inside of a restaurant. And you wouldn't feel (58) in a business office that has the appearance of a school. It soon becomes clear that the interior designer's most important basic (59) is the function of the particular (60) , for example, a theatre with poor sight lines, poor sound shaping qualities, and (61) few entries and exists will not work for (62) purposes, no matter how beautifully it might be (63) . Nevertheless, for any kind of space, the designer has to make many of the same kind of (64) . He or she must coordinate the shapes, lighting and decoration of everything from ceilling to floor, (65) addition, the designer must usually select furniture or design built-in furniture, according to the functions that need to be served.

单选题Railways are the most important {{U}}mode{{/U}} of transport for the economy.

单选题Most viruses that cause swine flu or bird flu are very hard to pass from one human to another: they don't cause epidemics. Sometimes, however, further changes in genes create a virus that can spread rapidly among humans, and can produce a more severe illness. One reason this illness is more severe is that the virus is so new. The regular flu that comes each year is caused by a regular human influenza virus that often has similarities to the viruses that have caused the nu in years past, so people have some degree of immunity to the latest virus. The unusual swine flu or bird flu viruses that develop the ability for person-to-person spread are so different that people have little or no immunity to them. What is the main reason that the swine flu is very dangerous to humans? A. That it is fatal and has killed many. B That it has spread to many countries. C. That people know nothing about it. D. That people have no immunity to it.

单选题The manager allocate duties to the clerks.

单选题Although South Carolina"s mineral resources are abundant , not all of them can be mined lucratively.

单选题Sarah's Uancestors/U arrived here from France about two hundred years ago.

单选题Because he wore a strange collection of clothes and often talked to himself his neighbours considered him Ueccentric/U.

单选题The visitors to the island enjoyed themselves very much, but they refused to eat the Uraw/U fish.