单选题Since the late 1970's, in the face of a severe loss of market share in dozens of industries, manufacturers in the United States have been trying to improve productivity and therefore enhance their international competitiveness through costcutting programs. (Cost-cutting here is definding the amount of labor constant.) However, from 1978 through 1982, productivity-- the value of goods manufactured divided by the amount of labor input-- did not improve; and while the results were better in the business upturn of the three years following, they ran 25 percent lower than productivity improvements during earlier, post-1945 upturns. At the same, it became clear that the harder manufactures worked to implement costcutting, the more they lost their competitive edge. With this paradox in mind, I recently visited 25 companies; it became dear to me that the costcutting approach to increasing productivity is fundamentally flawed. Manufacturing regularly observes a" 40, 40,20" rule, roughly 40 percent of any manufacturing-based competitive advantage derives from long-term changes in manufacturing structure (decisions about the number, size, location, and capacity of facilities) and in approaches to materials. Another 40 percent comes from major changes in equipment and process technology. The final 20 percent rests on implementing conventional costcutting. This rule does not be tried. The well-known tools of this approach-- including simplifying jobs and retraining employees to work smarter, not harder--do produce results. But the tools quickly reach the limits of what they can contribute. Another problem is that the cost-cutting approach hinders innovation and discourages creative people. As Abernathy's study of automobile manufacturers has shown, an industry can easily become prisoner of its own investments in costcutting techniques, reducing its ability to develop new products. And managers under pressure to maximize cost-cutting will resist innovation because they know that more fundamental changes in processes or systems will wreak havoc with the results on which they are measured, production managers have always seen their job as one of minimizing costs and maximizing output. This dimension of performance has until recently sufficed as a basis of evaluation, but it has created a penny pinching, mechanistic culture in most factories that has kept away creative managers. Every company I know that has freed itself from the paradox has done so, in part, by developing and implementing a manufacturing strategy. Such a strategy facturing and implementing a manufacturing strategy. Such a strategy focuses on the manufacturing structure and on equipment and process technology. In one company a manufacturing strategy that allowed different areas of the factory to specialize in different markets replaced the conventional cost-cutting approach, within three years the company regained its competitive advantage. Together with such strategies, successful companies are also encouraging managers to focus on a wider set of objectives besides cutting costs. There is hope for manufacturing, but it clearly rests on a different way of managing.

单选题UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan ______.

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单选题According to the passage, what is the function of "Shadow Cabinet" in Britain?

单选题Humans like to regard themselves as exceptional. Many philosophers believe humans are the only 1 which understands that others have their own personal thoughts. That understanding is known in the 2 as having a "theory of mind," and it is considered the 3 to such cherished human 4 as sympathy and deception. Biologists have learned to treat such 5 with caution. Bernd Heinrich and Thomas Bugnyar describe an experiment they have carried out 6 ravens. 7 to gaze is reckoned to be a good 8 of the development of theory of mind in human children. 9 about 18 months, most children are able to follow the gaze of another person, and 10 things about the gazer from it. Failure to 11 this trick is an early symptom of autism, a syndrome whose main underlying feature is a(n) 12 to understand that other people have 13 , too. To 14 whether ravens could follow gaze, Dr Heinrich used six six-month-old hand-reared ravens. The birds were set, one at a time, on a perch on one side of a room divided by a barrier. An experimenter in front of the barrier 15 his head and eyes in a particular 16 and gazed for 30 seconds before looking 17 . Dr Heinrich found that all the birds were able to follow the gaze of the experimenters, even 18 the barrier. In the 19 case, the curious birds either jumped down from the perch and walked around the barrier to have a 20 or leapt on top of it and peered over.

单选题 Whether trying to live with the depressing spectacle of draught or battling rampaging floods or suffering with a debilitating(使衰弱) disease caused by polluted drinking supplies, people in almost every corner of the world have had their problems with unpredictable changes of water. Although water covers much of our planet, more than 97% is in the oceans. Another 2% is unusable ice. And much of the remainder is polluted. So much the supposed abundance! Developed and developing countries alike are now talking about a crisis. What of the future? Will water needs reach a peak? Unhappily, UN experts expect demands to double in the next 25 years. This will coincide with increasing population and industrialization--and the attendant risk of factory and human wastes further contaminating rivers, lakes, and ground water. So, is there any hope of a solution? The answer, fortunately, is that the problem is being tackled. Specialists in many countries are developing methods to improve supply and conservation and protect quality, and a number of ambitious programmes have been undertaken. Good forecasting--including predictions of snow, rain, river levels and soil loss--can help scientists head off, or at least cope with floods. Canals can ease one of the major water-related problems: drought. With something like threequarters of the world's fresh water tied up as ice, plans to drag icebergs to drought areas have been around for a long time: attempts to overcome drawbacks--a great deal of energy would be needed to tow the ice and pump the water island, and the ice might melt before reaching its destination --are still being made. In addition, research into desalting sea-water continues with new and improving desalting methods al- though no method can yet promise truly low-cost fresh water. Fossil water---under- ground water dating back to Ice Age --could be drilled for in some areas but supplies are non-renewable. Work continues in all these areas. It is obvious that a lot of time, money and research is going into finding solutions for some of the problems. However, worldwide, the ugly fact remains that something like 250 million new cases of water borne diseases are discovered every year--and 25,000 people die from them every day. Pollution continues to plague us --all of us. So, whether polluted by industrial waste, sewage or other pollution, unreliable water supplies frequently create breeding grounds for deadly water-borne diseases when safeguards and purification are inadequate. Millions of people, therefore, continue to be affected by water-related problems and, contrary to popular belief, future water supplies are not inexhaustible. So the situation is serious, especially in view of UN estimates of demand. Although projects to provide ever-increasing supplies of water indicate that a growing number of countries are aware of the present problems and of those to come, these more often than not are highly expensive and not practical--and very time-consuming when time is a commodity in short supply. So, while research in these areas is important, the eventual solution would definitely appear to be worldwide conservation and pollution control --in other words, a greater respect of our most valuable natural resource.

单选题 Questions 17～20 are based on the following talk on the city of Belfast. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17～20.

单选题 Questions 17--20 are based on the following passage. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17--20.

单选题{{B}}Passage 1{{/B}} The changing profile of a city in the United States is apparent in the shifting definitions used by the United States Bureau of the Census. In 1870 the census officially distinguished the nation's "urban" from its "rural" population for the first time. "Urban population" was defined as persons living in towns of 8,000 inhabitants or more. But after 1900 it meant persons living in incorporated places having 2,500 or more inhabitants. Then, in 1950 the Census Bureau radically changed its definition of "urban" to take account of the new vagueness of city boundaries. In addition to persons living in incorporated units of 2,500 or more, the census now included those who lived in unincorporated units of that size, and also all persons living in the densely settled urban fringe, including both incorporated and unincorporated areas located around cities of 50,000 inhabitants or more. Each such unit, conceived as an integrated economic and social unit with a large population nucleus, was named a Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA). Each SMSA would contain at least (a) one central city with 50,000 inhabitants or more or (b) two cities having shared boundaries and constituting, for general economic and social purposes, a single community with a combined population of at least 50,000, the smaller of which must have a population of at least 15,000. Such an area included the county in which the central city is located, and adjacent counties that are found to be metropolitan in character and economically and socially integrated with the county of the central city. By 1970, about two-third of the population of the United States was living in these urbanized areas, and of that figure more than half were living outside the central cities. With the Census Bureau and the United States government used the term SMSA (by 1969 there were 233 of them), social scientists were also using new terms to describe the elusive, vaguely defined areas reaching out from what used to be simple "towns" and "cities". A host of terms came into use: "metropolitan regions", "polynucleared population groups", "metropolitan clusters", and so on.

单选题{{B}}Passage 1{{/B}} Man's puzzlement and preoccupation with time both derive ultimately from his unique relationship to it. All animals exist in time and are changed by it; only man can control it. Like Proust, the French author whose experiences became his literary capital, man can recapture the past. He can also summon up things to come, displaying imagination and foresight alone with memory. It really can be argued, that memory and foresightedness are the essence of intelligence: that man's ability to manipulate time, to employ both past and future as guides to present action, is what makes him human. To be sure, many animals can react to time after a fashion A rat can learn to press a lever that will, after a delay of some 25 seconds, reward it with a bit of food. But if the delay stretches beyond 30 seconds, the animal is stumped. It can no longer associate the reward so "far" in the future with the present lever-pressing. Monkeys, more smart than rats, are better able to deal with time. If one of them is allowed to see food being hidden under one of two cups, it can pick out the right cup even after 90 seconds have passed. But after that time interval, the monkey's hunt for the food is no Better than chance predicts. With the apes, man's nearest cousins, "time sense" takes a big step forward. Even under laboratory conditions, quite different from those they encounter in the wild, apes somemnes show remarkable ability to manipulate the present to obtain a future goal. A chimpanzee, for example, can learn to stack two boxes, one on the other, as a platform from which it can reach a hanging banana. Chimpanzees, indeed, carry their ability to deal with the future to the threshold of human capacity: they can make tools. And it is by the making of tools— physical tools as crude as a stone chopper, mental tools as subtle as a mathematical equation—that man characteristically prepares for future {{U}}contingencies{{/U}}. Chimpanzees in the wild have been seen to strip a twig of its leaves to make a probe for extracting termites from their hole. Significantly, however, the ape does not make his tool before setting out on a termite hunt, but only when it actually sees the insects or their nest. Here, as with the banana and the crates, the ape can cope only with a future that is immediate and visible — and thus halfway into the present

单选题 Questions 14-17 are based on the following dialogue between classmates about their presentation. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 14-17.

单选题 Questions 14—16 are based on the following dialogue between a doctor and a patient. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14—16.

单选题 Hawaii, the newest state in the United States, is a {{U}}(21) {{/U}} of eight large islands and many small {{U}}(22) {{/U}} in the Central Pacific Ocean, about 2,200 miles west of San Francisco. Hawaii was probably {{U}}(23) {{/U}} about 750 A. D. , by {{U}}(24) {{/U}} from the other Pacific islands. The first Europeans {{U}}(25) {{/U}} Americans to visit it were the British Captain James Cook and his {{U}}(26) {{/U}} in 1778. James named his discovery the Sandwich Islands {{U}}(27) {{/U}} the sponsor of his expedition, the Earl of Sandwich. Twelve years later, the others from Europe and the new United States began to settle in the islands. These "westerners" brought {{U}}(28) {{/U}} to Hawaii. They brought new diseases, which the Hawaiians had no {{U}}(29) {{/U}} to; they brought alcohol, which many Hawaiians became {{U}}(30) {{/U}} to; they brought a new religion which {{U}}(31) {{/U}} the old values and forced the islanders to {{U}}(32) {{/U}} their old culture and {{U}}(33) {{/U}} to a new one. Many Americans settled in Hawaii, and in 1893, they {{U}}(34) {{/U}} the queen and {{U}}(35) {{/U}} Hawaii a republic. Sandford Dole, a missionary's son, was made president. In 1898, the United States {{U}}(36) {{/U}} the islands, and it became a {{U}}(37) {{/U}} of the United States in 1900. On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese {{U}}(38) {{/U}} Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This attack {{U}}(39) {{/U}} the entrance of the United States to the Second World War. In 1959, the United States Congress {{U}}(40) {{/U}} Hawaii to statehood, making it the fiftieth state in the United States. For the first time in about 200 years, Hawaiians were able to participate in the electoral process.