单选题An e-book discussing how personal the presidential race has become describes how much Obama ______ Romeny. A. despises B. condemns C. disguises D. sneers

单选题As emerging economies including China are playing an increasingly important role in world trade and finance, the shift of power balance sometimes led to ______ and readjustments. A. frictions B. fractions C. fragments D. fractures

单选题

单选题A New York man has brought a class-action lawsuit against Apple in California, saying that the company's voice-activated Siri software failed to ______ the expectations created by its adverts. A. make up for B. put up with C. come up with D. live up to

单选题Microsoft will have a special center dedicated to resellers, OEMs, and the prevention of software ______. A. plagiarism B. copy C. imitation D. piracy

单选题He believes they should become full citizens, in which case they would be granted full ______. A. suffering B. suffrage C. suffragan D. suffragette

单选题Free transfer between terminals is available using Zelda Express and Zelda Connect trains.

单选题This year, Oscar mostly stayed away, perhaps noting the lack of box office and critical ______for these films. A. plagiarism B. plagues C. plasmas D. plaudits

单选题The country's new president, ______ he is, will face political and economic chal-lenges aplenty. A. who B. whatever C. whoever D. whomever

单选题

单选题In this section there are four passages followed by questions or unfinished statements, each with four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer. Every year the Department of Agriculture publishes estimates of family spending on children. This year, as in other years, many journalists duly passed the information on, often with snide asides about the "gift that keeps on taking" or the escalating price of bundles of joy. A married middle-income two-child family can expect to spend about $235,000 on housing, medical care, food, clothing, toys and other items over the next 17 years for a child born in 2011. The costs of college are extra. But—as an article in The Wall Street Journal recently noted—the official estimates omit consideration of the value of the time that parents devote to children, because that is considered an indirect rather than a direct expenditure. Indirect costs are not insignificant. Time taken out of paid employment to provide family care reduces the lifetime earnings of mothers, in particular, leaving them vulnerable to poverty if they are unmarried or experience divorce. My research, based on the analysis of the Child Development Survey of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, shows that even a very cautious estimate of what it would take to hire a replacement for family care was higher than direct expenditures on children under 12 for the year 2000. In other words, the total costs were more than twice as high as the direct costs. Child care is often a satisfying, meaningful activity, but it's not always fun. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, reports that American women find it slightly less enjoyable than doing housework and only slightly more enjoyable than paid work. What would happen if parents and grandparents withdrew those services or were unable to provide them? If we were concerned about the welfare of their children, we would need to pay for substitutes. The time and money that families devote to children represent costs not just for them but for society as a whole. On the other hand, this investment in human capital yields benefits in terms of future earnings and future taxes paid. Failure to think clearly about these issues reflects a larger confusion about children's place in our economic system. In an earlier era, they were considered one of our most important crops—a contribution to total output. I sometimes illustrate presentations on this topic with the artist Ann Geddes's memorable image of babies growing in a cabbage patch. The historian Laura Lovett describes state fairs in the 1930s where parents could enter their children to be judged, along with their pumpkin pies and heifer yearlings. Perhaps this helps explain how the Department of Agriculture became involved in estimating their costs. In an economy based on family farms, children began work at an early age under parental supervision, and their productive activities contributed to family income. They were also more likely to support their parents in old age, in return for inheriting the farm. Today, people are more likely to think of children as pets, a discretionary source of affection and entertainment, perhaps even a luxury good. (People also tend to think of pets as children.) My favorite illustration of this is a New Yorker cover depicting a couple passing a shop window, the woman looking longingly at babies gamboling like puppies behind the glass. Many environmentalists, worried about the impact of global population growth, see children as a threat rather than a resource. A recent book review in The New Yorker asks, "Is procreation immoral?" But one doesn't have to favor population growth to recognize the value of parental commitments. Fertility rates in the United States, as in many developed countries, have fallen below replacement levels. Rather than trying to draw analogies with either livestock or pets, we should conceptualize children as key elements of an economic system that reaches beyond the boundaries of both the market and the state, part of an intergenerational private/public partnership vital to our society. Most of us, whether parents or not, will rely on the next generation to care for us in old age and to pay taxes to repay our public debt. Most of us, whether parents or not, will leave bequests for the next generation, whether in the form of money, knowledge, technical innovation, physical infrastructure or an increasingly fragile and disrupted natural environment. Parents and potential parents could benefit from more complete estimates of the costs they will incur. They could benefit even more from greater public recognition of their contributions to society.

单选题Wells Fargo has been sued by a group of struggling homeowners, who say the bank worked with them in bad ______. A. vision B. faith C. service D. consensus

单选题{{B}}Background Information{{/B}} All businesses are affected by their immediate environment. Many factors influence them, for example, the location of the business premises, availability of labor, labor costs, and availability of raw materials and so on. Among them, location is particularly important for businesses, which allows the businesses to situate themselves somewhere where they can be noticed by their target audience. {{B}}How to Start a Business{{/B}} Starting up: picking an ideal location To michael mahle, picking the right location for his newly opened artisanal cheese shop, Bondgard, ranks up there with creating an air-tight business plan and landing seed funding. In fact, it's so important that he spent over a year debating about where to set up shop. Since Mahle lives in the New York City area, numerous avenues were open to him. However, after canvassing business-brokerage web sites and analyzing the demographics of various towns, he finally settled on his hometown of Allendale, an affluent community in Northern New Jersey. "I needed an area where the population would accept a cheese shop," says Mahle, "and this place was perfect." Allendale's residents, he says, "tend to be more worldly and willing to pay a premium for quality." Even though Mahle chose to park his business in a familiar setting, he's certain that the time he spent gathering information will pay dividends as he develops marketing campaigns and considers branching out to other locations in the future. To be sure, it's optimal for a business owner to have a firsthand knowledge about a location, as it lowers the chance of setting up shop in an unexpectedly bad spot. However, even if you live down the street, there are a number of factors to consider before signing a multiyear lease. Here are a few. Knowing your customers Michael Mahle chose to locate his cheese shop, Bondgard, in Allendale, N.J., for its well-traveled, cheese-loving residents. Your first task is to figure out who your customers will be, suggests Dorothy Finell, author of "The Specialty Shop," a book about creating a profitable retail business. Think about who your products or services appeal to...women? parents of small children? golf enthusiasts? Consider ages, too, says Finell, who adds that knowing specifically who you're targeting can help you both pinpoint the best locations and weed out the bad ones. "You can't even plunk the best of businesses in an area that's not conducive to the clientele that you're looking for," she says. "That's business suicide." If you have an area in mind, make sure the area's demographics chime with your intended customer. You can usually research an area's average cost of living and median home income at local chambers of commerce, city hall or just by asking existing business owners. Check out demographic web sites such as ePodunk and ZIPskinny. Additionally, Yahoo's and AOL's real estate sites offer demographic information as well. Timing is everything Once you figure out whom to reach, Martin Lehman, a counselor in New York for SCORE, an affiliate of the Small Business Administration, recommends thinking about how and, more importantly, when your potential customer might consume your products or services. For instance, a prospective deli owner might prize a spot near an office park, while a restaurateur specializing in brunch would likely prefer a more residential setting. Speaking from experience, Lehman cautions that areas that appear busy with pedestrian traffic might be deceptive. As a former owner of several women's apparel stores, Lehman once set .up shop near a number of hot lunchtime restaurants, showcasing clothing in his store's big windows. However, he soon found that the crowds that came to the area only wanted sandwiches--and when they left, foot traffic was scarce. "I could have put a rack outside with a dollar bill hanging on it, and it would still be there," he says. But proximity is paramount Proximity to complementary or similar businesses is also a huge determinate of success for many types of businesses, says Finell. For example, she says, "you don't want a tattoo parlor next to an antique shop." Instead, look for like-minded businesses. For instance, she says, "the type of person who would be shopping for antiques might also be interested in a linen shop." Or, she says, some businesses thrive when they're surrounded by competitors, which tend to share the same target audience. A fast-food franchise, for example, might consider locating near other fast-food businesses. Additionally, for small businesses that rely heavily on foot traffic "being near a bus line, a subway line or parking is usually an absolute must," says Finell. Customers of these businesses (say, a retail shop or gift store)often make impulse-driven purchases--so location is more important than marketing, she says. Customers who have convenience in mind also want to be able to enter and exit an establishment with ease, especially if they're driving, says Jon Schallert, a marketing and business location consultant in Longmont, Colo. For example, he says, being located on an extremely busy street won't help unless the turns in and out are easy and parking is available. The search begins After you have a better idea of what you're looking for, start your search. Mahle from Bondgard used business-broker web sites Vested Business Brokers and BusinessesforSale.com to search for potential store locations, although he ultimately landed his current location after spotting a for-rent sign in the window. Researching a location this way can help you get to know an area and learn about comparable prices that similar businesses pay, which can help you negotiate rent with landlords. Business brokers can be helpful to use, as they generally provide demographic information and possibly the history-of a certain location, according to Schallert. For instance, if you're planning on opening a bookstore, and the previous tenant also ran a bookstore, you'll want to know that, he says. After all, if the location didn't work for another business, it might not work for you. {{B}}Exercises{{/B}}

单选题Since two speakers are now unable to attend, we shall require only 2 Seminar Rooms instead of the 4 booked.

单选题Do you mean that you would rather have the claim brought to court if ______? A. need be B. it need be C. needs be D. need for

单选题Given the enthusiasm of Africans for phone technology, such programs provide a rare example of ______ requiring little in the way of capacity building support to learn how to use the development tool. A. benefactors B. beneficiaries C. beneficial D. benefits

单选题

单选题______, the portion of migrant workers' earnings sent home to their families, have been a critical means of financial support for generations. A. Trafficking B. Coffers C. Remittances D. Leverage

单选题In this section there are four passages followed by questions or unfinished statements, each with four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer. The {{U}}ghost towns{{/U}} of China, Ireland and Spain—full of large empty house estates— may be a phenomenon that is on its way to Africa. Built for people who never move in, they leave those who did with a worthless property they cannot sell. Perched in an isolated spot some 30 km (18 miles) outside Angola's capital, Luanda, Nova Cidade de Kilamba is a brand-new mixed residential development of 750 eight-storey apartment buildings, a dozen schools and more than 100 retail units. Designed to house up to half a million people when complete, Kilamba has been built by the state-owned China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC) in under three years at a reported cost of $3.5 bn (￡2.2 bn). Spanning 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres), the development is the largest of several new "satellite cities" being constructed by Chinese firms around Angola, and it is believed to be one of the largest new-built projects on the continent. The jewel in Angola's post-war reconstruction crown, Kilamba is the star of glossy government promotional videos which show smiling families enjoying a new style of living away from the dust and contusion of central Luanda where millions live in sprawling slums. But the people in these films are only actors, and despite all the hype, nearly a year since the first batch of 2,800 apartments went on sale, only 220 have been sold. When you visit Kilamba, you cannot help but wonder if even a third of those buyers have moved in yet. The place is eerily quiet, voices bouncing off all the fresh concrete and wide-open tarred roads. There are hardly any cars and even fewer people, just dozens of repetitive rows of multi-coloured apartment buildings, their shutters sealed and their balconies empty. Only a handful of the commercial units are occupied, mostly by utility companies, but there are no actual shops on site, and so—with the exception of a new hypermarket located at one entrance—there is nowhere to buy food. After driving around for nearly 15 minutes and seeing no-one apart from Chinese laborers, many of whom appear to live in containers next to the site, I came across a tiny pocket of life at a school. It opened six months ago, bussing in its pupils from outlying areas because there are no children living on site to attend. One student, a 17-year-old called Sebastiao Antonio—who spends nearly three hours a day in traffic getting to and from classes from his home 15 km away—told me how much he liked the city. "I really like this place—it's got car parking, places for us to have games like football, basketball and handball," he said. "It's very quiet, much calmer than the other city, there's no criminality." But when I asked if he and his family would move there, he just laughed. "No way, we can't afford this. It's impossible. And there is no work for my parents here," he said. His sentiments were echoed by Jack Franciso, 32, who started work at Kilamba as a street sweeper four months ago. "Yes, it's a nice place for sure," he said. But then he sighed: "To live here, you need a lot of money. People like us don't have money like that to be able to live here." And therein lies the problem. Apartments at Kilamba are being advertised online costing between $120,000 and $200,000—well out of reach of the estimated two-thirds of Angolans who live on less than $2 a day. However, Paulo Cascao, general Manager at Delta Imobiliaria, the real estate agency handling the sales, told the BBC that the problem was not the price, but difficulty in accessing bank credit. "The prices are correct for the quality of the apartments and for all the conditions that the city can offer," he said. "The sales are going slowly due to the difficulty in obtaining mortgages." A new legal flame work has recently been introduced to allow local banks to give mortgages, but for the majority of Angolans, even the few with well-paid office jobs, just finding enough cash for a deposit would be a struggle. "The government needs to start giving priority to building low-cost housing because great majority of the population live in shacks with no water, electricity or sanitation," Elias Isaac, country director at the Angolan Office of the Open Society Initiative for South African (OSISA), told the BBC. "There is no middle class in Angola, just the very poor and the very rich, and so there is no one to buy these sorts of houses."

单选题The Bank of England will free up at least $100 billion to the lending institutions to inject some ______ back into the financial system and ease constrictions. A. surplus B. liquidity C. fluidity D. polity