单选题Fortunately there are still a few tasty things for us gourmands to enjoy in relative security. Their numbers, however, are depleted almost daily. It seems, by ruthless proclamations from the ever-vigilant Food and Drug Administration and its allies, our doctors. The latest felon to face prosecution is the salt of life, sodium chloride. Ostensibly, overuse of salt muses high blood pressure and hypertension, the cause of half the deaths in the United States every year. A few years ago the anti-salt campaigners raised such a rumpus that salt was banned from baby food. Currently pressure is being applied to food manufacturers to oblige them to label their products to show sodium content. Bemuse doing so would cost mercenary manufacturers money, they argue that they have no idea how much salt remains on such things as potato chips and how much sticks to the bag. Furthermore, salt isn't the only harmful ingredient in food. If the manufacturer has to provide sodium content, why not require him to list every ingredient and specify which are detrimental to our health? Cigarettes have a warning printed on them. Shouldn't the same type of warning appear on canned foods that are notoriously over-salted? There are endless ifs and buts in the controversy, but the most telling of these is the questionable proof of salt' s diabolic effect upon blood pressure. True, people who cut their salt intake lowered their blood pressure, but where is the scientific proof that something other than salt didn't do the trick? The most common means of providing dubious proof that salt causes hyper tension is to compare societies that use little salt with those that use mountains of salt in their daily diets. Which group has the higher rate of hypertension? Whose blood pressure is lower? What happens when salt is introduced into a group where salt is a novelty? Does the blood pressure rise significantly? Studies of the Japanese indicate that as the world's greatest salters, they suffer the most from hypertension. On the other hand, the simple, salt-free cuisine of several tribes in the Solomon Islands has kept older tribesmen and women from developing hypertension and high blood pressure, ailments traditionally killing their peers in America. No account is taken of the effects of inflation, recession, pollution, crime, and sundry other ills to which Americans unlike people on primitive islands, are exposed. To salt or not to salt? That is the question. Now that the question has arisen, it must not be treated with levity but, rather, with searching scientific investigation so that those of us who are preoccupied with both savory food and longevity may decide which of the two is worth its salt.

单选题The world religion is derived from the Latin noun religion, which denotes both (1) observance of ritual obligations and an inward spirit of reverence. In modern usage, religion covers a wide spectrum of (2) that reflects the enormous variety of ways the term can be (3) . At one extreme, many committed believers (4) only their own tradition as a religion, understanding expressions such as worship and prayer to refer (5) to the practices of their tradition. They may (6) use vague or idealizing terms in defining religion, (7) , true love of God, or the path of enlightenment. At the other extreme, religion may be equated with (8) , fanaticism, or wishful thinking. By defining religion as a sacred engagement with what is taken to be a spiritual reality, it is possible to consider the importance of religion in human life without making (9) about what is really is or ought to be. Religion is not an object with a single, fixed meaning, or (10) a zone with clear boundaries. It is an aspect of human (11) that may intersect, incorporate, or transcend other aspects of life and society. Such a definition avoid the drawbacks of (12) the investigation of religion to Western or biblical categories (13) monotheism or church structure, which are not (14) . Religion in this understanding includes a complex of activities that cannot be (15) to any single aspect of human experience. It is a part of individual life but also of (16) dynamics. Religion includes not only patterns of language and thought. It is sometimes an (17) part of a culture. Religious experience may be expressed (18) visual symbols, dance and performance, elaborate philosophical systems, legendary and imaginative stories, formal (19) , and detailed rules of some ways. There are as many forms of religious expression as there are human cultural (20) .

单选题Roadside billboards, posters on buses and subway escalators, ads in airport terminals—a type of publicity known as out-of-home advertising—used to be the dull end of the industry. No more. The falling price and improving quality of flat-screen displays mean that static posters printed on paper are being replaced by stylish digital commercials with moving pictures, sound and sometimes interactive features. William Eccleshare, who runs the international operations of Clear Channel, an American firm which is one of the largest out-of-home ad companies, thinks that in some countries more than 90% of its business will be digital by the decade"s end. His arch-rival, Jean-Charles Decaux, the boss of France"s JCDecaux, agrees that there will be a significant switch to digital, but mainly inside airports, railway stations, shopping malls and other controlled environments. Ads in bus shelters and other outdoor spots at risk of vandalism will take a lot longer to move away from paper, Mr. Decaux thinks. Digital displays already account for about one-quarter of his company"s sales in transport hubs, but for less than 5% in street furniture and billboards. Clear Channel is so optimistic about digital posters because it believes they offer enormous potential for making advertisements more effective. McDonald"s can advertise its sausage and egg McMuffin at breakfast time, change to its regular Big Mac fare at lunch and follow that with ads for apple pie and ice cream during teatime. When Spain won the football World Cup last year, digital billboards in Madrid, sponsored by Nike, showed the result within seconds. Advertisers constantly talk about wanting to "engage" with consumers, so they are taking great interest in the potential for interactivity that digital technology will bring. JCDecaux, for example, is offering a free iPhone application called U snap: when a consumer sees a poster (paper or digital) for something that attracts his interest and takes a photo of it on his phone, the app recognises it, gives him product information and discount vouchers and directs him to the nearest retailer. Then there is "gladvertising" and "sadvertising", an idea in which billboards with embedded cameras, linked to face-tracking software, detect the mood of each consumer who passes by, and change the advertising on display to suit it. Such Big Brotherish software would no doubt detect a satisfied grin on the faces of out-of-home advertising bosses as they contemplate the next 18 months, in which a string of big events will boost their business: the Rugby World Cup, the American presidential election, the Euro 2012 football championship and the London Olympics. Wherever you go, there will be no escape from ads linked to these events, and the out-of-home advertising firms will be raking it in.

单选题It is claimed here that word processor create ______.

单选题For months the Japanese searched fitfully for the right word to describe what was happening. At the Bank of Japan, the nation's central bank, officials spoke of "an adjustment phase." Prime Minister admitted only to "a difficult situation." The Economic Planning Agency, the government's record keeper, referred delicately to a "retreat." Then two weeks ago, for the first time since 1997, the agency dropped its boilerplate reference to the "expansion, from its closely watched Monthly Economic Report, and the word game was over. Japan's economy, the world's second largest, conceded the experts, was in recession. That admission confirmed the had news businessmen had been reading in their spreadsheets for several months. "In 2001 one market after another turned bad," says Yoshihiko Wakamoto, senior vice president of Toshiba Corp. , which now admits that its pretax profits for fiscal 2001, ending March 31, may be down a whopping 42%. In April, when many Japanese companies announce their results for 2001 fiscal Year, most will report declining profits. Blue chips like Sony, NEC and Matsushita have all experienced drops of over 40% in pretax profits. Japan's security houses, hit by declining commissions from a falling stock market, will announce even more dramatic drops. Nomura Securities, once Japan's most profitable company, is talking about an 80% decline in profits. Auto manufacturers, banks, airlines, steel companies, department stores —all are in a slump. Technically, what is happening to the Japanese economy does not meet American criteria for a recession, normally defined as at least two consecutive quarters of negative growth. While economic growth has slowed in Japan, it has not ceased. Government economists are predicting a 3.5% increase in GNP for 2002. Outside experts are not so optimistic. But nearly everyone agrees that GNP growth in Japan is unlikely to slip into negative numbers, as it did last year in the U. S. and Britain. "There's no question that we are in a recession," pronounces Kunio Miyamoto, chief economist of the Sumitomo-Life Research Institute. "But it is a recession, Japanese-style." During the last half of the 1990s, Japanese companies based much of their expansion around the world on the wildly inflated values of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Japan's frenzied real estate market. Now both those markets have collapsed. And with long-term interest rates up from 5% to 7%, Japanese companies are less able to sell vast quantities of high-quality goods at razor-thin profit margins. Added to this are pressures from shareholders for a greater return on investments, from Japan's trading partners for restraints on its aggressive trade practices, and from its own citizens for a reduction in their working hours so they can enjoy the fruits of 40 years of relentless toil.

单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}}Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C, and D on ANSWER SHEET 1. Modern liberal opinion is sensitive to problems of restriction of freedom and abuse of power.{{U}} (1) {{/U}}, many hold that a man can be injured only by violating his will, but this view is much too{{U}} (2) {{/U}}. It fails to{{U}} (3) {{/U}}the great dangers we shall face in the{{U}} (4) {{/U}}of biomedical technology that stems from an excess of freedom, from the unrestrained{{U}} (5) {{/U}}of will. In my view, our greatest problems will be voluntary self-degradation, or willing dehumanization, as is the unintended yet often inescapable consequence of sternly and successfully pursuing our humanization{{U}} (6) {{/U}}. Certain{{U}} (7) {{/U}}and perfected medical technologies have already had some dehumanizing consequences. Improved methods of resuscitation have made{{U}} (8) {{/U}}heroic effort? to "save" the severely ill and injured. Yet these efforts are sometimes only partly successful: They may succeed in{{U}} (9) {{/U}}individuals, but these individuals may have sever brain damage and be capable of only a less-than-human, vegetating{{U}} (10) {{/U}}. Such patients have been{{U}} (11) {{/U}}a death with dignity. Families are forced to bear the burden of a{{U}} (12) {{/U}}"death watch". {{U}} (13) {{/U}}the ordinary methods of treating disease and prolonging life have changed the{{U}} (14) {{/U}}in which men die. Fewer and fewer people die in the familiar surroundings of home or in the{{U}} (15) {{/U}}of family and friends. This loneliness, {{U}}(16) {{/U}}, is not confined to the dying patient in the hospital bed. As a group, the elderly are the most alienated members of our society: Not yet{{U}} (17) {{/U}}the world of the dead, not deemed fit for the world of the living, they are shunted{{U}} (18) {{/U}}. We have learned how to increase their years, {{U}}(19) {{/U}}we have not learned how to help them enjoy their days. Yet we continue to bravely and feverishly push back the frontiers{{U}} (20) {{/U}}death.

单选题Until recently, mobile radio was to wireless communications what the Yugo was to transportation. With a mixed clientele ranging from truckers using CBs to police armed with walkie-talkies to taxi drivers dispatched by radio, it was viewed as an unglamorous business and a technological backwater. But specialized mobile radio, as it is known, has been rediscovered. It is now considered one of the biggest prizes in the all-out war for the public airwaves. The reason: high-tech companies have figured out how to profitably rebuild the antiquated dispatching system into an advanced cellular-telephone network that can take on the likes of AT & T and the giant Baby Bells. Upstart Nextel Communications sent shock waves through the industry last week when it agreed to buy Motorola's SMR frequencies for $1.8 billion. That could pose a serious threat to cellular hegemony. Although both systems are based on the same basic technology, SMR systems are digital and cover almost 25 times as much area as the average cellular network. SMR handsets won't work on cellular systems and tend to be bulkier than cellular phones, though they provide more features, like a digital pager service. And while cellular growth has tripled to some 13 million subscribers since 2000, the technology has been losing ground. It is running out of channel capacity so fast, in fact, that 40% of cellular calls in high-density areas like Manhattan and Los Angeles fail to be completed. SMRs have capacity to spare, and service could eventually be priced 10% to 15% less than cellular. Dispatchers predict they will have at least 10 million subscribers by the end of the decade. There are now about 1.5 million users of SMRs. The addition of another contender to an already crowded field of telephone systems will surely multiply the confusion. By the year 2010, consumers will be able to choose from at least half a dozen vendors of a dizzying array of wireless-communications services, including pagers, voice mail answering machines and cellular phones. Phone and cable television operators, such as Bell South, MCI and Cox Enterprises, are developing so-called personal communications networks, or PCNs, a highly advanced portable-phone system that is expected to cover a wider area, connect to a greater variety of services and be cheaper to operate than conventional cellular. And many companies that have gambled on the wrong technological standards, and invested billions trying to develop the same markets, will undoubtedly lose a great deal of money before the shakeout is over. "The winners," says Nextel chairman Morgan O'Brien, "will be those who can make the choice for consumers easy." With all the anticipated confusion--mindful of the early years of personal computers--it is likely to be years before anyone calls the purchase of wireless products an "easy" choice.

单选题The author contrasts the 1930's with the present in order to show that

单选题The number of the companies that were established in 2002 is about

单选题In the last paragraph, the author tries to justify his conclusion by

单选题"I'm a total geek all around," says Angela Byron, a 27-year-old computer programmer who has just graduated from Nova Scotia Community College. And yet, like many other students, she "never had the confidence" to approach any of the various open-source software communities on the internet-distributed teams of volunteers who collaborate to build software that is then made freely available. But thanks to Google, the world's most popular search engine and one of the biggest proponents of open-source software, Ms. Byron spent the summer contributing code to Drupal, an open-source project that automates the management of websites. "It's awesome," she says. Ms. Byron is one of 419 students (out of 8,744 who a'pplied) who were accepted for Google's "summer of code". While it sounds like a hyper-nerdy summer camp, the students neither went to Google's campus in Mountain View, California, nor to wherever their mentors at the 41 participating open-source projects happened to he located. Instead, Google acted as a matchmaker and sponsor. Each of the participating open-source projects received $500 for every student it took on; and each student received $4,500 ($500 right away, and $4,000 on completion of their work). Oh, and a T-shirt. All of this is the idea of Chris DiBona, Google's open-source boss, who was brainstorming with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google's founders, last year. They realised that a lot of programming talent goes to waste every summer because students take summer jobs flipping burgers to make money, and let their coding skills degrade. "We want to make it better for students in the summer," says Mr. DiBona, adding that it also helps the open-source community and thus, indirectly, Google, which uses lots of open-source software behind the scenes. Plus, says Mr. DiBona, "it does become an opportunity for recruiting. " Elliot Cohen, a student at Berkeley, spent his summer writing a "Bayesian network toolbox" for Python, an open-source programming language. "I'm a pretty big fan of Google," he says. He has an interview scheduled with Microsoft, but "Google is the only big company that I would work at," he says. And if that doesn't work out, he now knows people in the open-source community, "and it's a lot less intimidating. /

单选题"The imperative to self-knowledge has always been at the heart of philosophical inquiry," wrote MIT professor Sherry Turkle in the insightful book about the web and the self, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. Published in 1995 as the second part of a trilogy that examined our relationships with technology, it looked at how we are who we are in online spaces. And what that means for us offline. The good news is that the results are positive: "Play has always been an important aspect of our individual efforts to build identity," she said, referencing developmental psychologist Erik Erikson, and nodding to the theories of psychoanalysts Freud, Lacan and Jung. "In terms of our views of the self," she wrote, "new images of multiplicity, heterogeneity, flexibility, and fragmentation dominate current thinking about human identity. " At the time Life on the Screen was released, most of the visitors were college students and their professors from a remarkably small talent pool, and a surprisingly small geography. They were tech-savvy, and generically open-minded about the new fields of virtual exploration that lay within the networks of this new communication platform. They were, in other words, liberal, enlightened types who were more willing to embrace the unprecedented fluidity of self-expression that this new technology uniquely afforded. As a psychoanalyst and a web user herself, Turkle spent much of the book explaining why the articulation of multiple personalities wasn't pathological. Contrary to its Latin root, identity need not mean "the same", she argued. "No one aspect can be claimed as the absolute, true self", she wrote, maintaining that the web allowed us the opportunity to get to know our "inner diversity". In the great psychoanalytic tradition, she said that self-actualisation meant coming to terms with who we are, and integrating each aspect of it into a coherent and well-integrated us. Almost everyone has experienced this kind of identity play. Even if you've never ventured into an online game or been a signed-up member of a web community, you've probably developed a profile for a social network, written a blog, styled a website, commented on an article. But things are different from the time when Turkle was writing Life on the Screen. Nowadays, our virtual social lives are increasingly integrated. with our offline social lives. The freedom of expression is curtailed by the threat of offline consequences from online actions. Today, your reputation offline is far more closely tied to your reputation online than before. In fact, our experience of contemporary identity online is disarmingly similar to offline. However, I still subscribe to the old Turkle. Consequence-free online environments allow us to practise and play without fear of offline effect, and offer an extraordinary place to experience the fluidity of our selves: I can be anyone, even a dog. As Tom MacMaster found, there still are places online where this is possible.

单选题In a paper just published in Science, Peter Gordon of Columbia University uses his study of the Piraha and their counting system to try to answer a tricky linguistic question. The Piraha, a group of hunter-gatherers who live along the banks of the Maiei River in Brazil, use a system of counting called "one-two-many". In this, the word for "one" translates to "roughly one" (similar to "one or two" in English), the word for "two" means "a slightly larger amount than one" (similar to "a few" in English), and the word for "many" means "a much larger amount". This question was posed by Benjamin Lee Whorl in the 1930s. Whorl studied Hopi, an Amerindian language very different from tile Eurasian languages that had hitherto been the subject of academic linguistics. His work led him to suggest that language not only influences thought but, more strongly, that it determines thought. While there is no dispute that language influences what people think about, evidence suggesting it determines thought is inconclusive. For example, in 1972, Eleanor Rosch and Karl Heider investigated the colour-naming abilities of the Dani people of Indonesia. The Dani have words for only two colours.- black and white. But Dr. Rosch and Dr. Heider found that, even so, Dani could distinguish and comprehend other colours. That does not support the deterministic version of the Whorl hypothesis. While recognising that there are such things as colours for which you have no name is certainly a cognitive leap, it may not be a good test of Whorf's ideas. Colours, after all, are out there everywhere. Numbers, by contrast, are abstract, so may be a better test. Dr. Gordon therefore spent a month with the Piraha and elicited the help of seven of them to see how far their grasp of numbers extended. The tests began simply, with a row of, say, seven evenly spaced batteries. Gradually, they got more complicated. The more complicated tests included tasks such as matching numbers of unevenly spaced objects, replicating the number of objects from memory, and copying a number of straight lines from a drawing. In the tests that involved matching the number and layout of objects they could see, participants were pretty good when faced with two or three items, but found it harder to cope as the number of items rose. Things were worse when the participants had to remember the number of objects in a layout and replicate it "blind", rather than matching a layout they could see. In this case the success rate dropped to zero when the number of items became, in terms of their language, "many". And line drawing produced the worst results of all--though that could have had as much to do with the fact that drawing is not part of Piraha culture as it did with the difficulties of numerical abstraction. Indeed, Dr. Gordon described the task of reproducing straight lines as being accomplished only with "heavy sighs and groans".

单选题The decision of the New York Philharmonic to hire Alan Gilbert as its next music director has been the talk of the classical-music world ever since the sudden announcement of his appointment in 2009. For the most part, the response has been favorable, to say the least. “Hooray! At last!” wrote Anthony Tommasini, a sober-sided classical-music critic. One of the reasons why the appointment came as such a surprise, however, is that Gilbert is comparatively little known. Even Tommasini, who had advocated Gilbert's appointment in the Times, calls him “an unpretentious musician with no air of the formidable conductor about him.” As a description of the next music director of an orchestra that has hitherto been led by musicians like Gustav Mahler and Pierre Boulez, that seems likely to have struck at least some Times readers as faint praise. For my part, I have no idea whether Gilbert is a great conductor or even a good one. To be sure, he performs an impressive variety of interesting compositions, but it is not necessary for me to visit Avery Fisher Hall, or anywhere else, to hear interesting orchestral music. All I have to do is to go to my CD shelf, or boot up my computer and download still more recorded music from iTunes. Devoted concertgoers who reply that recordings are no substitute for live performance are missing the point. For the time, attention, and money of the art-loving public, classical instrumentalists must compete not only with opera houses, dance troupes, theater companies, and museums, but also with the recorded performances of the great classical musicians of the 20th century. There recordings are cheap, available everywhere, and very often much higher in artistic quality than today's live performances; moreover, they can be “consumed” at a time and place of the listener's choosing. The widespread availability of such recordings has thus brought about a crisis in the institution of the traditional classical concert. One possible response is for classical performers to program attractive new music that is not yet available on record. Gilbert's own interest in new music has been widely noted: Alex Ross, a classical-music critic, has described him as a man who is capable of turning the Philharmonic into “a markedly different, more vibrant organization.” But what will be the nature of that difference? Merely expanding the orchestra's repertoire will not be enough. If Gilbert and the Philharmonic are to succeed, they must first change the relationship between America's oldest orchestra and the new audience it hops to attract.

单选题Directions: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank. Our ape-men forefathers had no obvious natural weapons in the struggle for{{U}} (1) {{/U}}in the open. They had neither the powerful teeth nor the strong claws of the big cats. They could not {{U}}(2) {{/U}}with the bear, whose strength, speed and claws{{U}} (3) {{/U}}an impressive " small fire" weaponry. They could not even defend themselves{{U}} (4) {{/U}}running swiftly like the horses, zebras or small animals. If the ape-men had attempted to compete on those terms in the open, they would have been{{U}} (5) {{/U}}to failure and extinction. But they were{{U}} (6) {{/U}}with enormous concealed advantages of a kind not possessed by any of their competitors. In the search{{U}} (7) {{/U}}the pickings of the forest, the ape-men had{{U}} (8) {{/U}}efficient stereoscopic vision and a sense of color that the animals of the grasslands did not{{U}} (9) {{/U}}. The ability to see clearly at close range permitted the ape-men to study practical problems in a way that lay far{{U}} (10) {{/U}}the reach of the original inhabitants of the grassland. Good long-distance sight was{{U}} (11) {{/U}}another matter. Lack of long-distance vision had not been a problem for forest-dwelling apes and monkeys because the{{U}} (12) {{/U}}the viewpoint, the greater the range of sight-so{{U}} (13) {{/U}}they had had to do was climb a tree. Out in the open, however, this simple solution was not{{U}} (14) {{/U}}. Climbing a hill would have helped, but in many places the ground was flat. The ape-men{{U}} (15) {{/U}}the only possible solution. They reared up as high as possible on their hind limbs and began to walk{{U}} (16) {{/U}}. This vital change of physical position brought about considerable disadvantages. It was extremely unstable and it meant that the already slow ape-men became{{U}} (17) {{/U}}still. {{U}}(18) {{/U}}, they persevered and their bone structure gradually became{{U}} (19) {{/U}}to the new, unstable position that{{U}} (20) {{/U}}them the name Homo erectus, upright man.