单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Elections often tell you more about what people are against than what they are for. So it is with the European ones that took place last week in all 25 European Union member countries. These elections, widely trumpeted as the world's biggest-ever multinational democratic vote, were fought for the most part as 25 separate national contests, which makes it tricky to pick out many common themes. But the strongest are undoubtedly negative. Europe's voters are angry and disillusioned-and they have demonstrated their anger and disillusion in three main ways. The most obvious was by abstaining. The average overall turnout was just over 45%, by some margin the lowest ever recorded for elections to the European Parliament. And that average disguises some big variations: Italy, for example, notched up over 70%, but Sweden managed only 37%. Most depressing of all, at least to believers in the European project, was the extremely low vote in many of the new member countries from central Europe, which accounted for the whole of the fall in turnout since 1999. In the biggest, Poland, only just over a fifth of the electorate turned out to vote. Only a year ago, central Europeans voted in large numbers to join the EU, which they did on May 1st. That they abstained in such large numbers in the European elections points to early disillusion with the European Union-as well as to a widespread feeling, shared in the old member countries as well, that the European Parliament does not matter. Disillusion with Europe was also a big factor in the second way in which voters protested, which was by supporting a ragbag of populist, nationalist and explicitly anti-EU parties. These ranged from the 16% who backed the UK Independence Party, whose declared policy is to withdraw from the EU and whose leaders see their mission as "wrecking" the European Parliament, to the 14% who voted for Sweden's Junelist, and the 27% of Poles who backed one of two anti-EU parties, the League of Catholic Families and Selfdefence. These results have returned many more Eurosceptics and trouble-makers to the parliament: on some measures, over a quarter of the new MEPS will belong to the "awkward squad". That is not a bad thing, however, for it will make the 'parliament more representative of European public opinion. But it is the third target of European voters' ire that is perhaps the most immediately significant, the fact that, in many EU countries, old and new, they chose to vote heavily against their own governments. This anti-incumbent vote was strong almost everywhere, but it was most pronounced in Britain, the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and Sweden. The leaders of all the four biggest European Union countries, Tony Blair in Britain, Jacques Chirac in France, Gerhard Schroder in Germany and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, were each given a bloody nose by their voters. The big question now is how Europe's leaders should respond to this. By a sublime (or terrible) coincidence, soon after the elections, and just as The Economist was going to press, they were gathering in Brussels for a crucial summit, at which they are due to agree a new constitutional treaty for the EU and to select a new president for the European Commissi6n. Going into the meeting, most EU heads of government seemed determined to press ahead with this agenda regardless of the European elections--even though the atmosphere after the results may make it harder for them to strike deals.

单选题 With Airbus' giant A380 airliner about to take to the skies, you might think planes could not get much bigger-and you would be right. For a given design, it turns{{U}} (1) {{/U}}, there comes a point where the wings become too heavy to generate{{U}} (2) {{/U}}lift to carry their own weight.{{U}} (3) {{/U}}a new way of designing and making materials could{{U}} (4) {{/U}}that problem. Two engineers{{U}} (5) {{/U}}University College London have devised all innovative way to customise and control the{{U}} (6) {{/U}}of a material throughout its three-dimensional structure. In the{{U}} (7) {{/U}}of a wing, this would make possible a material that is dense, strong and load-bearing at one end, close to the fuselage,{{U}} (8) {{/U}}the extremities could be made less dense, lighter and more{{U}} (9) {{/U}}. It is like making bespoke materials,{{U}} (10) {{/U}}you can customise the physical properties of every cubic millimetre of a structure. The new technique combines existing technologies in a(n){{U}} (11) {{/U}}way, It starts by using finite-element-analysis software, of the type commonly used by engineers,{{U}} (12) {{/U}}a virtual prototype of the object. The software models the stresses and strains that the object will need to{{U}} (13) {{/U}}throughout its structure. Using this information it is then{{U}} (14) {{/U}}to calculate the precise forces acting on millions of smaller subsections of the structure.{{U}} (15) {{/U}}of these subsections is{{U}} (16) {{/U}}treated as a separate object with its own set of forces acting on it-and each subsection{{U}} (17) {{/U}}for a different microstructure to absorb those local forces. Designing so many microstructures manually{{U}} (18) {{/U}}be a huge task, so the researchers apply an optimisation program, called a genetic algorithm,{{U}} (19) {{/U}}. This uses a process of randomisation and trial-and-error to search the vast number of possible microstructures to find the most{{U}} (20) {{/U}}design for each subsection.

单选题What does the author mean by "turn it into riches" ( Line I 1, Paragraph 1 )?

单选题In which of the following years did the poor people constitute the largest proportion of the American population?

单选题It can be inferred from the text that there exists a tendency to

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} The Net success of "Lazy Sunday" represents a defining moment for the film and television business. Advances in digital video and broadband have vastly lowered the cost of production and distribution. Filmmakers are now following the path blazed by bloggers and musicians, cheaply creating and uploading their work to the Web. If it appeals to any of the Net's niches, millions of users will pass along their films through e-mail, downloads or links. It's the dawn of the democratization of the TV and film business--even unknown personalities are being propelled by the enthusiasm of their fans into pop-culture prominence, sometimes without even traditional intermediaries like talent agents or film festivals. "This is like bypass surgery,' says Dan Harmon, a filmmaker whose monthly L. A. -based film club and Web site, Channel 101, lets members submit short videos, such as the recent 70s' music mockumentary "Yacht Rock," and vote on which they like best. "Finally we have a new golden age where the artist has a direct connection to the audience;" The directors behind "Lazy Sunday" embody the phenomenon. When the shaggy-haired Samberg, 27, graduated from NYU Film School in 2001, he faced the conventional challenge or, crashing the gates Of Hollywood. With his two childhood friends Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, he came up with an unconventional solution: they started recording music parodies and comic videos, and posting them to their Web site, TheLonelyisland. com. The material got the attention of producers at the old ABC sitcom "Spin City", where Samberg and Taccone worked as low-level assistants; the producers sent a compilation to a talent agency. The friends got an agent, made a couple of pilot TV sketch shows for Comedy Central and Fox, featuring themselves hamming it up in nearly all the roles, and wrote jokes for the MTV Movie Awards. Even when the networks passed on their pilots, Samberg and his friends simply posted the episodes online and their fan base--at 40,000 unique visitors a month earlier this year--grew larger. Last August, Samberg joined the "SNL" cast, and Schaffer and Taccone became writers. Now they share an office in Rockefeller Center and "are a little too cute for everyone," Samberg says, "We are friends living our dream." Short, funny videos like "Lazy Sunday" happen to translate online, but not everything works as well. Bite-size films are more practical than longer ones; comedy plays better than drama. But almost everything is worth trying, since the tools to create and post video are now so cheap, and ad hoc audiences can form around any sensibility, however eccentric.

单选题Which of the following is the most desirable site where cosmic neutrinos can be easily detected? [A] Labs with massive detector. [B] Enclosed volcanic caves. [C] Vacuum cabins. [D] Shallow salt lake.

单选题Centuries ago, man discovered that removing moisture from food helps to preserve it, and that the easiest way to do this is to expose the food to sun and wind. In this way the North American Indians produce pemmican, the Scandinavians make stockfish and the Arabs dry dates and apricot leather. All foods contain water-cabbage and other leaf vegetables contain as much as 93% water, potatoes and other root vegetables 80%, lean meat 75% and fish anything from 80% to 60% depending on how fatty it is. If this water is removed, the activity of the bacteria that cause food to deteriorate is checked. Fruit is sun-dried in Asia Minor, Greece, Spain and other Mediterranean countries, and also in California, South Africa and Australia. The methods used vary, but in general, the fruit is spread out on trays in drying yards in the hot sun. In order to prevent darkening, pears, peaches and apricots are exposed to the fumes of burning sulfur before drying. Plums, for making prunes, and certain varieties of grapes for making raisins and currants, are dipped in an alkaline solution in order to crack the skins of the fruit slightly and remove their wax coating, so increasing the rate of drying. Nowadays most foods are dried mechanically. The conventional method of such dehydration is to put food in chambers through which hot air is blown at temperatures of about 110℃ at entry to about 43℃ at exit. This is the usual method for drying such things as vegetables, minced meat, and fish. Liquids such as milk, coffee, tea, soups and eggs may be dried by pouring them over a heated horizontal steel cylinder or by spraying them into a chamber through which a current of hot air passes. In the first case, the dried material is scraped off the roller as a thin film which is then broken up into small, though still relatively coarse flakes;" in the second process it falls to the bottom of the chamber as a fine powder. Where recognizable pieces of meat and vegetables are required, as in soup, the ingredients are dried separately and then mixed. Dried foods take up less room and weigh less than the same food packed in cans or frozen, and they do not need to be stored in special conditions. For these reasons they are invaluable to climbers, explorers and soldiers in battle, who have little storage space. They are also popular with housewives because it takes so little time to cook them. Usually it is just a case of replacing the dried-out moisture with boiling water.

单选题According to Oswald Clint, Shell's chance of catching up is

单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read the following text. Choose the best word (s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on ANSWER SHEET 1. There is growing interest in East Japan Railway Co. , one of the six companies, created out of the{{U}} (1) {{/U}}national railway system. In an industry lacking exciting growth{{U}} (2) {{/U}}, its plan to use real-estate assets in and around train stations{{U}} (3) {{/U}}is drawing interest. In a plan dubbed "Station Renaissance" that it{{U}} (4) {{/U}}in November, JR East said that it would{{U}} (5) {{/U}}using its commercial spaces for shops and restaurants, extending them to{{U}} (6) {{/U}}more suitable for the information age. It wants train stations as pick-up{{U}} (7) {{/U}}for such goods, as books, flowers and groceries purchased{{U}} (8) {{/U}}the Internet. In a country{{U}} (9) {{/U}}urbanites depend heavily on trains{{U}} (10) {{/U}}commuting, about 16 million people a day go to its train stations anyway, the company{{U}} (11) {{/U}}. So, picking up purchases at train stations spare{{U}} (12) {{/U}}extra travel and missed home deliveries. JR East already has been using its station{{U}} (13) {{/U}}stores for this purpose, but it plans to create{{U}} (14) {{/U}}spaces for the delivery of Internet goods. The company also plans to introduce{{U}} (15) {{/U}}cards--known in Japan as IC cards because they use integrated{{U}} (16) {{/U}}for holding information--{{U}} (17) {{/U}}train tickets and commuter passes{{U}} (18) {{/U}}the magnetic ones used today, integrating them into a single pass. This will save the company money, because{{U}} (19) {{/U}}for IC cards are much less expensive than magnetic systems. Increased use of IC cards should also{{U}} (20) {{/U}}the space needed for ticket vending.

单选题John Battelle is Silicon Valley's Bob Woodward. As one of the founders of Wired magazine, he has hung around Google for so long that he has come to be as close as any outsider can to actually being an insider. Certainly, Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, believe that it is safer to talk to Mr. Battelle than not to do so. The result is a highly readable account of Google's astonishing rise--the steepest in corporate history--from its origins in Stanford University to its controversial stockmarket debut and its current struggle to become a grown-up company while staying true to its youthfully brash motto, "Don't be evil. " Mr. Battelle makes the reader warm to Google's ruling triumvirate--their cleverness and their good intentions--and fear for their future as they take on the world. Google is one of the most interesting companies around at the moment. It has a decent shot at displacing Microsoft as the next great near-monopoly of the information age. Its ambition--to organise all the world's information, not just the information on the world wide web--is epic, and its commercial power is frightening. Beyond this, Google is interesting for the same reason that secretive dictatorships and Hollywood celebrities are interesting--for being opaque, colourful and, simply, itself. The book disappoints only when Mr. Battelle begins trying to explain the wider relevance of internet search and its possible future development. There is a lot to say on this subject, but Mr. Battelle is hurried and overly chatty, producing laundry lists of geeky concepts without really having thought any of them through properly. This is not a fatal flaw. Read only the middle chapters, and you have a great book.