单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Trying to get Americans to eat a healthy diet is a frustrating business. Even the best-designed public-health campaigns cannot seem to compete with the tempting flavors of the snack-food and fast-food industries and their fat-and sugar-laden products. The results are apparent on a walk down any American street—more than 60% of Americans are overweight, and a full quarter of them are overweight to the point of obesity. Now, health advocates say, an ill-conceived redesign has taken one of the more successful public-health campaigns—the Food Guide Pyramid—and rendered it confusing to the point of uselessness. Some of these critics worry that America's Department of Agriculture caved in to pressure from parts of the food industry anxious to protect their products. The Food Guide Pyramid was a graphic which emphasizes that a healthy diet is built on a base of grains, vegetables and fruits, followed by ever-decreasing amounts of dairy products. meat, sweets and oils. The agriculture department launched the pyramid in 1992 to replace its previous program, which was centered on the idea of four basic food groups. The "Basic Four" campaign showed a plate divided into quarters, and seemed to imply that meat and dairy products should make up half of a healthy diet, with grains, fruits and vegetables making up the other half. It was replaced only over the strenuous objections of the meat and dairy industries. The old pyramid was undoubtedly imperfect. It failed to distinguish between a doughnut and a whole-grain roll, or a hamburger and a skinless chicken breast, and it did not make clear exactly how much of each foodstuff to eat. It did, however, manage to convey the basic idea of proper proportions in an easily understanable way. The new pyramid, called" My Pyramid", abandons the effort to provide this information. Instead, it has been simplified to a mere logo. The food groups are replaced with unlabelled, multi-colored vertical stripes which, in some versions, rise out of a cartoon jumble of foods that look like the aftermath of a riot at a grocery store. Anyone who wants to see how this translates into a healthy diet is invited to go to a website, put in their age, Sex and activity level, and get a Custom. designed pyramid, complete with healthy food choices and suggested portion sizes. This is fine for those who are motivated, but might prove too much effort for those who most need such information. Admittedly, the designers of the new pyramid had a tough job to do. They were supposed to condense the advice in the 84-page United States' Dietary Guidelines into a simple, meaningful graphic suitable for printing on the back of a cereal box. And they had to do this in the face of pressure from dozens of special interest groups—from the country's Potato, Board, which thought potatoes would look nice in the picture, to the Almond Board of California, which felt the same way about almonds. Even the National Watermelon Promotion Board and the California Avocado Commission were eager to sect heir products recognized. Nevertheless, many health advocates believe the new graphic is a missed opportunity. Although officials insist industry pressure had nothing to do with: the eventual design, some critics suspect that political influence was at work: On the other hand, it is not clear how much good even the best graphic could do. Surveys found that 80% of Americans recognized the old Food Guide Pyramid—a big success in the world of public, health campaigns. Yet only 16% followed its advice.

单选题The role of governments in environmental management is deficit but inescapable. Sometimes, the state tries to manage the resources it owns, and does so badly. Often, (1) , governments act in an even more harmful way. They actually subsidize the exploitation and (2) of natural resources. A whole (3) of policies, from farm-price support to protection for coal-mining, do environmental damage and often (4) no economic sense. Making good policies offers a two-fold (5) : a cleaner environmentpolilicians and a more efficient economy. Crowth and environmentalism can actually go hand in hand, if politicians have the courage to (6) the vested interest that subsidies create. No activity affects more of the earth's surface than farming, h shapes a third of the planet's land area, not (7) Antarctica, and the proportion is rising. World food output per head has risen by 4 percent between the 1970s and 1980s mainly as a result of increases in (8) from land already in (9) , but also because more land has been brought under the plough. Higher yields have been achieved by increased irrigation, better crop breeding, and a (10) in the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers in the 1970s and 1980s. All these activities may have (11) environmental impacts. For example, land clearing for agrieuhure is the largest single (12) of deforestation; chemical fertilizers and pesticides may (13) water supplies; more intensive farming and the abandonment of fallow periods (14) worsen soil erosion; and the spread of monochord and use of high-yielding varieties of euros have been accompanied by the (15) of old varieties of food plants which might have provided some (16) against pests or diseases in future. Soil erosion threatens the productivity of land in both rich and poor countries. The United States, (17) the most careful measurements have been done, discovered in 1982 that about one-fifth of its farmland was losing topsoil at a rate (18) to diminish the soil's productivity. The country subsequently (19) a program to convert 11 percent of its cropped land to meadow or forest. Topsoil in India and China is (20) much faster than in America.

单选题Remember the days when companies such as Microsoft and Mc-Kinsey took immense satisfaction from subjecting job candidates to mind-crunching strategy sessions? If you thought that was rough, imagine an interview in which no amount of research or questioning of insiders will help. Imagine instead that all you can do is have a healthy breakfast, pick out your nicest suit, and hope for the best. In the new interview, they"re not just testing what you know. They"re also testing who you are. It"s called the situational interview, and it"s quickly becoming a must in the job-seeking world. In the post-Enron culture of caution, corporations are focusing on an obvious insight: that a gold-plated resume and winning personality are about as accurate in determining job performance as Wall Street analysts are in picking stocks. Now, with shareholder scrutiny, hiring slowdowns, and expense-reducing, no manager can afford to hire the wrong person. Hundreds of companies are switching to the new methods. Whereas the conventional interview has been found to be only 7% accurate in predicting job performance, situational interviews deliver a rating of 54%— the most of any interviewing tool. The situational technique"s superiority stems from its ability to trip up even the wittiest of interviewees. Of course, every applicant must display a healthy dose of occupational know-how, but behavior and ethical backbone play a big role. For example, a prospective analyst at a Wall Street bank might have to face, say, a customer with an account argument. It"s not happening on paper, but in real time—with managers and experts watching nearby. The interviewer plays the role of a fierce customer on the phone, angry about money lost when a trade wasn"t executed on time. It"s set up as an obvious mistake on the banker"s part. Interviewers watch the candidates" reactions: how they process the complex account information, their ability to talk the client down, what their body language displays about their own shortcomings, and which words they choose. In this instance, not being honest about the mistake or showing anger or frustration—no matter how glowing your resume—means you"re out. Behavioral interviews are also being rounded out by other tools that, until recently, had been reserved for elite hires. Personality-testing outfit Caliper, for example, which probes candidates for emotional-intelligence skills and job ability, has seen its business jump 20% this year. Clearly, the new interview isn"t without its drawbacks. Companies run the risk of arousing hostility in candidates, who may feel as if some line has been crossed into personal territory. Moreover, some companies worry about the fairness of personality tests. They have to make sure there are no inherent gender or racial biases in the test.

单选题 Imagine a world where your doctor could help you avoid sickness, using knowledge of your genes as well as how you live your life. Or where he would prescribe drugs he knew would work and not have debilitating side-effects. Such a future is arriving faster than most realise: genetic tests are already widely used to identify patients who will be helped or harmed by certain drugs. And three years ago, in the face of a torrent of new scientific data, a number of new companies set themselves up to interpret this information for customers. Through shop fronts on the internet, anyone could order a testing kit, spit into a tube and send off their DNA—with results downloaded privately at home. Already customers can find out their response to many common medications, such as antivirals and blood-thinning agents. They can also explore their genetic likelihood of developing deep-vein thrombosis, skin cancer or glaucoma. The industry has been subject to conflicting criticisms. {{U}}On the one hand, it stands accused of offering information too dangerous to trust to consumers; on the other it is charged with peddling irrelevant, misleading nonsense.{{/U}} For some rare disorders, such as Huntington's and Tay-Sachs, genetic information is a diagnosis. But most diseases are more complicated and involve several genes, or an environmental component, or both. Someone's chance of getting skin cancer, for example, will depend on whether he worships the sun as well as on his genes. {{U}}America's Government Accountability Office (GAO) report also revealed what the industry has openly admitted for years: that results of disease-prediction tests from different companies sometimes conflict with one another, because there is no industry-wide agreement on standard lifetime risks.{{/U}} Governments hate this sort of anarchy and America's, in particular, is considering regulation. But three things argue against wholesale regulation. First, the level of interference needs to be based on the level of risk a test represents. The government does not need to be involved if someone decides to trace his ancestry or discover what type of earwax he has. {{U}}Second, the laws on fraud should be sufficient to deal with the snake-oil salesmen who promise to predict, say, whether a child might be a sporting champion. And third, science is changing very fast.{{/U}} Fairly soon, a customer's whole genome will be sequenced, not merely the parts thought to be medically relevant that the testing companies now concentrate on, and he will then be able to crank the results through open-source interpretation software downloadable from anywhere on the planet. That will create problems, but the only way to stop that happening would be to make it illegal for someone to have his genome sequenced— and nobody is seriously suggesting that illiberal restriction. Instead, then, of reacting in a hostile fashion to the trend for people to take genetic tests, governments should be asking themselves how they can make best use of this new source of information. Restricting access to tests that inform people about bad reactions to drugs could do harm. The real question is not who controls access, but how to minimise the risks and maximise the rewards of a useful revolution.

单选题The views of Alan Milburn and David Culter on the reforms of heal-care systems are

单选题How is television said to distort life in reporting warfare and conflicts?

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} When they advise your kids to "get an education" if you want to raise your income, they tell you only half the truth. What they really mean is to get just enough education to provide manpower for your society, but not too much that prove an embarrassment to your society. Get high school diploma, at least. Without that, you are occupationally dead, unless your name happens to be George Bernard Shaw or Thomas Alva Edison and you can successfully drop out in grade school. Get a college degree, if possible. With a B.A., you are on the launching pad(发射台). But now you have to start to put on the brakes. If you go for a master's degree, make sure it is a M. B. A., and only from a first-rate university. Beyond this, the famous law of diminishing returns begins to take effect. Do you know, for instance, that long-haul truck drivers earn more a year than full professors? Yes, the average 1977 salary for those truckers was ＄24000, while the full professors managed to average just ＄23930. A Ph. D. is the highest degree you can get, but except in a few specialized fields such as physics or chemistry, where the degree can quickly be turned to industrial or commercial purposes, you are facing a dim future. There are more Ph. D.s unemployed or underemployed in this country than in any other part of the world by far. If you become a doctor of philosophy in English or history or anthropology or political science or language or—worst of all—in philosophy, you run the risk of becoming overeducated for our national demands. Not for our needs, mind you, but for our demands. Thousands of Ph. D. s are selling shoes, driving cabs, waiting on tables and filling out fruitless applications month after month. And then maybe taking a job in some high school or backwater college that pays much less than the janitor(看门人)earns. You can equate the level of income with the level of eduction only so far. Far enough, that is, to make you useful to the gross national product, but not so far that nobody can turn much of a profit on you.

单选题What should a driver do when ascending?

单选题The government, in face of the dangerous state of affairs, has made great efforts to

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} If good intentions and good ideas were all it took to save the deteriorating atmosphere, the planet's fragile layer of air would be as good as fixed. The two great dangers threatening the blanket of gases that nurtures and protects life on earth--global warming and the thinning ozone layer--have been identified. Better yet, scientists and policymakers have come up with effective though expensive countermeasures. But that doesn't mean these problems are anywhere close to being solved. The stratospheric ozone layer, for example, is still getting thinner, despite the 1987 international agreement known as the Montreal Protocol, which calls for a phaseout of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-depleting chemicals by the year 2006. CFCs--first fingered as dangerous in the 1970s by Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina, two of this year's Nobel--prizewinning chemists—have been widely used for refrigeration and other purposes. If uncontrolled, the CFC assault on the ozone layer could increase the amount of hazardous solar ultraviolet light that reaches the earth's surface, which would, among other things, damage crops and cause cancer in humans. Thanks to a sense of urgency triggered by the 1985 detection of what has turned out to be an annual "hole" in the especially vulnerable ozone over Antarctica, the Montreal accords have spurred industry to replace CFCs with safer substances. Yet the CFCs already in the air are still doing their dirty work. The Antarctic ozone hole is more severe this year than ever before, and ozone levels over temperate regions are dipping as well. If the CFC phaseout proceeds on schedule, the atmosphere should start repairing itself by the year 2000, say scientists. Nonetheless, observes British Antarctic Survey meteorologist Jonathan Shanklin: "It will be the middle of the next century before things are back to where they were in the 1970s." Developing countries were given more time to comply with the Montreal Protocol and were promised that they would receive ＄ 250 million from richer nations to pay for the CFC phaseout. At the moment, though, only 60% of those funds has been forthcoming. Says Nelson Sabogal of the U. N. Environment Program: "If developed countries don't come up with the money, the ozone layer will not recuperate. This is a crucial time." It is also a critical time for warding off potentially catastrophic climate change. Waste gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and the same CFCs that wreck the ozone layer all tend to trap sunlight and warm the earth. The predicted results: an eventual melting of polar ice caps, rises in sea levels and shifts in climate patterns.

单选题Internet data shows that younger adults have become the primary audience obsessed with television programs about altering people's appearance. Once the domain of the female in her fifties, plastic surgery has become the obsession of the younger Internet users. The recent tragic death of Stephanie Kuleba, an 18-year-old high school cheer-leader who died as a result of a plastic surgery, brought our attention to the pursuit of a more "ideal" body amongst teenagers. In fact, search data confirms this phenomenon. One of the most popular sites visited from the search term "plastic surgery" is the official site of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (www. plasticsurgery. org). Over 25% of visitors to the site fell within the 18-to-24-year-old—that's up from 19.6% two years ago. Plastic surgery has become an American obsession. Checking other markets, such as the U.K. and Australia, the 18-to-24-year-old fascination with plastic surgery is a definitely U.S. phenomenon. Looking at other health related sites visited by 18-to-24- year-olds reveals just how obsessed this age group is with appearance. Unlike the older groups who visit sites related to diseases and keeping healthy, younger Internet users flock to sites that dwell on personal appearance, such as those focused on body-building, weight loss and skin-care. And definitely plastic surgery. While surgery-themed television may be driving the interest of a younger audience, one factor appears to be key in moderating teens from altering their bodies: the failing U.S. economy. If we track the trend in searches on topics such as "plastic surgery", there has been a sharp decline in all plastic surgery topics over the last year. It may very well be related to the noticeable income group of visitors—U.S. households that earn less than $30,000 per year. In fact, if we look at the search patterns around popular surgeries, over the last year the term "cost" appear most commonly. While older age groups continue to search for information on procedures such as face-lifts or liposuction, it's the younger Internet users who in tough economic times are focusing on improving their outer beauty, though at a discount price.

单选题Just how much does the Constitution protect your digital data? The Supreme Court will now consider whether police can search the contents of a mobile phone without a warrant if the phone is on or around a person during an arrest. California has asked the justices to refrain from a sweeping ruling, particularly one that upsets the old assumptions that authorities may search through the possessions of suspects at the time of their arrest. It is hard, the state argues, for judges to assess the implications of new and rapidly changing technologies. The court would be recklessly modest if it followed California"s advice. Enough of the implications are discernable, even obvious, so that the justice can and should provide updated guidelines to police, lawyers and defendants. They should start by discarding California"s lame argument that exploring the contents of a smartphone—a vast storehouse of digital information—is similar to, say, going through a suspect"s purse. The court has ruled that police don"t violate the Fourth Amendment when they go through the wallet or pocketbook of an arrestee without a warrant. But exploring one"s smartphone is more like entering his or her home. A smartphone may contain an arrestee"s reading history, financial history, medical history and comprehensive records of recent correspondence. The development of "cloud computing", meanwhile, has made that exploration so much the easier. Americans should take steps to protect their digital privacy. But keeping sensitive information on these devices is increasingly a requirement of normal life. Citizens still have a right to expect private documents to remain private and protected by the Constitution"s prohibition on unreasonable searches. As so often is the case, stating that principle doesn"t ease the challenge of line-drawing. In many cases, it would not be overly burdensome for authorities to obtain a warrant to search through phone contents. They could still invalidate Fourth Amendment protections when facing severe, urgent circumstances, and they could take reasonable measures to ensure that phone data are not erased or altered while waiting for a warrant. The court, though, may want to allow room for police to cite situations where they are entitled to more freedom. But the justices should not swallow California"s argument whole. New, disruptive technology sometimes demands novel applications of the Constitution"s protections. Orin Kerr, a law professor, compares the explosion and accessibility of digital information in the 21st century with the establishment of automobile use as a virtual necessity of life in the 20th: The justices had to specify novel rules for the new personal domain of the passenger car then; they must sort out how the Fourth Amendment applies to digital information now.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} A simple pair of pants may contain a multitude of meanings. In the 1850s, jeans were the unemotional, durable dress of those that came to California to labor in the gold fields. Seams were strengthened with metal pins to make them hold, a technology borrowed from the construction of horse blankets. Cloth for beasts of burden was translated to the needs of men of burden. These were the clothes of hard-laboring people, and these pants held little promise for the men who wore them, save the promise that they would be ready for the next day's labors. During the same decade, in the court of one European queen, "the gown worn by a fashionable lady in attendance contained 1,100 yards of material not including lace and other ornaments." American women of wealth were also wrapped in an abundance of cloth. While makers of jeans worried over how many men could be fitted into a given amount of cloth, for women of wealth the concern was with how many yards of cloth could be attractively arranged upon a given individual. This was the mark of prosperity: to wear enough material on one's back to clothe many of more modest means. The fashionable rich could not imagine themselves wearing the vulgar canvas pants of workers and "peasants". Neither could working-class people reasonably imagine themselves in the costumes of wealth and power. Tile only fashion link between them— subtle at best—was the stern top hat of wealthy capitalists, a coal-black cylinder symbolizing the factory chimney pipes that brought profit to one, hardship to the other. Blue jeans only signified labor and sweat. Years later, the clothing of nineteenth-century laborers would assume new and different meanings. Humble beginnings became increasingly obscure within the unfolding of popular culture. In the movies, the horse riders of the early cattle industry were reborn as symbols of a noble, rural simplicity, and blue jeans became conspicuous within the landscape of the American media. On the screen these pants teased the imaginations of city folk, who longed for a simpler and less corrupt life. While laborers would continue to wear them at work, now the well-off might put on a pair at home or in the garden—an escape from the discipline of the business world. In the 1950s, blue jeans became a statement by those who wished to boycott the values of a consumer-based society that was concerned only with acquisition. Blue-jeans-wearing rebels of popular movies were an expression of contempt towards the empty and obedient silence of Cold-War America; the positive images of American consumer society were under siege. What had been a piece of traditional American culture—blue jeans—became a rejection of traditional culture.

单选题Recalculating the global use of phosphorus, an important fertilizer element of modem agriculture, a team of researchers warns that the world's stocks may soon be in short supply and that overuse in the industrialized world has become a leading cause of the pollution of lakes, rivers and streams. Writing in the Feb. 14 edition of the journal Environmental Research Letters, Stephen Carpenter of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Elena Bennett of McGill University report that the human use of phosphorus, primarily in the industrialized world, is causing the widespread eutrophication of fresh surface water. What's more, the minable global stocks of phosphorus are concentrated in just a few countries and are in decline, posing the risk of global shortages within the next 20 years. "There is a finite amount of phosphorus in the world," says Carpenter, one of the world's leading authorities on lakes and streams. "This is a material that's becoming rarer and we need to use it more efficiently." Phosphorus is an essential element for life. Living organisms, including humans, have small amounts and the element is crucial for driving the energetic processes of cells. In agriculture, phosphorus mined from ancient marine deposits is widely used to boost crop yields. The element also has other industrial uses. But excess phosphorus from fertilizer that washes from farm fields and suburban lawns into lakes and streams is the primary cause of the algae blooms that destroy freshwater ecosystems arid degrade water quality. Phosphorus pollution poses a risk to fish and other water life as well as to the animals and humans who depend on clean fresh water. In some instances, excess phosphorus sparks blooms of toxic algae, which pose a direct threat to human and animal life. "If you have too much phosphorus, you get eutrophication," explains Carpenter, of the cycle of excessive plant and algae growth that significantly degrades bodies of fresh water. "Phosphorus stimulates the growth of algae and weeds near shore and some of the algae can contain cyanobacteria, which are toxic. You lose fish. You lose water quality for drinking." The fertilizer-fueled algae blooms themselves amplify the problem as the algae die and release accumulated phosphorus back into the water. Complicating the problem, says Carpenter, is the fact that excess phosphorus in the environment is a problem primarily in the industrialized world, mainly Europe, North America and parts of Asia. In other parts of the world, notably Africa and Australia, soils are phosphorus poor, creating a stark imbalance. Ironically, soils in places like North America, where fertilizers with phosphorus are most commonly applied, are already loaded with the element. Bennett and Carpenter argue that agriculture practices to better conserve phosphate within agricultural ecosystems are necessary to avert the widespread pollution of surface waters. Phosphorus from parts of the world where the element is abundant, they say, can be moved to phosphorus deficient regions of the world by extracting phosphorus from manure, for example, using manure digesters.