单选题Prices are sky-high, with profits to match. But looking further ahead, the industry faces wrenching change, says an expert of energy. "The time when we could count on cheap oil and even cheaper natural gas is clearly ending. "That was the gloomy forecast delivered in February by Dave O'Reilly, the chairman of Chevron Texaco, to hundreds of oilmen gathered for a conference in Houston. The following month, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez gleefully echoed the sentiment: "The world should forget about cheap oil." The surge in oil prices, from ＄10 a barrel in 1998 to above ＄50 in early 2005,has prompted talk of a new era of sustained higher prices. But whenever a "new era" in oil is hailed, scepticism is in order. After all, this is essentially a cyclical business in which prices habitually yo-yo. Even so, an unusually loud chorus is now joining Messrs O'Reilly and Chavez, pointing to intriguing evidence of a new "price floor" of ＄30 or perhaps even ＄40. Confusingly, though, there are also signs that high oil prices may be caused by a speculative bubble that could burst quite suddenly. To see which camp is right, two questions need answering: why did the oil price soar? And what could keep it high? To make matters more complicated, there is in fact no such thing as a single "oil price": rather, there are dozens of varieties of crude trading at different prices. When newspapers write about oil prices, they usually mean one of two reference crudes: Brent from the North Sea, or West Texas Intermediate (WTI) . But when ministers from the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) discuss prices, they usually refer to a basket of heavier cartel crudes, which trade at a discount to WTI and Brent. All oil prices mentioned in this survey are per barrel of WTI The recent volatility in prices is only one of several challenges facing the oil industry. Although at first sight Big Oil seems to be in rude health, posting record profits, this survey will argue that the western oil majors will have their work cut out to cope with the rise of resource nationalism, which threatens to choke off access to new oil reserves. This is essential to replace their existing reserves, which are rapidly declining. They will also have to respond to efforts by governments to deal with oil's serious environmental and geopolitical side-effects. Together, these challenges could yet wipe out the oil majors.

单选题The attitude of economists toward the prospect of dollar against euro is

单选题What does the example of the smallpox vaccine illustrate?

单选题The word "it" (Line 1, Paragraph 4) most probably refers to

单选题CORNELL'S SUICIDE PROBLEM. That's the description that broadcasted across the bottom of CNN during this morning's segment about the university installing fences to prevent people from jumping into the gap. Actually, CNN, it's not a suicide problem so much as a media problem—a problem stemming from outlets like yours that are quick to spread the myth that Cornell is the "suicide school". The New York Times is guilty, too. After the third Cornell suicide in less than a month, the Times ran a front-page story that said the university was on "high alert about the mental health of its students" and that the recent deaths "have cast a golly atmosphere over the university and renewed talk of Cornell's reputation—unsup-ported, say officials—as a high-stress 'suicide school'". But it's not until deep into the jump, on April 25th, that the article addresses the actual statistics, which indicate that Cornell's rate of suicides is no higher than the national average for a university of that size (about two a year). Other high-pressure colleges have more troubling numbers to contend with. MIT's suicide rate since 1964, when the university started keeping track, is about 14.6 per 100,000 students, according to an article in MIT's student newspaper, The Tech, compared to about 4.3 per 100,000 over the same time period at Cornell. And although the recent concentration of Cornell suicides is tragic and remarkable, it comes on the heels of four years without a single one. But the suicide-free years don't make headlines; jumpers do. Granted, I'm a proud Cornell alumna, so I'm particularly sensitive about these misconceptions. But I like to think I'm relatively objective about my alma mater. Cornell suicides, when they occur, tend to be dramatic. They get national media attention with frightening images like the ones CNN was flashing today of guys in uniforms watching the campus bridges. The idea of a stressed-out undergraduate throwing himself into a deep gap—it's frightening, and it stays with you. So much so that you probably remember it as more exaggerated a problem than it actually is. Individuals can't be faulted for that—our brains do funny things with unreliable evidence. But media outlets are different, and should be found at fault when they fan these misconceptions.

单选题Ever since they were first staged in 19th century Europe, world's fairs have enabled people from around the globe to visit wondrous pavilions where they can discover distant lands and new technologies. The 2006 world's fair is no exception, but it also has a decidedly new- era twist: the whole event happens in cyberspace. A nonprofit project dreamed up by Americans Carl Malamud, a computer consultant, and Vinton Cerf, and Internet pioneer and telecommunications-company vice president, the Internet 2006 World Exposition is a digital work in progress, a multi-chambered forum that cybernauts can help build and renovate throughout the year--and perhaps long after the fair's official close in December. While high-tech pavilions set up by sponsoring corporations are featured prominently, as in real fairs, this virtual exposition is closer in spirit and reality to a vast bustling bazaar, a marketplace for the talents and offerings of thousands of individuals and small groups. Anyone with a computer and a modem can not only "attend" but also participate as an exhibitor by creating an individual multimedia Website. Getting the fair up and running was by no means easy. Malamud, 36, spent the past year shuttling among 30 countries, lobbying companies that initially dismissed the project as unwieldy and unworkable. While some nations immediately supported the idea, others completely missed the point of Malamud's vision: to make the fair a public-works project that focuses on what the Internet can offer expert or novice. Once grass-roots groups started backing the project, though, businesses were not far behind. By donating equipment and services, these companies will gain access to millions of potential consumers eager to see the firms' latest technologies. Since the exposition's Jan. 1 launch, as many as 40,000 visitors each day from more than 40 countries have tried the major Websites. Most virtual visitors log on from the U. S and Japan, but the United Arab Emirates, Sweden, Singapore and Estonia have been represented. Comments logged in the fair's guest book are overwhelmingly positive. "Wow, the world is shrinking," wrote a visitor from the Netherlands. Since their initial hesitancy, the major sponsors-primarily telecommunications and software companies--have become firm believers. Beyond the diversity of content and international scope, the fair is a technological marvel. The fastest international link ever installed, this pipeline could be the first step toward laying a permanent network that will eventually hardwire every nation in the world into the Internet. The organizers hope that the infrastructure--and awareness-nurtured by this exposition will launch a boom in Net use.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Until recently, most American entrepreneurs (企业家)were men. Discrimination against women in business, the demands of caring for families, and lack of business training had kept the number of women entrepreneurs small. Now, however, businesses owned by women account for more than ＄40 billion in annual revenues, and this figure is likely to continue rising throughout the 1980s. As Carolyn Doppelt Gray, an official of the Small Business Administration, has noted, "The 1970s was the decade of women entering management, and the 1980s has turned out to be the decade of the woman entrepreneur." What are some of the factors behind this trend? For one thing, as more women earn advanced degrees in business and enter the corporate world, they are finding obstacles. Women are still excluded from most executive suites. Charlotte Taylor, a management consultant, had noted, "In the 1970s women believed if they got an MBA and worked hard, they could become chairman of the board. Now they've found out that isn't going to happen, so they go out on their own." In the past, most women entrepreneurs worked in "women's" fields—cosmetics and clothing, for example. But this is changing. Consider ASK Computer Systems, a ＄22-million-a-year computer software business. It was founded in 1973 by Sandra Kurtzig, who was then a housewife with degrees in math and engineering. When Kurtzig founded the business, her first product was software that let weekly newspapers keep tabs on their newspaper carriers—and her office was a bedroom at home, with a shoebox under the bed to hold the company's cash. After she succeeded with the newspaper software system, she hired several bright computer-science graduates to develop additional programs. When these were marketed and sold. ASK began to grow. It now has 200 employees, and Sandra Kurtzig owns ＄66.9 million of stock. Of course, many women who start their own businesses fail, just as men often do. They still face hurdles in the business world, especially problems in raising money; the Banking and finance world is still dominated by men, and old attitudes die hard. Most businesses owned by women are still quite small. But the situation is changing; there are likely to be many more Sandra Kurtzigs in the years ahead.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Globally, recovery is going slightly better than expected, according to the IMF, which released its latest World Economic Outlook today. After shrinking by 0.6% last year, the global economy is likely to expand by 4.2% in 2010, 0.3% faster than the IMF projected in January. But economic performances will continue to vary widely around the world. Much of the upward revision to global growth can be attributed to a better outlook for the American economy. The IMF revised its forecast for American economic expansion in 2010 up 0.4%, to 3.1%. There was no change, by contrast, for the euro area, which already faced a poorer growth outlook. The Euro area economy may only grow by 1% in 2010 and 1.5% in 2011. And much of the job of expansion will be handled by Germany and France, while southern European growth continues to lag. Spain's economy will continue to shrink in 2010. But the outlook is brightening for many emerging economies, including those in central and eastern Europe, for which growth forecasts were revised up by 0.8%. Developing Asia is enjoying a strong recovery, and the IMF indicated that both India and Brazil are likely to perform much better this year than initially anticipated, notching (赢得) growth rates of 8.8% and 5.5%, respectively. The report suggested that planned stimulus measures for 2010 should be fully implemented, given the fragility of recovery, but it also noted that sovereign debt worries will become more severe as the year progresses. Debt issues are likely to prove especially problematic in Europe, which has the highest debt ratios and the slowest expected growth rates. The stressed southern European nations are in a damned-if-they-do-damned-if-they-don't position. If little action is taken on debt, rising debt costs will choke of an already weak recovery. If aggressive action is taken, the blow to aggregate demand will likewise undermine growth. Around the world, trade and production have recovered strongly, but employment remains well below prerecession levels in most countries. Labour market weakness is helping to keep inflation expectations in check; the IMF forecasts consumer price increases in developed nations of 1.5% in 2010 and 1.4% in 2011. But the return to strong growth is boosting commodity prices once more. Oil prices may increase by 30% in 2010, said the IMF, a rise 7% larger than projected in January. The overall picture is of a remarkable turnaround in global fortunes, given the depth of the recession. The year's performance is much better than many would have dared to hope early last year. But in parts of Europe, the future is somewhat less certain, and because that uncertain future could lead to sovereign debt crises that could potentially rattle financial markets, world leaders should remain vigilant.

单选题The first man who cooked his food, instead of eating it raw, lived so long ago that we have no idea who he was or where he lived. We do know, however, that (1) thousands of years food was always eaten cold and (2) . Perhaps the cooked food was heated accidentally by a (3) fire or by the melted lava from an erupting (4) . When people first tasted food that had been cooked, they found it tasted better. However, (5) after this discover, cooked food must have remained a rarity (6) man learned how to make and light (7) . Primitive men who lived in hot regions could depend on the heat of the sun (8) their food. For example, in the desert (9) of the southwestern. United States, the Indians cooked their food by (10) it on a flat (11) in the hot sun. They cooked piece of meat and thin cakes of com meal in this (12) . We surmise that the earliest kitchen (13) was stick (14) which a piece of meat could be attached and held over a fire. Later this stick was (15) by an iron rod or spit which could be turned frequently to cook the meat (16) all sides. Cooking food in water was (17) before man learned to make water containers that could not be (18) by fire. The (19) cooking pots were reed or grass baskets in which soups, and stews could be cooked. As early as 166 B. C, the Egyptians had learned to make (20) permanent cooking pots out of sand stone. Many years later, the Eskimos learned to make similar pans.

单选题Charles Reznikoff (1894～1976) worked relentlessly, never leaving New York but for a brief stay in Hollywood, of all places. He was admired by Pound and Kenneth Burke. and often published his own works; in the Depression era, he managed a treadle printing press in his basement. He wrote three sorts of poems: exceptionally short imagistic lyrics; longer pieces crafted and cobbled from other sources, often from the Judaic tradition: and book-length poems wrought from the testimony both of Holocaust trials and from the courtrooms of mm-of-the-century America. Two of these full-length volumes were indeed titled Testimony, as was an earlier prose work; it was a word that kept him close company. When asked late in life to define his poetry, it was not the word he chose. "Objectivist,' he wrote, naming his longstanding group, and mimicking poetic style with a single prose sentence: "images clear but the meaning not stated but suggested by the objective details and the music of the verse: words pithy and plain: without the artifice of regular meters: themes, chiefly Jewish. American. urban." If the sentence sounds hard-won, this is perhaps because it was. Four decades earlier, he wrote in a letter to friends, "There is a learned article about my verse in Poetry this month, from which I learn that I am an objectivist." The learned fellow was Louis Zukofsky, brilliant eminence of the Objectivists. "with whom I disagree as to both form and content of verse, but to whom I am obliged for placing some of my things here and there." So read Reznikoffs conclusion in 1931. with its fillip of polite resentment. Movements and schools are arbitrary and immaterial things by which poetic history is told. This must have rankled Reznikoff. who spent his writing life tracing the material and the necessary. Born a child of immigrants in Brooklyn in 1294. he was in journalism school at 16, took a law degree at 21. Though he was little interested in legal practice, the ideas would be near the heart of his writing. Ideal poetic language, he wrote, "is restricted almost to the testimony of a witness in a court of law." If this suggests a congenital optimism about the law. it made for astonishingly care-filled poetry. Reznikoff is unsurpassed in conveying the sense that the world is worth getting right. Not the glorious or the damaged world, but the world that is everything that is the case. Reznikoffs faith in the facts of the case takes on an intensity no less social than spiritual, no greater when surveying the Old Testament than New York This collection gathers all his poems (but for those already book-length) by the technique of compressing onto single pages as many as five or six at a time. This can lessen the force; each is a sort of American haiku, though no more impressionistic than a hand-operated printing press. One such. numbered 69 in the volume Jerusalem the Golden, runs in its length: "Among the heaps of brick and plaster lies f a girder, still itself among the rubbish." This exemplary couplet is sometimes taken to represent Reznikoff's poetry itself, immutable and certain amid the transitory.

单选题Has America gone insane? Season six for American Idol has caused us to ask some fundamental questions about the reality television phenomenon. Show judge Simon Cowell repeatedly chides(斥责) contestants," This is a singing competition. But is it really? When talented singers such as Gina Glocksen are voted off in favor of a tone-deaf Sanjaya Malakar, with his trainwreck performances, the question is whether Idol is really a singing competition, or something altogether different. Although Sanjaya was only in the middle of the pack for last week's vote, on the Web he was the most searched for Idol contestant of the season, garnering(获得) more than twice the volume of searches than his nearest rival (not counting the continuing quests for racy photos of Antonella Barba, who is no longer in the competition). Theories abound as to Sanjaya's staying power on the show, from suggestions of a flood of offshore voting to the texting power of pre-pubescent girls. There is one theory that can actually be quantified by Internet data: shock-jock Howard Stern's campaigning for show-spoiler site Vote for the Worst" to support voting for the entertaining contestants who the producers would hate to see win on American Idol, according to site creator Dave Della Terza, who teaches a course in reality television at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Ill. While Votefortheworst.com is small compared to the official American Idol site, the fact that it gets nearly a fifth as many online visits gives it the strength to sway a vote. Vote for the Worst is gaining strength, with over a 50% growth since last season, which can be attributed largely to the self-proclaimed "King of All Media." But what does the American public think of the unlikely Idol star? Of all of the searches for Sanjaya over the last four weeks, 41% were searching on variations of his name," Sanjaya, or" Sanjaya Malakar, and various misspellings. At least 2.9% searched for information on Sanjaya's sister, who didn't make the cut on the show. The next most popular search topic regarded questions about Sanjaya's sexual orientation, with searches such as "Sanjaya Malakar gay", "Sanjaya gay" and" is Sanjaya gay? What's missing are searches related to Sanjaya's musical selection or talent. The Sanjaya phenomenon, while amusing, highlights the biggest challenge to reality shows that depend on a public vote for show outcome. It's not a singing contest, or even a popularity contest; it's become a race to see who can make the biggest spectacle. In that context, Sanjaya has the advantage.

单选题The service role of colleges specifically aims to

单选题 On 26 March, the Italian Senate approved a bill that would give physicians in the country the right to {{U}}override{{/U}} the living wills of people who are in a persistent vegetative state, and to try to keep the patients alive through artificial nutrition. The measure has caused intense controversy. Many countries have laws, or established codes of medical practice, that protect the expressed wishes of an individual to decline treatment if they become severely incapacitated and incapable of communicating. In most US states, for example, a doctor must negotiate with relatives via an ethics committee if he or she believes that a patient incapacitated in this way could benefit from additional treatment. The Italian bill, however, explicitly allows physicians to overrule such living wills. It also declares that artificial nutrition is not a clinical intervention. Curiously, the proposed law applies only to patients in the type of prolonged, deep coma known as a persistent vegetative state, and not to those with other, similarly incapacitating illnesses. This is because the bill has been prompted by the recent and much-publicized death of Eluana Englaro, who spent 17 years in a vegetative state after a car accident at the age of 21. Her father, argtfing that his daughter had voiced a desire to be allowed to die if incapacitated, had pressed her reluctant doctors to cease artificial feeding. He eventually took legal action, winning in one court after the next in fighting off all the doctors' appeals. In February, he finally had her moved to a hospital that was prepared to remove the feeding tube. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi issued an emergency decree to block the process, but the Italian president refused to sign it. The constitutional crisis was averted when Englaro died on 9 February. Surveys have indicated that a large majority of Italians do not support the idea that living wills could be ignored But most relevant scientific societies have been quiet. The Federation of Italian Physicians published only a mild statement, after the Senate vote, suggesting that it should have been consulted. As tragic as Englaro's situation was, media-fuelled emotion is not a good basis for lawmaking. The Italian constitution says that no one can be forced to undergo medical treatment without his or her approval. The Italian parliament must now ensure that the bill is imbued with a suitable level of scientific and legal sophistication, and that it meets this constitutional provision. Discussion needs to embrace the requested wider consultation with the medical community and provisions should be made for care-givers' conscientious objection. But a physician whose conscience precludes his or her personally removing a feeding tube should not have the last say in the life or death of a patient whose wishes are clearly stated.