单选题Over the past few decades, the common interest shown in applied mathematics is ______.

单选题College sports in the United States are a huge deal. Almost all major American universities have football, baseball, basketball and hockey programs, and (1) millions of dollars each year to sports. Most of them earn millions (2) as well, in television revenues, sponsorships. They also benefit (3) from the added publicity they get via their teams. Big-name universities (4) each other in the most popular sports. Football games at Michigan regularly (5) crowds of over 20, 000. Basketball’s national collegiate championship game is a TV (6) on a par with any other sporting event in the United States, (7) perhaps the Super Bowl itself. At any given time during fall or winter one can (8) one’s TV set and see the top athletic programs — from schools like Michigan, UCLA, Duke and Stanford — (9) in front of packed houses and national TV audiences. The athletes themselves are (10) and provided with scholarships. College coaches identify (11) teenagers and then go into high schools to (12) the country’s best players to attend their universities. There are strict rules about (13) coaches can recruit — no recruiting calls after 9 p. m., only one official visit to a campus — but they are often bent and sometimes (14) . Top college football programs (15) scholarships to 20 or 30 players each year, and those student-athletes, when they arrive (16) campus, receive free housing, tuition, meals, books, etc. In return, the players (17) the program in their sport. Football players at top colleges (18) two hours a day, four days a week from January to April. In summer, it’s back to strength and agility training four days a week until mid-August, when camp (19) and preparation for the opening of the September-to-December season begins (20) . During the season, practices last two or three hours a day from Tuesday to Friday. Saturday is game day. Mondays are an officially mandated day of rest.

单选题What does the word "Which" in line 3 of the third paragraph refer to?

单选题She knew how to make an entrance. Her dark hair cut in a severe pageboy, Ayn Rand would sweep into a room with a long black cape, a dollar-sign pin on her lapel and an ever present cigarette in an ivory holder. Melodramatic, yes, but Rand didn't have time to be subtle. She had millions of people to convert to objectivism, her philosophy of radical individualism, limited government and avoidance of altruism and religion. Her adoring followers--some called them a cult--revered her as the high priestess of laissez-faire capitalism until her death in 1982 at age 77. The bad economy has been good news for Rand's legacy. Her fierce denunciations of government regulation have sent sales of her two best-known novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, soaring. Yet her me-first brand of capitalism has been exccoriated (严厉批评) for fomenting (引发) the recent financial crisis. And her most famous former acolyte-onetime Fed chairman Alan Greenspan--has been blamed for inflating the housing bubble by refusing to intervene in the market. In the midst of the newly rekindled debate, two excellent biographies have just been published: Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne C. Heller (Doubleday; 592 pages), is a comprehensive study, in novelistic detail, of Rand's personal life, and Goddess of the Market : Ayn Rand and the American Right, by Jenniter Burns (Oxford; 369 pages), leans more heavily on Rand's theories and politics. From her earliest years, Rand was a woman on a mission. Born in 1905 to a bourgeois Jewish family in St. Petersburg, Rand was 12 when the Bolshevik Revolution took place. Her family, suddenly poor, was forced to flee, and Rand's hatred of communism and any sort of collectivism would guide her life. Arriving in the US in 1926 with a new name, Ayn (rhymes with fine) made her way to Hollywood, where she had modest success as a screenwriter and married an aspiring actor, Frank O'Connor. Her politicization came when she and her husband worked on Republican Wendell Willkie's losing presidential campaign in 1940. According to Burns, "Before Willkie she had been pro-capitalist yet pessimistic, writing 'The capitalist world is low, unprincipled, and corrupt. ' Now she celebrated capitalism as the 'noblest, cleanest and most idealistic system of all'. " The Fountainhead, an epic novel chronicling the struggles of an architect named Howard Roark against conventional values, was her breakout work. In her race to get the sprawling 700-page book to press, she began taking the amphetamine Benzedrine (一种兴奋剂的名称) to fuel her efforts. "Rand used it to power her last months of work on the novel, including several 24-hour sessions correcting page proofs," writes Burns. The book brought Rand financial security and fame.

单选题As mentioned in the text, Japanese consumers are generally

单选题What's your earliest childhood memory? Can you remember learning to walk? Or talk? The first time you heard thunder or watched a television program? Adults seldom (1) events much earlier than the year or so before entering school, (2) children younger than three or four (3) retain any specific, personal experiences. A variety of explanations have been (4) by psychologists for this " childhood amnesia " . One argues that the hippocampus, the region of the brain which is (5) for formling memories, does not mature until about the age of two. But the most popular theory (6) that, since adults don't think like children, they cannot (7) childhood memories. Adults think in words, and their life memories are like stories or (8) —one event follows another as in a novel or film. (9) , when they search through their mental (10) for early childhood memories to add to this verbal life story, they don't find any that fit the (11) . It's like trying to find a Chinese word in an English dictionary. Now psychologist Annette Simms of the New York State University offers a new (12) for childhood amnesia. She argues that there simply aren't any early childhood memories to recall. According to Dr. Simms, children need to learn to use someone else's spoken (13) of their personal (14) in order to turn their own short-term, quickly forgotten (15) of them into long-term memories. (16) , children have to talk about their (17) and hear others talk about them—Mother talking about the afternoon (18) looking for seashells at the beach or Dad asking them about their day at Ocean Park. Without this (19) reinforcement, says Dr.Simms, children cannot form (20) memories of their personal experiences.

单选题The main problem of insurance coverage for hospice care and active treatment is that______.

单选题Employees with on-line relationships can benefit the company because

单选题"WHAT'S the difference between God and Larry Ellison?" asks an old software industry joke. Answer: God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison. The boss of Oracle is hardly alone among corporate chiefs in having a reputation for being rather keen on himself. Indeed', until the bubble burst and the public turned nasty at the start of the decade, the cult of the celebrity chief executive seemed to demand bossly narcissism, as evidence that a firm was being led by an all-conquering hero. Narcissus met a nasty end, of course. And in recent years, boss-worship has come to be seen as bad for business. In his management bestseller, "Good to Great", Jim Collins argued that the truly successful bosses were not the serf-proclaimed stars who adorn the covers of Forbes and Fortune, but instead self-effacing, thoughtful, monkish sorts who lead by inspiring example. A statistical answer may be at hand. For the first time, a new study, "It's All About Me", to be presented next week at the annual gathering of the American Academy of Management, offers a systematic, empirical analysis of what effect narcissistic bosses have on the firms they run. The authors, Arijit Chatterjee and Donald Hambrick, of Pennsylvania State University, examined narcissism in the upper levels of 105 firms in the computer and software industries. To do this, they bad to solve a practical problem: studies of narcissism have hitherto relied on surveying individuals personally, something for which few chief executives are likely to have time or inclination. So the authors devised an index of narcissism using six publicly available indicators obtainable without the co-operation of the boss. These are: the prominence of the boss's photo in the annual report; his prominence in company press releases; the length of his "Who's Who" entry; the frequency of his use of the first person singular in interviews; and the ratios of his cash and non-cash compensation to those of the firm's second-highest paid executive. Narcissism naturally drives people to seek positions of power and influence, and because great self-esteem helps your professional advance, say the authors, chief executives will tend on average to be more narcissistic than the general population. How does that affect a firm? Messrs Chatterjee and Hambrick found that highly narcissistic bosses tended to make bigger changes in the use of important resources, such as research and development, or in spending and leverage; they carried out more and bigger mergers and acquisitions; and their results were both more extreme (more big wins or big losses) and more transient than those of firms run by their humbler peers. For shareholders, that could be good or bad. Although (oddly) the authors are keeping their narcissism ranking secret, they have revealed that Mr Ellison did not come top. Alas for him, that may be because the study limited itseff to people who became the boss after 1991--well after he took the helm. In every respect Mr Ellison seems to be the classic narcissistic boss, claims Mr Chatterjee. There is life in the old joke yet.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} The domestic economy in the United States expanded in a remarkably vigorous and steady fashion. The revival in consumer confidence was reflected in the higher proportion of incomes spent for goods and services and the marked increase in consumer willingness to take on installment debt. A parallel strengthening in business psychology was manifested in a stepped-up rate of plant and equipment spending and a gradual pickup in expenses for inventory. Confidence in the economy was also reflected in the strength of the stock market and in the stability of the bond market. For the year as a whole, consumer and business sentiment benefited from the ease in East-West tensions. The bases of the business expansion were to be found mainly in the stimulative monetary and fiscal policies that had been pursued. Moreover, the restoration of sounder liquidity positions and tighter management control of production efficiency had also helped lay the groundwork for a strong expansion. In addition, the economic policy moves made by the President had served to renew optimism on the business outlook while boosting hopes that inflation would be brought under more effective control. Finally, of course, the economy was able to grow as vigorously as it did because sufficient leeway existed in terms of idle men and machines. The United States balance of payments deficit declined sharply. Nevertheless, by any other test, the deficit remained very large, and there was actually a substantial deterioration in our trade account to a sizable deficit, almost two-thirds of which was with Japan. While the overall trade performance proved disappointing, there are still good reasons for expecting the delayed impact of devaluation to produce in time a significant strengthening in our trade picture. Given the size of the Japanese component of our trade deficit, however, the outcome will depend importantly on the extent of the corrective measures undertaken by Japan. Also important will be our own efforts in the United States to fashion internal policies consistent with an improvement in our external balance. The underlying task of public policy for the year ahead--and indeed for the longer run--remained a familiar one: to strike the right balance between encouraging healthy economic growth and avoiding inflationary pressures. With the economy showing sustained and vigorous growth, and with the currency crisis highlighting the need to improve our Competitive posture internationally, the emphasis seemed to be shifting to the problem of inflation. The Phase Three program of wage and price restraint can contribute to reducing inflation. Unless productivity growth is unexpectedly large, however, the expansion of real output must eventually begin to slow down to the economy's larger run growth potential if generalized demand pressures on prices are to be avoided. (449 words){{B}}Notes:{{/B}} inventory n.存货。East-West tensions 东西方紧张局势。fiscal (与国库的钱有关的)财务的(常指税收)。liquidity 周转率，清偿力。leeway n.回旋，余地。given 鉴于，由于。the Phase Three program 第三个阶段计划。

单选题It seems that the woman mentioned in the last paragraph

单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} For the past two years in Silicon Valley, the centre of America's technology industry, conference-goers have entertained themselves playing a guessing game: how many times will a speaker mention the phrase "long tail"? It is usually a high number, thanks to the influence of the long-tail theory, which was first developed by Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired magazine, in an article in 2004. Though technologists and bloggers chuckle at how every business presentation now has to have its long-tail section, most are envious of Mr. Anderson, whose brainwave quickly became the most fashionable business idea around. Whether a blockbuster film, a bestselling novel, or a chart-topping rap song, popular culture idolises the hit. Companies devote themselves to creating them because the cost of distribution and the limits of shelf space in physical shops mean that profitability depends on a high volume of sales. But around the beginning of this century a group of internet companies realised that with endless shelves and a national or even international audience online they could offer a huge range of products—and make money at the same time. The niche, the obscure and the specialist, Mr. Anderson argues, will gain ground at the expense of the hit. As evidence, he points to a drop in the number of companies that traditionally calculate their revenue/sales ratio according to the 80/20 rule—where the top fifth of products contribute four-fifths of revenues. Ecast, a San Francisco digital jukebox company, found that 98% of its 10000 albums sold at least one track every three months. Expressed in the language of statistics, the experiences of Ecast and other companies such as Aragon, an online bookseller, suggest that products down in the long tail of a statistical distribution, added together, can be highly profitable. The internet helps people find their way to relatively obscure material with recommendations and reviews by other people, (and for those willing to have their artistic tastes predicted by a piece of software) computer programs which analyse past selections. Long-tail enthusiasts argue that the whole of culture will benefit, not just commercial enterprises. Television, film and music are such bewitching media in their own right that many people are quite happy to watch and listen to what the mainstream provides. But if individuals have the opportunity to pick better, more ideally suited entertainment from a far wider selection, they will take it, according to the theory of the long tail. Some analysts reckon that entire populations might become happier and wiser once they have access to thousands of documentaries, independent films and subgenres of every kind of music, instead of being subjected to what Mr. Anderson calls the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare. That might be taking things a bit far. But the long tail is certainly one of the internet's better gifts to humanity.

单选题The term "grub" ( Line 5, Paragraph 4) most probably means

单选题According to the text, the servant problem is to the ruling class what