单选题It is implied in the last paragraph that

单选题The scourge that's plaguing cruise lines—and causing thousands of Americans to rethink their holiday travel plans—didn't start this year, nor did it even start on a ship. It began, as far as the Centers for Disease Control(CDC) can tell, in Norwalk, Ohio, in October 1968, when 116 elementary-school children and teachers suddenly became ill. The CDC investigated, and the culprit was discovered to be a small, spherical, previously unclassified virus that scientists named, appropriately enough, the Norwalk virus. Flash forward 34 years, and Norwalk-like viruses(there's a whole family of them) are all over the news as one ocean liner after another limps into port with passengers complaining of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and cramping. The CDC, which gets called in whenever more than 2% of a vessel's passengers come down with the same disease, identified Norwalk as the infectious agent and oversaw thorough ship scrubbings— which to the dismay of the owners of the cruise lines, haven't made the problem go away. So are we in the middle of an oceangoing epidemic? Not according to Dave Forney, chief of the CDC's vessel-sanitation program. He sees this kind of thing all the time; a similar outbreak on several ships in Alaska last summer got almost no press. In fact, he says, as far as gastrointestinal illness goes, fewer people may be getting sick this year than last. Norwalk-like viruses, it turns out, are extremely common—perhaps second only to cold viruses—and they tend to break out whenever people congregate in close quarters for more than two or three days. Oceangoing pleasure ships provide excellent breeding grounds, but so do schools, hotels, camps, nursing homes and hospitals. "Whenever we look for this virus," says Dr. Marc Widdowson, a CDC epidemiologist, "we find it." Just last week 100 students (of500) at the Varsity Acres Elementary School in Calgary, Alta stayed home sick. School prank? Hardly. The Norwalk virus had struck again. If ocean cruises are your idea of fun, don't despair. This might even be a great time to go shopping for a bargain. The ships have been cleaned. The food and water have been examined and found virus free. According to the CDC, it was probably the passengers who brought the virus aboard. Of course, if you are ill or recovering from a stomach bug, you might do everybody a favor and put off your travel until the infectious period has passed (it can take a couple of weeks). To reduce your chances of getting sick, the best thing to do is wash your hands—frequently and thoroughly—and keep them out of your mouth. One more thing: if, like me, you are prone to motion sickness, don't forget to pack your Dramamine.

单选题According to the passage, a conversation between two Americans may break down due to _______

单选题Companies have embarked on what looks like the beginnings of a re-run of the mergers and acquisitions (M＆A) wave that defined the second bubbly half of the 1990s. That period, readers might recall, was characterized by a collective splurge that saw the creation of some of the most indebted companies in history, many of which later went bankrupt or were themselves broken up. Wild bidding for telecoms, internet and media assets, not to mention the madness that was Daimler's $40 billion motoring takeover in 1998-1999 of Chrysler or the Time-Warner/AOL mega-merger in 2000, helped to give mergers a thoroughly bad name. A consensus emerged that M＆A was a great way for investment banks to reap rich fees, and a sure way for ambitious managers to betray investors by trashing the value of their shares. Now M＆A is back. Its return is a global phenomenon, but it is perhaps most striking in Europe, where so far this year there has been a stream of deals worth more than $600 billion in total, around 40% higher than in the same period of 2004. The latest effort came this week when France's Saint-Gobain, a building-materials firm, unveiled the details of its ￡3.6 billion ( $6.5 billion) hostile bid for BPB, a British rival. In the first half of the year, cross-border activity was up threefold over the same period last year. Even France Telecom, which was left almost bankrupt at the end of the last merger wave, recently bought Amena, a Spanish mobile operator. Shareholder's approval of all these deals raises an interesting question for companies everywhere: are investors right to think thin these mergers are more likely to succeed than earlier ones? There are two answers. The first is that past mergers may have been judged too harshly. The second is that the present rash of European deals does look more rational, but—and the caveat is crucial—only so far. The pattern may not hold. M＆A's poor reputation stems not only from the string of spectacular failures in the 1990s, but also from studies that showed value destruction for acquiring shareholders in 80% of deals. But more recent studies by economists have introduced a note of caution. Investors should look at the number of deals that succeed or fail (typically measured by the impact on the share price), rather than (as you might think) weighing them by size. For example, no one doubts that the Daimler-Chrysler merger destroyed value. The combined market value of the two firms is still below that of Daimler alone before the deal. This single deal accounted for half of all German M＆A activity by value in 1998 and 1999, and probably dominated people's thinking about mergers to the same degree. Throw in a few other such monsters and it is no wonder that broad studies have tended to find that mergers are a bad idea. The true picture is more complicated.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} The idea is as audacious as it altruistic: provide a personal laptop computer to every schoolchild -- particularly in the poorest parts of the world. The first step to making that happen is whittling the price down to $100. And that is the goal of a group of American techno-gurus led by Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the fabled MIT Media Lab. When he unveiled the idea at the World Economic Forum in January it seemed wildly ambitious. But surprisingly, it is starting to become a reality. Mr. Negroponte plans to display the first prototype in November at a UN summit. Four countries -- Brazil, Egypt, Thailand and South Africa -- have said they will buy over I m units each. Production is due to start in late 2006. How is the group, called One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), able to create a laptop so inexpensively? It is mainly a matter of cleverly combining existing technologies in new ways. The laptop will have a basic processor made by AMD, flash memory instead of a hard disk, will be powered by batteries or a hand-crank, and will run open-source software. The $100 laptop also puts all the components behind the screen, not under the keyboard, so there is no need for an expensive hinge. So far, OLPC has got the price down to around $130. But good news for the world's poor, may not be such great news for the world's computer manufacturers. The new machine is not simply of interest in the developing world. On September 22nd, Mitt Romney, the governor of Massachusetts, said the state should purchase one for every secondary-school student, when they become available. Sales to schools are just one way in which the $100 laptop could change the computer industry more broadly. By depressing prices and fuelling the trend for "good-enough computing", where customers upgrade less often, it could eventually put pressure on the world's biggest PC-makers.

单选题By citing examples of women employment in Sweden, the author intends to show that

单选题In the first paragraph, the author is mainly concerned with______.

单选题What can we infer from the last sentence of the passage?

单选题What may cause the percentage of workers to decline?

单选题The European Union's Barcelona summit, which ended on March 16th, was played out against the usual backdrop of noisy "anti-globalizati0n' demonstrations and massive security. If nothing else, the demonstrations illustrated that economic liberalization in Europe--the meeting's main topic--presents genuine political difficulties. Influential sections of public opinion continue to oppose anything that they imagine threatens "social Europe", the ideal of a cradle-to-grave welfare state. In this climate of public opinion, it is not surprising that the outcome in Barcelona was modest. The totemic issue was opening up Europe's energy markets. The French government has fought hard to preserve a protected market at home for its state-owned national champion, Electricite de France (EDF). At Barcelona it. made a well-flagged tactical retreat. The summiteers concluded that from 2004 industrial users across Europe would be able to choose from competing energy suppliers, which should account for "at least" 60% of the market. Since Europe's energy market is worth 350 billion (＄ 309 billion) a year and affects just about every business, this is a breakthrough. But even the energy deal has disappointing aspects. Confining competition to business users makes it harder to show that economic liberalization is the friend rather than the foe of the ordinary person. It also allows EDF to keep its monopoly in the most profitable chunk of the French market. In other areas, especially to do with Europe's tough labor markets, the EU is actually going backwards. The summiteers declared that "disincentives against taking up jobs" should be removed; 20m jobs should be created within the EU by 2010. But only three days after a Barcelona jamboree, the European Commission endorsed a new law that would give all temporary-agency workers the same rights as full-timers within six weeks of getting their feet under the desk. Six out of 20 commissioners did, unusually, vote against the measure--a blatant piece of re-regulation--but the social affairs commissioner, Anna Diamantopoulou, was unrepentant, indeed triumphant. A dissatisfied liberaliser in the commission called the directive "an absolute disaster". The summit's other achievements are still more fragile. Europe's leaders promised to increase spending on "research and development" from its current figure of 1.9% of GDP a year to 3%. But how will European politicians compel businesses to invest more in research? Nobody seems to know. And the one big research project agreed on at Barcelona, the Galileo satellite-positioning system, which is supposed to cost 3.2 billion of public money, is of dubious commercial value, since the Europeans already enjoy free access to the Americans' GPA system. Edward Bannerman, head of economics at the Centre for European Reform, a Blairite think-tank, calls Galileo "the common agricultural policy in space./

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Americans usually consider themselves a friendly people. Their friendships, however, tend to be shorter and more casual than friendships among people from other cultures. It is not uncommon for Americans to have only one close friend during their life-time, and consider other "friends" to be just social acquaintances. This attitude probably has something to do with American mobility and the fact that Americans do not like to be dependent on other people. They tend to "compartmentalize" friendships, having "friends at work" ,"friends on the softball team", "family friends", etc. Because the United States is a highly active society, full of movement and change, people always seem to be on the go. In this highly charged atmosphere, Americans can sometimes seem brusque or impatient. They want to get to know you as quickly as possible and then move on to something else. Sometimes, early on, they will ask you questions that you may feel are very personal. No insult is intended; the questions usually grow out of their genuine interest or curiosity, and their impatience to get to the heart of the matter. And the same goes for you. If you do not understand certain American behavior or you want to know more about them, do not hesitate to ask them questions about themselves. Americans are usually eager to explain all about their country or anything "American" in which you may be interested. So much so in fact that you may become tired of listening. It doesn't matter, because Americans tend to be uncomfortable with silence during a conversation. They would rather talk about the weather or the latest sports scores, for example, than deal with silence. On the other hand, don't expect Americans to be knowledgeable about international geography or world affairs, unless those subjects directly involve the United States. Because the United States is not surrounded by many other nations, some Americans tend to ignore the rest of the world.