单选题With which of the following statements regarding the behavior of large firms in industrialized societies would the author agree?

单选题 Norwood, Ohio-in this town, which is surrounded by Cincinnati, there is a field surrounded by a high chain-link fence. Across a sweet on one side of the field is a residential neighborhood of modest homes. On another side is an upscale shopping center. The field used to be a neighborhood with 99 houses and small businesses, but almost all the structures have been destroyed. One of the homes that remain-the developer of the shopping center wants to level all so he can expand his domain-was for 35 years the first and only home owned by Carl and Joy Gamble, who are both in their mid-60s. Now they live across the Ohio River in Kentucky, in the basement of their daughter's house, as they wait for the Ohio Supreme Court to decide their home's fate. Norwood's government seized it to enrich itself by enriching a taxpaying developer who has a ＄125 million project. The Gambles say that when the city offered them money for their house, they were not interested. "We had everything we wanted, right there," says Joy, who does not drive but could walk to see her mother in a Norwood nursing home. "We loved that house-that home." Past tense. Norwood's government, in a remarkably absurd deal, accepted the developer's offer to pay the cost of the study that-surprise! -enabled the city to declare the neighborhood "blighted" and "deteriorating." NEWSWEEK reader, stroll around your neighborhood. Do you see any broken sidewalk pavement? Any standing water in a road? Such factors-never mind that sidewalks and roads are government's responsibility-were cited by the developer's study to justify Norwood's forcing the Gambles and their neighbors to sell to the developer. Norwood's behavior is part of a national pattern: From 1998 through 2002, state and local governments seized or threatened to seize more than 10,000 homes, businesses, churches and pieces of land, not for "public use" but to enrich private interests, some of whose enhanced riches can be siphoned away by taxes. Such legalized theft-theft by government-does not use a gun, it just abuses the power of eminent domain. The Gambles' plight-a quiet, blue-collar couple's life in ruins just as they are entering retirement-vividly illustrates what happens when property rights become too attenuated to protect the individual's zone of sovereignty against government power. Because such abuses are proliferating nationwide, people are pressuring state legislatures to forbid the seizure of property simply to give local governments-who never say they have enough revenues-the revenues they say they need. And Congress may forbid the use of federal funds for projects benefiting from such seizures.

单选题{{B}}Part B{{/B}}Directions: In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For questions 41--45, choose the most suitable one from the list A--G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There is one extra example which you do not need to use. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. We don't see or hear them, but every day they quietly go about their work--filtering and cleansing our rivers and streams. And if we don't act soon, they'll disappear from the workforce just when we need them most. I am talking about pigtoes, monkeyface, pink heelsplitter and purple wartyback--freshwater mussels (贻贝) with funny names that belie the seriousness of their labors. {{U}}(41) {{/U}}. One mussel alone can cleanse as much as a gallon of water per hour. Add up the work of a whole mussel community, and you get a virtual water treatment plant. According to Ethan Nedeau, an expert on the freshwater mussels of New England, even half the population of mussels at work in a one-half mile segment of New Hampshire's Ashuelot River can help cleanse more than 11.2 million gallons of water a day--roughly the quantity of household water used by 112 000 people. {{U}} (42) {{/U}}. Today 69 percent of US freshwater mussel species are to some degree at risk of extinction or already extinct. The most diverse assemblage of freshwater mussels ever known was located in the middle stretch of the Tennessee River in northern Alabama. Before the damming of the river in the early 1900s, 69 mussel species had been spotted in this reach; 32 of them have apparently disappeared, with no recording sightings in nearly a century. {{U}} (43) {{/U}}. Like many freshwater mussels, the orange-nacre mucket has a fascinating life cycle and exhibits some of the most sophisticated mimicry in the animal kingdom. The females essentially use their offspring to lure fish into helping them colonize new stream bottoms. They package their larvae (幼虫) at the end of jelly--like tubes that can extend eight feet out into the water. To fish swimming by, the larvae dancing in the riffles of the river current looks like a tasty minnow. When the fish bites, the tube breaks, releasing the larvae into the stream. A few of the offspring attach to the fish's gills and hitchhike around with their firmed host for a week or two, absorbing nutrients and growing along the way. {{U}}(44) {{/U}}. Along with 16 other threatened or endangered mussel species in the Mobile watershed, the orange-nacre mucket is at risk of extinction--in large part due to excessive pollution and dams that have diminished the river habitat they need to survive. To me, the loss of such industrious, fascinating creatures diminishes more than our water quality-- it diminishes our natural heritage and our world. {{U}} (45) {{/U}}. So as we celebrate World Water Day, I hope we also celebrate the freshwater mussels that help keep our waters clean and healthy--and commit to efforts to conserve them. [A] My favorite freshwater mussel is the orange-nacre mucket, found only in the rivers and streams of Alabama's Mobile River basin. [B] The United States ranks first in the world in the number of known species of freshwater mussels 292, com- pared with just 10 in all of Europe. But we're losing these "living filters" all too fast. [C] Only habitat improvements, in some cases combined with mussel breeding and release efforts, can save these and the other 200 freshwater mussel species at risk nationwide. [D] Because I bet we'll miss these little creatures with the whimsical names when they're gone. [E] They suck water in, filter out bits of algae, bacteria and other tiny particles, and then release it back to the river cleaner than before. [F] Finally, the young mussels drop off, float to the river bottom, and colonize new territory--and before long begin their vital task of water purification. [G] It is our responsibility to take actions to protect the freshwater mussels, otherwise they will disappear in the future and the water will not be refreshed.

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}}Reading the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your. answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} King Richard III was a monster. He poisoned his wife, stole the throne from his two young nephews and ordered them to be smothered in the Tower of London. Richard was a sort of Antichrist the King --"that bottled spider, that poisonous bunchbacked toad. " Anyway, that was Shakespeare's version. Shakespeare did what the playwright does: he turned history into a vivid, articulate, organized dream-repeatable nightly. He put the crouch back onstage, and sold tickets. And who Would say that the real Richard known to family and friends was not identical to Shakespeare's memorably loathsome creation? The actual Richard went dimming into the past and vanished. When all the eye-witnesses are gone, the artist's imagination begins to twist. Variations on the King Richard Effect are at work in Oliver Stone's JFK. Richard III was art, but it was propaganda too. Shakespeare took the details of his plot from Tudor historians who wanted to blacken Richard's name. Several centuries passed before other historians began to write about Richard's virtues and suggest that he may have been a victim of Tudor malice and what is the cleverest conspiracy of all: art. JFK is a long and powerful {{U}}harangue{{/U}} about the death of the man--Stone keeps calling "the slain young king.' What are the rules of Stone's game? Is Stone functioning as commercial entertainer? Propagandist? Documentary filmmaker? Historian? Journalist? Fantasist? Sensationalist? Crazy conspiracy-monger? Lone hero crusading for the truth against a corrupt Establishment? Answer: some of the above. The first superficial effect of JFK is to raise angry little scruples like welts in the conscience. Wouldn't it be absurd if a generation of younger Americans, with no memory of 1963, were to form their ideas about John Kennedy's assassination from Oliver Stone's report of it? But worse things have happened--including, perhaps, the Warren Commission report? Stone uses a suspect, mixed art form, and JFK raises the familiar ethical and historical problems of docudrama. But so what? Artists have always used public events as raw material, have taken history into their imaginations and transformed it. The fall of Troy vanished into the Iliad. The Battle of Borodino found its most memorable permanence in Tolstoy's imagining of it in War and Peace. Especially in a world of insatiable electronic storytelling, real history procreates, endlessly conjuring new versions of itself. Public life has become a metaphysical breeder of fictions. Watergate became an almost continuous television miniseries--although it is interesting that the movie of Woodward and Bernstein's All The President's Men stayed close to the known facts and, unlike JFK, did not validate dark conjecture.

单选题Earlier this summer Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's governor, said that the state's penal system was "falling apart in front of our very eyes". Indeed so. Some 172,000 inmates are crowded into institutions—from the state's 33 prisons to its 12 "community correctional facilities"—that are meant to house fewer than 90,000. Drug abuse is rampant; so too are diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C. Race-based gangs pose the constant threat of violence, riot and even murder. And with more than 16,000 prisoners sleeping in prison gymnasiums and classrooms, rehabilitation programs are virtually non-existent—which helps to explain why two-thirds of California's convicts, the highest rate in the country, are back in prison within three years of being released. Will the governor's summons of a special session of the state legislature, beginning this week, bring a remedy? The reason for the session is to discuss Mr Schwarzenegger's request for almost $ 5.8 billion of public money to be pumped into the prison system. Bonds for $ 2 billion would finance ten 500-bed "re-entry facilities" for prisoners nearing the end of their sentences; another $ 2 billion would expand existing prisons; $1.2 billion would be earmarked for two new prisons; and $ 50Om would go for new prison hospitals. Money alone will provide neither an immediate solution nor a lasting one. The first problem is that California simply puts too many offenders in prison. The imprisonment rate, which has risen almost eight-fold since 1970 and is way ahead of any European country, has consistently meant overcrowding despite the construction of 22 new prisons in the past 20 years. The 1994 "three-strikes" law, approved by voters in a referendum, means handing out 25-years-to-life sentences for often trivial third offences--and results in the growing presence in prison of elderly inmates who cost the taxpayer far more than the average of $ 34,000 a prisoner. Meanwhile, the practice of returning parole violators to prison, even for relatively trivial missteps such as missing a drugs test, also strains the system; some 11% of inmates are parole violators. Added to all these are more than 5,000 illegal immigrants being held on behalf of the federal government. The second problem is that any attempt to reform California's penal policy becomes hostage to politics. Two years ago, the governor was expressing optimism. He added the word "rehabilitation" to California's department of corrections, appointed Rod Hickman, a reformminded former prison guard, to oversee the system and promised to lessen the power of the 31,000-strong prison guards' union, not least by breaking the "code of silence" that protects corrupt or violent guards. But that was then. The reality now is that Mr Hickman resigned in March. Evidence indicates that the governor's office may have given the code of silence in California's prisons a new lease on life. Many experts say that with no moderation in sentencing policies on the horizon, the prison population is expected to grow by another 21,0O0 over the next five years—enough to outpace any prison-building program. Thus, the dream of prison reforms will never touch the ground.

单选题Digital photography is still new enough that most of us have yet to form an opinion about it, (1) develop a point of view. But this hasn't stopped many film and computer fans from agreeing (2) the early conventional wisdom about digital cameras—they're neat (3) for your PC, but they're not suitable for everyday picture-taking. The fans are wrong: More than anything else, digital cameras are radically (4) what photography means and what it can be. The venerable medium of photography (5) we know it is beginning to seem out of (6) with the way we live. In our computer and camcorder (7) , saving pictures as digital (8) and watching them on TV is no less practical—and in many ways more (9) than fumbling with rolls of film that must be sent off to be (10) . Paper is also terribly (11) Pictures that are incorrectly framed, (12) , or lighted are nonetheless committed to film and ultimately processed into prints. The digital medium changes the (13) . Still images that are (14) digitally can immediately be shown on a computer (15) , a TV screen, or a small liquid-crystal display (LCD) built right into the camera. And since the points of light that (16) an image are saved as a series of digital bits in electronic memory, (17) being permanently etched onto film, they can be erased, retouched, and transmitted (18) . What's it like to (19) with one of these digital cameras? It's a little like a first date- exciting, confusing and fraught with (20) .

单选题Burkina Faso student teacher Hema Cecile has a lot more time to crack the books thanks to a recent initiative from the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC). The launch of the Lighting Africa program by the two organizations this year has made it possible for Cecile to swap kerosene lamps for a solar-powered LED lantern. Lighting Africa is a ＄12 million project which intends to bring light to the poorest regions across sub-Saharan Africa. The program works with the lighting industry to develop clean, affordable lighting and energy solutions for millions without access to electric grids. Its aim is to accelerate the market and to develop education programs that inform off-grid populations currently dependent on costly, inefficient and hazardous fuel-based lighting about modern alternatives. Cecile used to spend ＄3-4 a month on kerosene for her lamp. That is a large proportion of her earnings—like 70 percent of the population she lives on less than ＄2 a day. In the weeks since buying her lantern she has managed to read four books including Madame Bovary. by Gustave Flaubert and Emile Zola's Germinal. She is among the most learned in a society which has the world's lowest literacy rate, according to a 2007 UN Human Development Report. When she graduates next year she will teach in a local junior school She makes ends meet by holiday jobs as a cleaner and an IT trainer. To earn her daily ration of cornmeal she does shifts from May to September in a corn field. The lanterns are designed to look like the kerosene ones they are replacing in order to increase adoption among the population. Each has a small solar panel on the top and costs an average ＄30, although some cost ＄100, depending on the size of the battery and the number of LED lights it contains. Because of the large number of sunlight hours in Burkina Faso, the lamps can be relied on to work whenever needed. The battery life is 2-4 years, and can be replaced once they lose their storage capacity. The LED lights last 5-10 years. Although it is barely out of its trial period the project, Chabanne said there are signs the project is a boon for the population in areas other than household savings and education. "There are fewer people reporting eye problems to the local hospital./

单选题Why did the number of complaints drop?

单选题The author would describe the Reisses' life as

单选题{{B}}Part C{{/B}}Directions: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Vilhelm Hammershoi has been a well-kept secret since his death in 1916． All his best- known paintings are of household interiors that are drained of color and tell no stories. {{U}}46． His windows cannot be seen through, his doors cannot be opened and the figures produce no element{{/U}} {{U}}of vitality into the rooms.{{/U}} Hammershoi is defiantly inscrutable; the mood is melancholic and enigmatic, but the paintings are oddly compelling. Quite why, no one seems sure. Of the 71 paintings in a new exhibition in London, 21 come from his native Copenhagen, 15 from other Scandinavian collections and 20 from private collections, principally Danish. Hammershoi's focus was not as narrow as this show might suggest, but to see his nudes it is necessary to visit the Statens Museum for Kunst in Denmark. He did some fine, if bleak, landscapes too, but it was the interiors that sold in his lifetime, and he is best remembered for paintings of the sun shining through curtainless window-panes, casting shadows on carpetless floors. 47．{{U}}Anxious to transform the prosaic into the romantic, his admirers speak of a poet of light and the poetry of silence.{{/U}} Hammershoi himself was guileless. 48．{{U}}"What makes me choose a motif are the lines, what I like to call the architectural context of an image," he said in 1907.{{/U}} Light was also very important, but it was lines, he insisted, that had the greatest significance for him. His wife, Ida, makes appearances in the empty rooms, but she is usually painted from the back, with the emphasis on the bare nape of her neck. The heroic figures are white doors and windows, and tables, chairs, a piano and a sofa. No painter can have got so much pleasure from painting brown furniture. One work, titled "Interior with a Woman at a Sewing Table", is a symphony of three shades of shiny brown. Hammershoi was influenced by Vermeer and the 17th-century Dutch genre painters and by Caspar David Friedrich, a German, but there is no one like him. His work shows traces of an unexpected subversive sense of humor. 49．{{U}}Felix Kramer, the show's curator, identifies irregularities, for example, that create an almost surreal quality: a piano with two legs, table legs casting shadows in different directions, chests of drawers with no knobs or handles.{{/U}} Even some of Hammershoi's admirers wonder what it all means. 50．{{U}}Trying to pin Hammershoi down is as profitless as Waiting for Godot.{{/U}} However, the new exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts might encourage some excitement in the marketplace. The highest price made by a Hammershoi interior is ￡ 520,000 ($1 million) in 2006 and the price boom in the auction houses is passing him by. Perhaps the secret of Hammershoi has been kept a bit too well.

单选题 Business travelers used to be the cash cows of the hotel business. Armed with corporate credit cards and expense accounts, they'd happily lay down hundreds of dollars per night for the privilege of a Godiva chocolate on their pillow and a sunken whirlpool tub in their bathroom. But just as prolonged corporate belt tightening has forced road warriors to use budget airlines, more and more of them are now eschewing five-star lodging in favor of cheaper accommodations. Indeed, earlier this year the US-based National Business Travel Association released figures showing that 61 percent of corporate travel managers planned to book their people into lower-priced hotels in the coming year. Here's the good news: penny-pinching is translating into better deals at cheap and up-market hotels alike. Services at middle-market hotels are rising to accommodate a new wave of more demanding corporate customers. And luxury hotels are working harder to keep business travelers coming, offering lower rates, special packages and extra services. Even though business-travel volume is set to rise by more than 4 percent in 2004 after three dismal years, hotels will continue to be under pressure—in large part because a weak dollar is forcing American business travelers to search for value. Some of the best deals are coming from the big chains. In January Starwood Hotels announced it would upgrade its global middle-market brand, Four Points, by rolling out free high-speed wireless Internet access in all guest rooms. On the flip side, upscale brands like Inter Continental and Ritz Carlton are selling empty rooms at discount rates via online services. That has the effect of depressing luxury-room prices, because corporate travel managers can now demand that hotels match their own discount prices all the time. Inter Continental hotels in France and Germany have been hit so hard that they are actually repricing their rooms to reflect rates before the dollar began falling. Upscale hotels like Waldorf-Astoria, Sofitel are also trying to offer extra services. But beware of new, hidden fees. In an effort to make up some of their fast revenue, hotels are starting to charge corporate travelers for things that used to be free—including breakfast, banquet or meeting rooms. Aside from saving companies money, the trend in frugal business travel may give rise to a whole new market segment: the buy-to-let hotel room. Last week in London, British property developer Johnny Sandelson launched GuestInvest, a hotel in Notting Hill where users can purchase a room for ￡235,000, use it for a maximum of 52 nights a year themselves, then rent it out the rest of the time to make extra money. It seems an idea whose time has come: GuestInvest says it has already fielded hundreds of calls from business people interested in making a cheaper hotel their second home.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Yasuhisa Shizoki, a 51-year-old MP from Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), starts tapping his finger on the dismal economic chart on his coffee table. "Unless we change the decision-making process," he says bluntly, "we are not going to be able to solve this kind of problem." With the economy in such a mess, it may seem a bit of a diversion to be trying to sort out Japan's political structures as well as its economic problems. But Mr Shiozaki can hardly be accused of time-wasting. He has consistently prodded the government to take a firm hand to ailing banks, and has given warning against complacency after a recent rise in share prices. Far from being a distraction, his latest cause highlights how far Japan is from genuine economic reform. Since cowriting a report on political reform, which was released by an LDP panel last week, Mr Shiozaki has further upset the party's old guard. Its legionaries, flanked by columns of the bureaucracy, continue to hamper most attempts to overhaul the economy. Junichiro Koizumi was supposed to change all that, by going over their heads and appealing directly to the public. Yet nearly a year after becoming prime minister, Mr Koizumi has precious little to show for his efforts. His popularity is now flagging and his determination is increasingly in doubt. As hopes of immediate economic reform fade, optimists are focusing on another potential benefit of Mr Koizumi's tenure. They hope that his highly personalized style of leadership will pave the way for a permanent change in Japanese politics: towards more united and authoritative cabinets that are held directly accountable for their policies. As that happens, the thinking goes, real economic reforms will be able to follow. A leading candidate for change is the 40 year-old system--informal but religiously followed--through which the LDP machinery vets every bill before it ever gets to parliament. Most legislation starts in the LDP's party committees, which mirror the parliamentary committee structure. Proposals then go through two higher LDP bodies, which hammer out political deals to smooth their passage. Only then does the prime minister's cabinet get fully involved in approving the policy. Most issues have been decided by the LDP mandarins long before they reach this point, let alone the floor of parliament, leaving even the prime minister limited influence, and allowing precious little room for public debate and even less for accountability. As a result, progress will probably remain slow. Since they know that political reform leads to economic reform, and hence poses a threat to their interests, most of the LDP will resist any real changes. But at least a handful of insiders have now bought into one of Mr Koizumi's best slogans: "Change the LDP, change Japan."