单选题According to the text, what role has English played during the process of globalization?

单选题If sustainable competitive advantage depends on work-force skills, American firms have a problem. Human-resource management is not traditionally seen as central to the competitive survival of the firm in the United States. Skill acquisition is considered an individual responsibility. Labor is simply another factor of production to be hired—rented at the lowest possible cost—much as one buys raw materials or equipment. The lack of importance attached to human-resource management can be seen in the corporate hierarchy. In an American firm the chief financial officer is almost always second in command. The post of head of human-resource management is usually a specialized job, off at the edge of the corporate hierarchy. The executive who holds it is never consulted on major strategic decisions and has no chance to move up to Chief Executive Officer (CEO). By way of contrast, in Japan the head of human-resource management is central--usually the second most important executive, after the CEO, in the firm's hierarchy. While American firms often talk about the vast amounts spent on training their work-forces, in fact they invest less in the skills of their employees than do either Japanese or German firms. The money they do invest is also more highly concentrated on professional and managerial employees. And the limited investments that are made in training workers are also much more narrowly focused on the specific skills necessary to do the next job rather than on the basic background skills that make it possible to absorb new technologies. As a result, problems emerge when new breakthrough technologies arrive. If American workers, for example, take much longer to learn how to operate new flexible manufacturing stations than workers in Germany (as they do ) , the effective cost of those stations is lower in Germany than it is in the United States. More time is required before equipment is up and running at capacity, and the need for extensive retraining generates costs and creates bottle-necks that limit the speed with which new equipment can be employed. The result is a slower pace of technological change. And in the end the skills of the population affect the wages of the top half. If the bottom half can't effectively staff the processes that have to he operated, the management and professional jobs that go with these processes will disappear.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Much of the American anxiety about old age is a flight from the reality of death. One of the striking qualities of the American character is the unwillingness to face either the fact or meaning of death. In the more somber tradition of American literature-from Hawthorne and Melville and Poe to Faulkner and Hemingway—one finds a tragic depth that belies the surface thinness of the ordinary American death attitudes. By an effort of the imagination, the great writers faced problems that the culture in action is reluctant to face—the fact of death, its mystery, and its place in. the back-and-forth shuttling of the eternal recurrence. The unblinking confrontation of death in Greek time, the elaborate theological patterns woven around it in the Middle Ages, the ritual celebration of it in the rich, peasant cultures of Latin and Slavic Europe and in primitive cultures; these are difficult to find in American life. Whether through fear of the emotional depths, or because of a drying up of the sluices of religious intensity, the American avoids dwelling on death or even corning to terms with it; he finds it morbid and recoils from it, surrounding it with word avoidance (Americans never die; they "pass away,") and various taboos of speech and practice. A "funeral parlor" is decorated to look like a bank; everything in a funeral ceremony is done in hushed tones, as if it were something furtive, to be concealed from the world; there is so much emphasis on being dignified that the ceremony often loses its quality of dignity. In some of the primitive cultures, there is difficulty in understanding the muses of death; it seems puzzling and even unintelligible. Living in a scientific culture, Americans have a ready enough explanation of how it comes, yet they show little capacity to come to terms with the fact of death itself and with the grief that accompanies it. "We jubilate over birth and dance at weddings", writes Margaret Mead, "but more and more hustle the death off the scene without ceremony, without an opportunity for young and old to realize that death is as much a fact of life as is birth". And one may add, even in its hurry and brevity, the last stage of an American' s life—the last occasion of this relation to his society—is as standardized as the rest.

单选题The contents of "people column" in The New York Times include

单选题When mentioning "the government accepts a figure of about 300,000", the writer is trying to illustrate ______.

单选题What does the author probably mean by "the sizzle, not the steak" (Line 6, Paragraph 5) ?

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} The protection of cultural diversity from a political and economic point of view in fact became pressing with globalization, which is characterized by the liberalization on a large scale of economic and commercial exchange, and thus, what has been called the commodification of culture. It has been noted, for instance, that over the past 20 years, trade in cultural goods has quadrupled and the new international rules (WTO, OECD) on trade are increasingly removing State support and protection measures in favour of national goods and services in the name of market freedom and free trade. For those in favour of the promotion of cultural diversity, which includes Canada, France and the Group of 77 (group of developing countries), the aim is above all to obtain from the United States the guarantee that the “Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions”, signed by UNESCO in November 2005, would not be subordinated to international trade instruments. Indeed, for the United States and other supporters of free trade, the convention is a had idea and the measures referred to above stem quite simply from an interventionist conception of the State which is not likely to favour the market. Subsidies to cultural enterprises, the imposition of broadcast quotas and restrictions on foreign ownership of the media would, for them, interfere with the natural development of the market. In addition, even though it is not official, the convention on cultural diversity is for many Americans an attempt to undermine the global supremacy of their audiovisual industries. If the general understanding of cultural diversity is based mainly on binary distinctions such as modern culture/local culture, the reality of cultural diversity is not binary, but stems from respect for and acceptance of differences, dialogue, and the quest for shared values, in order to leave behind the monologism that is a feature of the information society. In this setting, diversity is consequently a way of approaching the structure of how we live together, based on the acceptance of a plural vision of the world. We can see then that cultural diversity is perceived here as the integration, rather than the superposition or juxtaposition of cultures and that the information society in which it is expressed is above all a society of shared knowledge.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} A few milliamps of electricity can cause plants to increase synthesis of chemicals. These compounds often also have a pharmacological (related to medicine) or commercial value, so the trick could be used to help increase yields of commercially useful biologicals. Artemisinic acid, from sweet wormwood, for example, is used in malarial medications, and shikonin (紫草素), from the purple gromwell plant, is used against skin infections. Researchers have long known that stressing plants can force them to take defensive action, often ramping up the production of protective chemicals that, for example, make them more resistant to insect attack. It has become common practice to stress such plants into increasing their yields. This is usually clone using physical stress elicitors (诱导子), including bits of the micro-organisms that normally attack the plants, or irritants made from metallic compounds such as copper chloride. These are effective, but they come at a cost. Most elicitors are toxic to plants and can build up in tissues, making it necessary to occasionally "clean" a plant of the chemicals so they keep having the same effect. Recently, research groups at the University of Arizona in Tucson found that the application of an electric current to the hairy roots of the poisonous herb Hyoscyamus muticus stimulated the production of the herb's toxin hyoscyamine (天仙子胺). This unpublished finding inspired Hans Van Etten, also of the University of Arizona, and his colleagues to test sub-lethal levels of electrical currents on other plants, to assess electricity's potential to elevate chemical production. The researchers exposed eight different plant species (ranging from Japanese pagoda tree seedlings to pea plants) to weak electrical currents of 30 milliamps. Seven of the plants increased their production o{ defensive chemicals. The average boost of chemical production was 20 times, they report in Biotechnology Progress. One plant, a type of alfalfa, increased its chemical yield by 168 times. These values are very similar to those achieved using chemical elicitors, and seem to have no lethal effects-just a negative effect on growth. The treatment can be used over and over again without the build-up of any unwanted material. The useful compounds would be very easy to harvest: they simply pour out into solution if the plants are grown hydroponically. "The fact that we can use electricity instead of toxic materials to elicit chemical production is very exciting because it means we get to look at how these chemicals form without having to constantly add and remove toxins from the system," says Van Etten. "This is a really novel and creative approach that I've never seen before," says plant metabolic engineer Fabricio Medina Bolivar from Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. "The possibilities for using electricity with plants in this way are absolutely tremendous. "

单选题In which aspect are the Universities superior to the University Colleges and Institutes?______

单选题The text mentions all of the following as difficulties that self-employed women may encounter EXCEPT

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} For most of us, work is the central, dominating fact of life. We spend more than half our conscious hours at work, preparing for work, traveling to and from work. What we do there largely determines our standard of living and to a considerable extent the status we are accorded by our fellow citizens as Well. It is sometimes said that because leisure has become more important the indignities and injustices of work can be pushed into a corner; that because work is intolerable, the people who do it should compensate for its boredoms and frustrations by concentrating their hopes on the other part of. their lives. I reject that as a counsel of despair. For the foreseeable future the material and psychological rewards which work can provide will continue to play a. vital part in determining the satisfaction that life can offer. Yet only a small minority can control the pace at which they work or the conditions in which their work is done; only for a small minority does work offer scope for creativity, imagination, or initiative. Inequality at work and in work still is one of the cruelest and most glaring forms of inequality in our society. We can not hope to solve the more obvious problems of industrial life, many of which arise directly or indirectly from the inequality at work. Still less can we hope to create a decent and humane society. The most glaring inequality is that between managers and the rest. For most managers, work is an opportunity and a challenge. Their jobs engage their interest and allow them to develop their abilities. They are able to exercise responsibility; they have a considerable degree of control over their own and the others' working lives. Most important of all, they have the opportunity to initiate. By contrast, for most manual workers, work is a boring, monotonous, even painful experience. They spend all their working lives in conditions which would be regarded as intolerable for themselves by those who take the decisions which let such conditions continue. The majority have little control over their work; it provides them with no opportunity for personal development. Often production is so designed that workers are simple part of the technology. In offices, many jobs are so routine that workers justifiably feel themselves to be mere cogs in the bureaucratic machine. As a direct consequence of their work experience, many workers feel alienated from their work and their firm, whether it is in public or in private ownership.

单选题In 1880, Sir Joshua Waddilove, a Victorian philanthropist, founded Provident Financial to provide affordable loans to working-class families in and around Bradford, in northern England. This month his company, now one of Britain's leading providers of "home credit" -small, short-term, unsecured loans—began the nationwide rollout of Vanquis, a credit card aimed at people that mainstream lenders shun. The card offers up to they impose extra charges, such as application fees; and they cap their potential losses by lending only small amounts ( $ 500 is a typical credit limit). All this is easier to describe than to do, especially when the economy slows. After the bursting of the technology bubble in 2000, several sub-prime credit-card providers failed. Now there are only around 100, of which nine issue credit cards. Survivors such as Metris and Providian, two of the bigger sub-prime card companies, have become choosier about their customers' credit histories. As the economy recovered, so did lenders' fortunes. Fitch, a rating agency, says that the proportion of sub-prime credit-card borrowers who are more than 60 days in arrears (a good predictor of eventual default)is the lowest since November 2001. But with American interest rates rising again, some worry about another squeeze. As Fitch's Michael Dean points out, sub-prime borrowers tend to have not just higher-rate credit cards, but dearer auto loans and variable-rate mortgages as well That makes a risky business even riskier.

单选题Michell returned to London instead of staying in Hollywood NOT because

单选题New claims for unemployment insurance dipped last week, suggesting that companies are laying off fewer workers as the budding economic recovery unfolds. The Labor Department reported on Thursday that for the work week ending April 27, new claims for jobless benefits went down by a seasonally adjusted 10,000 to 418,000, the lowest level since March 23．In another report, orders to U. S. factories rose for the fourth straight month, a solid 0.4 percent rise in March. The figure was largely boosted by stronger demand for unendurable goods, such as food, clothes, paper products and chemicals. Total unendurable goods were up 1.6 percent in March, the biggest increase in two years. Orders also rose for some manufactured goods, including metals, construction machinery, household appliances and defense equipment. The report reinforces the view that the nation's manufacturers-which sharply cut production and saw hundreds of thousands of jobs evaporate during the recession-are on the comeback trail. Stocks were rising again on Thursday. In the first half-four of trading, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 43 points and the Nasdaq index was up 14 points. In the jobless-claims report, even with the decline, a government analyst said, the level was inflated as a result of a technical fluke. The distortion is coming from a requirement that laid-off workers seeking to take advantage of a federal extension for benefits must summit new claims. Congress recently passed legislation signed into law by President Bush that provided a 13-week extension of jobless benefits. The fluck has clouded the layoffs picture for several weeks. But the government analyst said the refilling requirement is having much less of an effect on the claims numbers than in previous weeks. The more stable four-week moving average of new claims, which smoothes out weekly fluctuation, also fell last week to 435750, the lowest level since the beginning of April. But the number of workers continuing to receive unemployment benefits rose to 3.8 million for the work week ending April 20, evidence that people who are out of work are having trouble finding new jobs. Economists predict that job growth won't be strong enough in the coming months to prevent the nation's unemployment rate-now at 5.7 percent-from rising. Many economists are forecasting a rise in April's jobless rate to 5.8 percent and estimating that businesses added around 55,000 jobs during the month. The government will release the April employment report on Friday. Even as the economy bounces back from recession, some economists expect the jobless rate will peak to just over 6 percent by June. That is because companies will be reluctant to quickly hire back laid-off workers until they are assured the recovery is here to stay. Given the fledging rebound, many economists expect the Federal Reserve to leave short-term interest rates-now at 40-year lows-unchanged when it meets on May 7．The Fed adjusted interest rates 11 times in a row last year to rescue the economy from recession, which began in May 2001.