单选题Pfizer could avoid the loss caused by expiration of Norvasc's patents by______.

单选题The author uses the simile of fish and pond to explain that

单选题Paragraph 2 and 3 are written to

单选题The standards of planet are open to question because

单选题It can be inferred from Paragraph 4 that ______.

单选题In this text the extraordinary evolution refers to______.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} It is not just Indian software and "business-process outsourcing" firms that are benefiting from the rise of the internet. Indian modern art is also on an upward spiral, driven by the aspirations of newly rich Indians, especially those living abroad, who use the internet to spot paintings and track prices at hundreds of gallery and auction websites. Prices have risen around 20-fold since 2000, particularly for prized names such as Tyeb Mehta and F. N. Souza. There would have been "no chance" of that happening so fast without the internet, says Arun Vadehra, who runs a gallery in Delhi and is an adviser to Christie's, an international auction house. He expects worldwide sales of Indian art, worth $200million last year, to double in 2006. It is still a tiny fraction of the $ 30 billion global art market, but is sizeable for an emerging market. For newly rich often very rich-non-resident Indians, expensive art is a badge of success in a foreign land. "Who you are, and what you have, are on your walls," says Lavesh Jagasia, an art dealer in Mumbai. Indian art may also beat other forms of investment. A painting by Mr. Mehta that fetched $1.58million last September would have gone for little more than $100,000 just four years ago. And a $22million art-investment fund launched in July by Osian's, a big Indian auction house, has grown by 4.1 work by younger artists such as Surendran Nair and Shibu Natesan beat estimates by more than 70%. Sotheby's and Christie's have auctions in New York next week, each with a Tyeb Mehta that is expected to fetch more than $1 million. The real question is tee fate of other works, including some by Mr. Souza with estimates of up to $600,000. If they do well, it will demonstrate that there is strong demand and will pull up prices across the board. This looks like a market with a long way to run.

单选题 You and your parents can stop worrying-Pasteur, Edison, Darwin and lots more were far from being geniuses in their teens. History books {{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}mention it, but the truth is that many of our greatest figures were {{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}"beatniks" when they were teenagers. They were given to daydreaming, indecision, plain dullness, and they showed no {{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}of being doctor, lawyer or Indian chief. So, young men and women, if you suffer from the same {{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}, don't despair. The world was built by men and women whose parents worried that they would "never {{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}} to a hill of beans." You don't hear too much about their early failure because parents prefer to cite more {{U}} {{U}} 6 {{/U}} {{/U}}examples. If you take piano lessons and your attitude towards practicing is {{U}} {{U}} 7 {{/U}} {{/U}}by laziness, your parents might {{U}} {{U}} 8 {{/U}} {{/U}}complain and flaunt before you the famous picture of little Mozart in his ruffled nightshirt, playing the piano at midnight in the attic. {{U}} {{U}} 9 {{/U}} {{/U}}the point is, your parents would not show you a picture of a certain party who never showed a {{U}} {{U}} 10 {{/U}} {{/U}}of interest in music during his {{U}} {{U}} 11 {{/U}} {{/U}}years. In fact he never showed {{U}} {{U}} 12 {{/U}} {{/U}}in any direction whatever. Finally put to studying law, he {{U}} {{U}} 13 {{/U}} {{/U}}passed his final exams. It was not until he was 22 that he suddenly became fired {{U}} {{U}} 14 {{/U}} {{/U}}a great passion for music, and his name was Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowsky. In the sciences, there have been hundreds of geniuses who aimed straight at the {{U}} {{U}} 15 {{/U}} {{/U}}from earliest years, and hundreds who showed no {{U}} {{U}} 16 {{/U}} {{/U}}at all. There were the teenage Mayo brothers, who actually {{U}} {{U}} 17 {{/U}} {{/U}}their father in his crude country operating room. {{U}} {{U}} 18 {{/U}} {{/U}}Harvey Cushing, one of the world's greatest brain surgeons, might have become a professional ballplayer if his father hadn't {{U}} {{U}} 19 {{/U}} {{/U}}that he give {{U}} {{U}} 20 {{/U}} {{/U}}a try.

单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} John Battelle is Silicon Valley's Bob Woodward. One of the founders of Wired magazine, he has hung around Google for so long that he has come to be as close as any outsider can to actually being an insider. Certainly, Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, believe that it is safer to talk to Mr. Battelle than not to do so. The result is a highly readable account of Google's astonishing rise—the steepest in corporate history—from its origins in Stanford University to its controversial stockmarket debut and its current struggle to become a grown up company while staying true to its youthfully brash motto, "Don't be evil" Mr. Battelle makes the reader warm to Google's ruling triumvirate—their cleverness and their good intentions—and fear for their future as they take on the world. Google is one of the most interesting companies around at the moment. It has a decent shot at displacing Microsoft as the next great near-monopoly of the information age. Its ambition—to organise all the world's information, not just the information on the world wide web--is epic, and its commercial power is frightening. Beyond this, Google is interesting for the same reason that secretive dictatorships and Holly3vood celebrities are interesting—for being opaque, colourful and, simply, itself. The book disappoints only when Mr. Battelle begins trying to explain the wider relevance of internet search and its possible future development. There is a lot to say on this subject, but Mr. Battelle is hurried and overly chatty, producing laundry lists of geeky concepts without really having thought any of them through properly. This is not a fatal flaw. Read only the middle chapters, and you have a great book.

单选题 Clothes, decorations, physique, hair and facial {{U}}(1) {{/U}} give a great deal of information about us. For instance, we wear clothes to keep us warm, {{U}}(2) {{/U}} unlike animals we do not have a protective {{U}}(3) {{/U}} of hair. But for the purpose of communication, we dress {{U}}(4) {{/U}} clothes of different colours, style and material; we wear jewellery and other valuables; we use cosmetics and perfume; we {{U}}(5) {{/U}} beards and sideburns; and we smoke pipes and carry walking sticks. Strict rules govern the clothes we wear. We do not, wear football boots with a dinner-jacket, {{U}}(6) {{/U}} a boiler suit to work in an insurance office. A clerk on Wall Street will wear more formal dress than someone in a {{U}}(7) {{/U}} job in a country town. Fashionable and smart {{U}}(8) {{/U}} are associated with good qualities, and well-dressed people have been {{U}}(9) {{/U}} to get more help and cooperation from {{U}}(10) {{/U}} strangers. For example, a woman is often given more {{U}}(11) {{/U}} of help with her broken-down car when she is dressed attractively than when she is dressed less {{U}}(12) {{/U}}. Rebels consider themselves to be different from other people in society, and often {{U}}(13) {{/U}} their physical appearance to show this. In the last two decades in Britain there have been a number of {{U}}(14) {{/U}} movements with distinct uniforms. Hippies did not just wear simple clothes but dressed in a particular style that made them instantly {{U}}(15) {{/U}}. But in our modem society some people {{U}}(16) {{/U}} choose particular clothes to project the personalities. {{U}}(17) {{/U}} types wear brighter colours than more reserved people. Some people wear odd {{U}}(18) {{/U}} of clothes to express their individuality. For example, someone {{U}}(19) {{/U}} give an impression of high social status, {{U}}(20) {{/U}} origin and bad temper by wearing an expensive suit.

单选题 If open-source software is supposed to be free, how does anyone selling it make any money? It's not that different from how other software companies make money. You'd think that a software company would make most of its money from, well, selling software. But you'd be wrong. For one thing, companies don't sell software, strictly speaking; they license it. The profit margin on a software license is nearly 100 percent, which is why Microsoft gushes billions of dollars every quarter. But what's the value of a license to a customer? A license doesn't deliver the code, provide the utilities to get a piece of software running, or answer the phone when something inevitably goes wrong. The value of software, in short, doesn't lie in the software alone. The value is in making sure the soft ware does its job. Just as a traveler should look at the overall price of a vacation package instead of obsessing over the price of the plane ticket or hotel room, a smart tech buyer won't focus on how much the license costs and ignore the support contract or the maintenance agreement. Open-source is not that different. If you want the software to work, you have to pay to ensure it will work. The open-source companies have refined the software model by selling subscriptions. They roll together support and maintenance and charge an annual fee, which is a healthy model, though not quite as wonderful as Microsoft's money-raking one. Tellingly, even Microsoft is casting an envious eye at aspects of the open-source business model. The company has been taking halting steps toward a similar subscription scheme for its software sales. Microsoft's subscription program, known as Soft ware Assurance, provides maintenance and support together with a software license. It lets you up grade to Microsoft's next version of the software for a predictable sum. But it also contains an implicit threat: If you don't switch to Software Assurance now, who knows how much Microsoft will charge you when you decide to upgrade? Chief information officers hate this kind of "assurance", since they're often perfectly happy running older versions of software that are proven and stable. Microsoft, on the other hand, rakes in the software-licensing fees only when customers upgrade. Software Assurance is Microsoft's attempt to get those same licensing fees but wrap them together with the service and support needed to keep systems running. That's why Microsoft finds the open-source model so threatening: open-source companies have no vested interest in getting more licensing fees and don't have to pad their service contracts with that extra cost. In the end, the main difference between open-source and proprietary software companies may be the size of the check you have to write.

单选题What kind of neutrinos would be most useful to astronomers?

单选题It seemed so promising—mirrors sprawled across desert land in the scorching southwest delivering clean electricity and helping Americans out of the increasing fuel crisis. Some scientists and industry developers claim that Nevada's empty and sun-drenched expanses alone could supply enough electricity to power the entire country. Now even the optimists fear this wonderful prospect may be a mirage. Congress cannot make up their mind to extend the tax-reducing bill for solar-energy projects, which solar advocates say is critical to the future of their industry but which is due to expire at the end of the year. The latest attempt failed in the Senate earlier this month, prospects for a deal before November's presidential and congressional elections now look dim. Uncertainty has led some investors to delay or abandon projects in the past few months. Rhone Resch, the president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said if the tax-reducing bill is allowed to expire at the end of the year, "it will result in the loss of billions of dollars in new investments in solar. " Further dampening hopes for a big solar-energy boom, the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has abruptly suspended new applications to put solar collectors on federal land. The agency says it has received more than 130 applications and needs to conduct a region-wide environmental impact study on the industry before it will accept any more. The study will take 22 months to complete, however. Few argue against trying to preserve precious water sources and protect desert tortoises and other creatures that might not enjoy cohabiting with sprawling fields of mirrors. But many solar advocates wonder why the government is not acting as cautiously when it comes to drilling for oil and gas. Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington State, wants a congressional probe into the proposed suspension. "The fact that the BLM pops this out without people even knowing about it, especially when solar thermal looks extremely promising as a power source, is not right," she says. Harry Reid of Nevada, who is the majority leader in the Senate, also condemns the BLM's freeze, saying that it could "slow new development to a crawl". The BLM is not without its supporters, however. At a public meeting on June 23rd in Golden, Colorado, Alex Daue, of the Wilderness Society, said that his organization supports renewable energy development as long as it doesn't damage other important resources. The message is clear: no rubber stamps, even for renewable energy.

单选题Men are generally better than women on tests of spatial ability, such as mentally rotating an object through three dimensions or finding their way around in a new environment. But a new study suggests that under some circumstances a woman's way of navigating is probably more efficient. Luis Pacheco-Cobos of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and his colleagues discovered this by following mushroom gatherers from a village in the state of Tlaxcala for two rainy seasons. Two researchers, each fitted with GPS navigation devices and heart-rate monitors, followed different gatherers on different days. They recorded the weight of the mushrooms each gatherer collected and where they visited. The GPS data allowed a map to be made of the routes taken and the heart-rate measurements provided an estimate of the amount of energy expended during their travels. The results, to be published in Evolution and Human Behavior, show that the men and women collected on average about the same weight of mushrooms. But the men travelled farther, climbed higher and used a lot more energy—70% more titan the women. The men did not move any faster, but they searched for spots with lots of mushrooms. The women made many more stops, apparently satisfied with, or perhaps belier at finding, patches of fewer mushrooms. Previous work has shown that men tend to navigate by creating mental maps of a territory and then imagining their position on the maps. Women are more likely to remember their mutes using landmarks. The study lends support to the idea that male and female navigational skills were honed differently by evolution for different tasks. Modern-day hunter-gatherers divide labor, so that men tend to do more hunting and women more gathering. It seems likely that early humans did much the same thing. The theory is that the male strategy is the most useful for hunting prey; chasing an antelope, say, would mean running a long way over a winding mute. But having killed his prey, the hunter would want to make a beeline for home rather than retrace his steps exactly. Women, by contrast, would be better off remembering landmarks and retracing the paths to the most productive patches of plants. The research suggests that in certain circumstances women are better at navigating than men, which might lend some comfort to a man desperately searching for an item in a supermarket while his exasperated wife methodically moves around the aisles filling the shopping trolley. He is simply not cut out for the job, evolutionarily speaking.