单选题The creation of the new advanced vocational diploma is ______.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Every second in the United States alone, more than 250 animals are slaughtered for food, adding up to more than 8 billion animals each year. Reducing the amount of meat in one’s diet is nutritionally, environmentally, and ethically beneficial. People who eat meat usually have weaker immune systems compared to those of vegetarians. Meat has been directly linked to diabetes, obesity, arthritis, and many other illnesses. Furthermore, meat-eaters are at a higher risk for diseases, including cancer, and they are more likely to die from these diseases. Critics say that a meatless diet does not provide enough nutrients, especially protein and iron. Actually, according to A Teen’s Guide to Going Vegetarian, by Judy Krizmanic, protein is found in almost every food, and iron appears in many vegetables. Getting enough nutrients in a meat-reduced diet should not be difficult. A 1988 study found that some of the highest pesticide residues appear in meat and eggs. Diets including more fruits and vegetables will only make people healthier. Some skeptics believe that there will be a shortage of food if animals are not eaten. In fact, the opposite is true. More than 80% of the corn and 95% of the oats grown in the US are fed to livestock. The world’s cattle alone consume enough food to equal the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people, more than the entire human population. One half of the water used in the Unites States also goes to livestock; 2.50 gallons of water produces only 1 pound of beef. If people eat less meat and more plants, the amount of available food will increase. Many people become vegetarians because they feel that eating animals is unethical. 90% of these animals are raised in confinement. Chickens and other birds have only about half. a square foot of space each, and since they are raised so close together, a hot blade is used to cut off their beaks to prevent them from pecking each other to death. Likewise, pigs that are repressed will bite each other’s tails, so both their teeth and tails are removed as soon as they are born. Eating animals is hazardous in numerous ways. Even a slight reduction in meat intake is better than nothing at all. Consuming less meat is beneficial to the health of animals, the health of people, and to the health of the world.

单选题The United States experienced some of the most extreme weather events in its history this spring, including deadly outbreaks of tornadoes, near-record flooding, drought and wildfires. Damages from these disasters have already passed $ 32 billion, and the hurricane season, which is just beginning, is projected to be above average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Government scientists said Wednesday that the frequency of extreme weather has increased over the past two decades, in part as a result of global warming caused by the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But they were careful not to blame humans for this year's rash of deadly events, saying that in some ways weather patterns were returning to those seen at the beginning of the last century. "Looking at long-term patterns since 1980, indeed, extreme climatological and meteorological events have increased," said Thomas R. Karl, director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. "But in the early part of the 20th century, there was also a tendency for more extreme events followed by a quiet couple of decades. " Presenting a new NOAA report on 2011 extreme weather, Dr. Karl said that extremes of precipitation have increased as the planet warms and more water evaporates from the oceans. He also said models suggest that as carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere and heats the planet, droughts will increase in frequency and intensity. "But it is difficult and unlikely to discern a human fingerprint, if there is one, on the drought record of the United States," he said. Some other climate scientists were more categorical about the human contribution to extreme climate events. Kevin Trenberth, distinguished senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said that when the greenhouse effect caused by burning fossil fuels is added to the natural variability of climate, weather disasters can be expected to occur more frequently. "Global warming is contributing to an increased incidence of extreme weather because the environment in which all storms form has changed from human activities," Dr. Trenberth said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "Records are not just broken, they are smashed. It is as clear a warning as we are going to get about prospects for the future. " April was a particularly devastating month for tornadoes and rainfall, with 875 tornadoes reported during the month and heavy rain and snowmelt contributing to Mississippi River flooding later in the spring that surpassed the historic floods of 1927 and 1937. So far this year, there have been nearly 1,400 preliminary tornado reports nationwide; those reports will most likely be whittled down to about 900 confirmed tornadoes, the second-highest annual total recorded in modern times. The record is 1,011 confirmed tornadoes in 2008. The year also is on track to be one of the deadliest, with 536 fatalities so far from tornadoes, placing 2011 in sixth place in United States history and the deadliest since 1936.

单选题According to paragraph 3, the author tries to emphasize______.

单选题What is incredible about a child is that______

单选题Operating a single currency is not going to be easy. European economic and (1) union will not function (2) hitches. (3) , signs of (4) have already appeared. And these political, economic and social pressures will almost certainly (5) in the years to come. (6) EMU failure is a topic generally (7) in continental Europe. And for good reason. The (8) of monetary union would almost certainly slam the European Union (9) political (10) and the world into (11) crisis. "It would be almost as bad as a (12) in Europe," says Uwe Angenendt, chief economist (13) BHF-Bank in Frankfurt. The 14 contend EMU failure is not possible. They (15) insist that the political (16) in Europe for monetary union is simply (17) strong to allow (18) to fail. But they (19) a simple fact: European (20) concocted monetary union, and there- fore they can unconcoct it.

单选题For many people the New York Times is the greatest newspaper anywhere. But there has long been a small pool of conservative dissenters in its hometown. For them. the Times is left-wing, inaccurate, devoid of humor, and, worst of all. unopposed (they never seem to count the Wall Street Journal. which, to be fair, doesn't write that much about the Big Apple). Now these criticisms are being made, daily, and often wittily, by a flee web-based publication. The publisher, reporting staff and editor of smartertimes.com is Ira Stoll. a 28-year-old former managing editor of Forward, a Jewish weekly. At 6 o'clock every morning he picks up a copy of the Times at a Brooklyn news-stand and, within four hours, unleashes an invariably scathing report on something he thinks either ridiculous or wrong. Categories on the website range from the pedantic—"New York, lack of basic familiarity with" (noting unbearable geographic errors) and "Misspelling of names" (including that of the Sulzberger family, which controls the Times)—to weightier topics such as taxes and immigration. Most of the time. Mr. Stoll is on the look-out for left-wing bias masked as objectivity. He is particularly tough on the citation of allegedly impartial "experts" m back up predictable Times conclusions—that the poor are getting poorer, private education is bad. welfare reform has failed, public housing is vital, and Republicans and policemen are insensitive, racist or mentally challenged. Occasionally, Mr. Stoll's pieces precede (or perhaps cause) a correction. He was. for instance. the first to spot that the Times had attacked John Ashcroft, the conservative attorney-general, with a shortened and misleading quotation lifted from another newspaper. More often the sins are of leftish omission. Last weekend's ode to the joys of traveling in Cuba, he points out, avoided "any mention of the country's horrible human-rights record". Like other zealots, Mr. Stoll sometimes asks too much. Even. erm weekly newspapers occasionally get things wrong; it would be surprising if a daily as big as the Times never did. And Mr. Stoll’s bias. though overt, can get a little boring. This week he nicely skewered an absurdly solemn Times piece about a plan in Connecticut to stop high schools starting work before 8.30am, because teenagers do "not physiologically wake up", fbr not even wondering whether it might be a good tiling for the little dears to go to bed earlier. But did Mr. Stoll really need to add a carp about those tired teenagers having sex "with the assistance of taxpayer-provided free contraceptives"? All the same, Mr. Stoll seems to have struck a nerve. In only seven months, with no marketing, he has developed a subscriber list for a daily e-mail of almost 2.000 people (including, inevitably, Newt Gingrich). And the Times seems to be taking some notice. Three of its journalists have already taken him out for lunch.

单选题The author's study of this syndrome leads him to think that

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} The entertainment industry and technology companies have been warring for years over the dazzling ability of computers and the Internet to copy and transmit music and movies. A crucial battle ended this week with a ruling by America's Supreme Court in favour of copyright holder and against two companies that distribute peer-to-peer (P2P) software, which lets users share files online with others. The court's decision, though ostensibly a victory for content providers, is nevertheless unlikely to stamp out file sharing -- much of which will continue from outside America -- or stop the technological innovation that is threatening the current business models of media firms. The court was asked to decide whether two firms, Grokster and StreamCast, were liable for copyright infringement by their customers. Two lower courts had said that the firms were not liable, citing a 1984 ruling in favour of Sony's Betamax video recorder. This held that a technology firm is immune from liability so long as the device concerned is "capable of substantial noninfringing uses". The court did not reinterpret the 1984 decision in light of the Internet. Instead the justices ruled that the case raised a far narrower issue: whether Grokster and StreamCast induced users to violate copyrights and chose not to take the simple steps available to prevent it. Such behaviour would make the firms clearly liable for copyright infringement and end their immunity, even under the Betamax standard. The court reasoned that there were sufficient grounds to believe that inducement occurred, and sent the case back to lower courts for trial. Although the Grokster decision will probably not squelch innovation as much as many tech firms fear, it should certainly make IT and electronics firms more cautious about how they market their products --and quite right, too. But the Supreme Court's narrow ruling makes this unlikely -- in- deed, the justices noted the technology's widespread legitimate use. Yet their decision will surely embolden the entertainment industry to pursue in court any firms that they can claim knowingly allow infringement. This could kill off some small innovative start-ups. On the other hand, the ruling could also provide legal cover for tech firms with the wit to plaster their products with warnings not to violate the law. But judged from a long-term perspective, this week's victory for copyright holders seems likely to prove a Pyrrhic one. The Internet and file sharing are disruptive technologies that give consumers vastly more ability to use all sorts of media content, col0yrighted or not. Surely entertainment firms must devise ways to use this technology to sell their wares that will also allow copyright to be protected. So long as technology continues to evolve in ways that enable legitimate content sharing, piracy will also probably continue to some degree. Happily, in this case the piracy seems to have prompted content fir-rug to compete by offering better fee-based services. The challenge for content providers is to use new technology to create value for customers, and to make those who use content illegally feel bad about it.

单选题Contrary to the impression that grandmothers are delighted to help their grown daughters and care for their grandchildren, a study of multigenerational families indicates that many older women resent the frequent impositions of the younger generations on their home and energy. "Young women with children are under a lot of pressure these days, and they expect their mothers to help them pick up the pieces," noted Dr. Bertram J. Cohler, a behavioral scientist at the University of Chicago. "This is often the strongest source of resentment on the part of Grandmother, who has finished with child caring and now has her own life to live. Grandmothers like to see their children and grandchildren, but on their own time." In all the four New England families studied, the older women resented the numerous phone calls and visits from their grown daughter, who often turned to their mothers for advice, physical resources, affection, and companionship as well as baby sitting services. "American society keeps piling on the burdens for older people, particularly those in their 50s and 60s," Dr. Cohler said in an interview here. "They're still working and they're taking care of their grown children and maybe also their aged parents. Sometimes life gets to be too much. That's one reason many older folks move far away, to Florida or Arizona. They need more space and time to attend to their own affair and friends. Young people don't understand this, and that's part of what create tension between generations." He has found that, contrary to what the younger generations may have thought, older people have an enormous amount to do. "More than half of working-class grandmothers still work, and if they' re retired they have activities in the community that keep them occupied," he said. "Each generation has got to appreciate the unique needs of the other," Dr. Cohler went on. "The younger generation has to realize that grandparents have busy, active lives and that they need privacy and more space for themselves. And the older generation has to realize that continuing to be part of the family is important to the younger generation and that they need help and support." He noted that problems with interdependence between generations were likely to be more intense in working-class families than in middle and upper-class families. He explained that the working class tended to be geographically less mobile and to have fewer outside resources and that daughters were more likely to be reared with a strong family orientation and less emphasis on establishing an independent life.