单选题During the past generation, the American middle-class family that once could count on hard work and fair pay to keep itself financially secure has been transformed by economic risk and new realities. Now a pink slip, a bad diagnosis, or a disappearing spouse can reduce a family from solidly middle class to newly poor in a few months. In just one generation, millions of mothers have gone to work, transforming basic family economics. Scholars, policymakers, and critics of all stripes have debated the social implications of these changes, but few have looked at the side effect: family risk has risen as well. Today's families have budgeted to the limits of their new two-paycheck status. As a result, they have lost the parachute they once has in times of financial setback-- a back-up earner (usually Mom) who could go into the workforce if the primary earner got laid off or fell sick. This "added-worker effect" could support the safety net offered by unemployment insurance or disability insurance to help families weather bad times. But today, a disruption to family fortunes can no longer be made up with extra income from an otherwise-stay-at-home partner. During the same period, families have been asked to absorb much more risk in their retirement income. Steelworkers, airline employees, and now those in the auto industry are joining millions of families who must worry about interest rates, stock market fluctuation, and the harsh reality that they may outlive their retirement money. For much of the past year, President Bush campaigned to move Social Security to a savings-account model, with retirees trading much or all of their guaranteed payments for payments depending on investment returns. For younger families, the picture is not any better. Both the absolute cost of healthcare and the share of it borne by families have risen--and newly fashionable health-savings plans are spreading from legislative halls to Wal-Mart workers, with much higher deductibles and a large new dose of investment risk for families' future healthcare. Even demographics are working against the middle class family, as the odds of having a weak elderly parent-- and all he attendant need for physical and financial assistance -- have jumped eightfold in just one generation. From the middle-class family perspective, much of this, understandably, looks far less like an opportunity to exercise more financial responsibility, and a good deal more like a frightening acceleration of the wholesale shift of financial risk onto their already overburdened shoulders. The financial fallout has begun, and the political fallout may not be far behind.

单选题If you smoke, you' d better hurry. From July 1st pubs all over England will, by law, be no-smoking areas. So will restaurants, offices and even company cars, if more than one person uses them. England's smokers are following a well-trodden path. The other three bits of the United Kingdom have already banned smoking in almost all enclosed public spaces, and there are anti-smoking laws of varying strictness over most of Western Europe. The smoker's journey from glamour through toleration to suspicion is finally reaching its end in pariah status. But behind this pubhc-health success story lies a darker tale. Poorer people are much more likely to smoke than richer ones--a change from the 1950s, when professionals and laborers were equally keen. Today only 15% of men in the highest professional classes smoke, but 42% of unskilled workers do. Despite punitive taxation--20 cigarettes cost around ￡ 5.00 ( $10.00), three-quarters of which is tax--55% of single mothers on benefits smoke. The figure for homeless men is even higher; for hard-drug users it is practically 100%. The message that smoking kills has been heard, it seems, but not by all. Having defeated the big killers of the past--want, exposure, poor sanitation-- governments all over the developed world are turning their attention to diseases that stem mostly from how individuals choose to live their lives. But the same deafness afflicts the same people when they are strongly encouraged to give up other sorts of unhealthy behavior. The lower down they are on practically any pecking order--job prestige, income, education, background-the more likely people are to be fat and unfit, and to drink too much. That tempts governments to shout ever louder in an attempt to get the public to listen- and nowhere do they do so more aggressively than in Britain. One reason is that pecking orders matter more than in most other rich countries : income distribution is very unequal and the unemployed, disaffected, ill-educated rump is comparatively large. Another reason is the frustration of a government addicted to targets, which often aim not only to improve something but to lessen inequality in the process. A third is that the National Health Service is free to patients, and paying for those who have arguably brought their ill-health on themselves grows alarmingly costly. Britain's aggressiveness, however, may be pointless, even counter-productive. There is no reason to believe that those who ignore measured voices will listen to shouting. It irritates the majority who are already behaving responsibly, and it may also undermine all government pronouncements on health by convincing people that they have an ultra-cautious margin of error built in. Such hectoring may also be missing the root cause of the problem. According to Mr. Marmot, who cites research on groups as diverse as baboons in captivity, British civil servants and Oscar nominees, the higher rates of ill health among those in more modest walks of life can be attributed to what he calls the "status syndrome". People in privileged positions think they are worth the effort of behaving healthily, and find the will-power to do so. The implication is that it is easier to improve a person's health by weakening the connection between social position and health than by targeting behavior directly. Some public-health experts speak of social cohesion, support for families and better education for all. These are bigger undertakings than a bossy campaign; but more effective, and quieter.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} If you are a tourist interested in seeing a baseball game while in New York, you can find out which of its teams are in town simply by sending a message to AskForCents.com. In a few minutes, the answer comes back, apparently supplied by a machine, but actually composed by a human. Using humans to process information in a machine-like way is not new: it was pioneered by the Mechanical Turk, a famed 18th-century chess-playing machine that was operated by a hidden chessmaster. But while computers have since surpassed the human brain at chess, many tasks still baffle even the most powerful electronic brain. For instance, computers can find you a baseball schedule, but they cannot tell you directly if the Yankees are in town. Nor can they tell you whether sitting in the bleachers is a good idea on a first date. AskForCents can, because its answers come from people. "Whatever question you can come up with, there's a person that can provide the answer—you don't have the inflexibility of an algorithm-driven system," says Jesse Heitler, who developed AskForCents. Mr. Heitler was able to do this thanks to a new software tool developed by Amazon, the online retailer, that allows computing tasks to be farmed out to people over the internet. Aptly enough, Amazon's system is called Mechanical Turk. Amazon's Turk is part toolkit for software developers, and part online bazaar: anyone with intemet access can register as a Turk user and start performing the Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) listed on the Turk website (mturk.com). Companies can become "requesters by setting up a separate account, tied to a bank account that will pay out fees, and then posting their HITs. Most HITs pay between one cent and $5. So far, people from more than 100 countries have performed HITs, though only those with American bank accounts can receive money for their work; others are paid in Amazon gift certificates. Mr. Heitler says he had previously tried to build a similar tool, but concluded that the in-frastucture would be difficult to operate profitably. Amazon already has an extensive software infrastructure designed for linking buyers with sellers, however, and the Turk simply extends that existing model. Last November Amazon unveiled a prototype of the system, which it calls "artificial artificial intelligence". The premise is that humans are vastly superior to computers at tasks such as pattern recognition, says Peter Cohen, director of the project at Amazon, so why not let software take advantage of human strengths? Mr. Cohen credits Amazon's boss, Jeff Bezos, with the concept for the Turk. Other people have had similar ideas. Eric Bonabeau of Icosystem, an American firm that builds software tools modeled on natural systems, has built what he calls the "Hunch Engine" to combine human intelligence with computer analysis. The French postal service, for example, has used it to help its workers choose the best delivery routes, and pharmaceutical researchers are using it to determine molecular structures by combining their gut instincts with known results stored in a database. And a firm called Seriosity hopes to tap the collective brainpower of the legions of obsessive players of multiplayer online games such as "World of War-craft ", by getting them to perform small real-world tasks (such as sorting photographs) while playing, and paying them in the game's own currency.

单选题A controversial decision on whether choice cuts of steak and cartons of milk produced from cloned animals are suitable for the dinner table is now long overdue. Hundreds of pigs, cows and other animals created with the help of cloning are living (1) farms across the United States and (2) the forthcoming ruling will directly (3) American consumers, British holidaymakers may also (4) themselves at the forefront of a food revolution that many commentators expect will (5) arrive here. (6) the birth of Dolly the sheep-the first mammal cloned from an adult cell--there were extreme predictions of herds of genetically (7) bulls and pastures (8) with cloned dairy cows. That double (9) of the past decade has not yet been realized (10) clones have become a familiar sight at agricultural fairs in America, where producers of (11) pigs and cattle have been among the first to (12) cloning, which offers a way to keep (13) traits without inbreeding problems caused by traditional methods. Clones of rare and elite animals, including sheep, goats, and rabbits, (14) a way to improve animal healthy, (15) the nutritional value of meat and milk, and breed animals immune (16) diseases or better suited for developing countries. The safety of cloned (17) has been under examination by various bodies. Three years ago the US National Academy of Science concluded that (18) available data indicated that cloning met animal welfare and food safety considerations, more information was needed. (19) scientific evidence suggests that there is little (20) for alarm, at least on food-safety grounds.

单选题Part of the public policy task, as outlined in the text, is to

单选题Parents can easily come down with an acute case of schizophrenia from reading the contradictory reports about the state of the public schools. One sat of experts asserts that the schools are better than they have been for years. Others say that the schools are in terrible shape and are responsible for every national problem from urban poverty to the trade deficit. One group of experts looks primarily at such indicators as test scores, and they cheer what they see: all the indicators—reading scores, minimum competency test results, the Scholastic Aptitude Test scores—are up, some by substantial margins. Students are required to take more academic courses—more mathematics and science, along with greater stress on basic skills, including knowledge of computers. More than 40 state legislatures have mandated such changes. But in the eyes of another set of school reformers such changes are at best superficial and at worst counterproductive. These experts say that merely toughening requirements, without either improving the quality of instruction or, even more important, changing the way schools are organized and children are taught makes the schools worse rather than better. They challenge the nature of the test, mostly multiple choice or true or false, by which children's progress is measured; they charge that raising the test scores by drilling pupils to come up with the right answers does not improve knowledge, understanding and the capacity to think logically and independently. In addition, these critics fear that the get-tough approach to school reform will cause more of the youngsters at the bottom to give up and drop out. This, they say, may improve national scores but drain even further the nation's pool of educated people. The way to cut through the confusion is to understand the different yardsticks used by different observers. Compared with what schools used to be like "in the good old days", with lots of drill and uniform requirements, and the expectation that many youngsters who could not make it would drop out and find their way into unskilled jobs--by those yardsticks the schools have measurably improved in recent years. But by the yardsticks of those experts who believe that the old school was deficient in teaching the skills needed in the modem world, today' s schools have not become better. These educators believe that rigid new mandates may actually have made the schools worse.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} The American screen has long been a smoky place, at least since 1942's Now, Voyager, in which Bette Davis and Paul Henreid showed how to make and seal a romantic deal over a pair of cigarettes that were smoldering as much as the stars. Today cigarettes are more common on screen than at any other time since midcentury: 75% of all Hollywood films—including 36% of those rated G or PG—show tobacco use, according to a 2006 survey by the University of California, San Francisco. Audiences, especially kids, are taking notice. Two recent studies, published in Lancet and Pediatrics, have found that among children as young as 10, those exposed to the most screen smoking are up to 2.7 times as likely as others to pick up the habit. Worse, it's the ones from nonsmoking homes who are hit the hardest. Now the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH)—the folks behind the designated-driver campaign—are pushing to get the smokes off the screen. "Some movies show kids up to 14 incidents of smoking per hour," says Barry Bloom, HSPH's dean. "We're in the business of preventing disease, and cigarettes are the No. 1 preventable cause." Harvard long believed that getting cigarettes out of movies could have as powerful an effect, but it wouldn't be easy. Cigarette makers had a history of striking product-placement deals with Hollywood, and while the 1998 tobacco settlement prevents that, nothing stops directors from incorporating smoking into scenes on their own. In 1999 Harvard began holding one-on-one meetings with studio execs trying to change that, and last year the Motion Picture Association of America flung the door open, inviting Bloom to make a presentation in February to all the studios. Harvard's advice was direct: Get the butts entirely out, or at least make smoking unappealing. A few films provide a glimpse of what a no-smoking or low-smoking Hollywood would be like. Producer Lindsay Doran, who once helped persuade director John Hughes to keep Ferris Bueller smoke-free in the 1980s hit, wanted to de the same for the leads of her 2006 movie Stranger Than Fiction. When a writer convinced her that the character played by Emma Thompson had to smoke, Doran relented, but from the way Thompson hacks her way through the film and snuffs out her cigarettes in a palmful of spit, it's clear the glamour's gone. And remember all the smoking in The Devil Wears Prada? No? That's because the producers of that film kept it out entirely—even in a story that travels from the US fashion world to Paris, two of the most tobacco-happy places on earth. "No one smoked in that movie," says Doran, "and no one noticed." Such movies are hardly the rule, but the pressure is growing. Like smokers, studios may conclude that quitting the habit is not just a lot healthier but also a lot smarter.

单选题"The answer is closer to 'yes'" (Line 1, Paragraph 3) because

单选题Anthropologists commonly distinguish three forms of marriage: monogamy, the marriage of one man to one woman, polygyny, the marriage of one man to two or more women, and polyandry, the marriage of one woman to two or more men. Polygyny and polyandry are often linked under the single term "polygamy" , a marriage of one individual to two or more spouses. Though there are many societies which permit, or even encourage, polygamous marriages, it does not follow, in such societies,that every married individual, or even that a majority of them, has more than one spouse, Quite the contrary is true, for in most, if not all, of so called polygamous societies monogamy is statistically the prevailing form. The reason for this is clear: the proportion of male to female births in any human society is roughly the same, and if this proportion is maintained among the sexually mature, a preponderance of plural marriages means that a considerable number of either men or women must remain unmarried. No society can maintain itself under such conditions; the emotional stresses would be too great to be survived. Accordingly, even where the cultural ideals do not prohibit plural marriages, these may occur on any notable scale only societies where for one reason or another, one sex markedly outnumbers the other. In short, monogamy not only prevails in most of the world"s societies, either as the only approved form of marriage or as the only feasible form, but it may also prevail within a polygamous society where, very often, only a minority of the population can actually secure more than one spouse. In a polygynous household the husband must supply a house and garden for each of his wives. The wives live with him in turn, cooking and serving fur him during the period of his visit. The first wife takes precedence over the others. Polyandry is much rarer than polygyny. It is often the result of a disproportion in the ratio of men to women. In sum, polygamy is not, as so frequently indicated, universally a result of human immorality. It is simply not true, in this aspect of euhure as in many others, that people who follow patterns of culture deemed immoral in our society are thereby lacking in morality. Our ideal and compulsory pattern of marriage, which holds that monogamy is the only appropriate form of marriage, is not shared by all peoples, even by some of those who regularly practice monogamy. In a great many societies, monogamy is only one possible form of marriage, with polygyny or polyandry as perfectly possible, though less frequent, alternatives.

单选题Biologically, there is only one quality which distinguishes us from animals: the ability to laugh. In a universe which appears to be utterly devoid of humor, we enjoy this supreme luxury. And it is a luxury, for unlike any other bodily process, laughter does not seem serve a biologically useful purpose. In a divided world, a laughter is a unifying force. Human beings oppose each other on a great many issues. Nations may disagree about systems of government and human relations may be plagued by ideological factions and political camps, but we all share the ability to laugh. And laughter, in turn, depends on the most complex and subtle of all-human qualities: a sense of humor. Certain comic stereotypes have a universal appeal. This can best be seen from the world-wide popularity of Charlie Chaplain's early films. The little man at odds with society never fails to amuse no matter which country we come from. As that great commentator on human affairs, Dr. Samuel Johnson, once remarked, "Men have been wise in very different modes; but they have always laughed in the same way. " A sense of humor may take various forms and laughter may be anything from refined tinkle to an earthquaking roar, but the effect is always the same. Humor helps us to maintain a correct sense of values. It is the one quality which political fanatics appear to lack. If we can see the funny side, we never make the mistake of taking ourselves too seriously. We are always reminded that tragedy is not really far removed from comedy, so we never get a lopsided view of things. This is one of the chief functions of satire and irony. Human pain and suffering are so grim; we hover so often on the brink of war, political realities are usually enough to plunge us into total despair. In such circumstances, cartoons and satirical accounts of somber political events redress the balance. They take the wind out of pompous and arrogant politicians who have lost their sense of proportion. They enable us to see that many of our most profound actions are merely comic or absurd. We laugh when a great satirist like Swift writes about wars in Gulliver's Travels. The Lilliputians and their neighbors attack each other because they can't agree which end to break an egg. We laugh because we are meant to laugh; hut we are meant to weep too. It is no wonder that in totalitarian regimes any satire against the Establishment is wholly banned. It is too powerful weapon to be allowed to flourish. The sense of humor must be singled out as man's most important quality because it is associated with laughter. And laughter, in turn, is associated with happiness. Courage, determination, initiative--these are qualities we share with other forms oflife. But the sense of humor is an unique human quality. If happiness is one of the great goals of life, then it is the sense of humor that provides the key.

单选题By almost every measure, Paul Pfingst is an unsentimental prosecutor. Last week the San Diego County district attorney said he fully intends to try (1) Charles Andrew Williams, 15, as an adult (2) the Santana High School shootings. Even before the (3) Pfingst had stood behind the controversial California law that (4) treating murder suspects as young as 14 as adults. So nobody would have wagered that Pfingst would also be the first D. A. ( district attorney) in the U. S. to (5) his very own Innocence Project. Yet last June, Pfingst told his attorneys to go back over old murder and rape (6) and see ff any unravel with newly developed DNA-testing tools. In other words, he wanted to revisit past victories—this time playing for the other team. "I think people misunderstand being conservative (7) being biased," says Pfingst. "I consider myself a pragmatic guy, and I have no interest in putting (8) people in jail." Around the U. S. , flabbergasted defense attorneys and their jailed clients cheered his move. Among prosecutors, (9) , there was an awkward pause. (10) , each DNA test costs as much as $ 5,000. Then there's the (11) risk: if dozens of innocents (12 , the D.A. will have indicted his shop. (13) nine months later, no budgets have been busted or prosecutors ousted. Only the rare case merits review. Pfingst's team considers convictions before 1993, when the city started (14) DNA testing. They discard cases if the defendant has been released. Of the 560 (15) files, they have re-examined 200, looking for cases with biological evidence and defendants who still (16) innocence. They have identified three so far. The most compelling involves a man (17) 12 years for molesting a girl who was playing in his apartment. But others were there at the time. Police found a small drop of saliva on the (18) shirt—too small a (19) to test in 1991. Today that spot could free a man. Test results are due any day. (20) by San Diego, 10 other counties in the U.S. are starting DNA audits.

单选题The author considers the explanation put forward by Freyre and Tannenbaum for the treatment accorded Black slaves to be

单选题For a national of pet-rovers, the British are surprisingly relaxed about the vast numbers of animal experiments that are conducted by its scientists. A dearth of publicity following the jailing of extremists who threatened the livelihoods (and, in other cases, the lives) of those who help provide animals for research may be one reason for the muted response to the recent Home Office announcement that the number of animals used in experiments rose once again last year. But another reason is that Britain already has the most restrictive rules in the world governing the use of animals, which curtail the use of many of the higher-order species for which people feel the greatest empathy, and that most of the research that is done instead involves rodents. Unlike America, where researchers routinely use chimpanzees to help develop vaccines against diseases such as hepatitis-C and HIV, no experiments of any kind have been conducted on great apes in Britain for more than a decade. Only relatively small numbers of monkeys are used (less than 0.1% of the total number of animals). Nevertheless their use is controversial so, to determine whether it is also worthwhile, Sir Patrick Bateson of the University of Cambridge recently conducted the first ever retrospective study of the use of primates in research, which was published on July 27th. Sir Patrick examined experiments on some 3,000 monkeys such as the macaque that were conducted over the decade to 2006. The lion's share involved neurological studies: scientists argue that if they can better understand how the brain works, then they will be better placed to develop ways to stave off degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. They were supervised by 72 people who held a license from the Home Office that allowed them to use primates in research; each experiment had to be licensed, too. And most did indeed help to further knowledge. However in a disturbing 9 % of cases "no clear scientific, medical or social benefit had emerged" by the time the evaluation was completed. That seems rather a lot of unnecessary pain and distress, as Sir Patrick acknowledges. Yet his colleague Sir Mark Walport of the Wellcome Trust, which funds medical research, points out that all scientific research carries a risk that it will reveal nothing novel, and that the fact that 91% of investigations using primates did prove worthwhile was something of a triumph. One of Sir Patrick's recommendations that is particularly welcome is that researchers "have a moral obligation to publish results—even if negative—in order to prevent work being repeated unnecessarily". For too long scientists have shared only the results of successful experiments, condemning others to repeat their mistakes. That is something we have previously argued against, and the ongoing shift away from paper-based journals to electronic: data repositories can only help. In an ideal world, there would be no animal testing. It is stressful for animals, and expensive and time-consuming for people. But while it remains necessary to advance both medical and veterinary research, conducting it under the strictest rules, and exposing what is done to external scrutiny, should help ensure Britain's continuing status as an animal-loving nation.

单选题About three-quarters of Americans, according to surveys, think the country is on the wrong track. About two-thirds of the public disapprove of the job performance of President Bush, and an even higher number disdain Congress. The media are excited about the prospect of a wealthy businessman running for President as an independent who could tap into broad public disgruntlement with the partisan politicians in Washington. 2007? Yes. But also 1992. The main difference between the two situations is that Michael Bloomberg is richer—and saner—than Ross Perot. But one similarity might be this: the American people were wrong then and may be wrong now. The widespread pessimism in the early 1990s about the course of the country turned out to be unwarranted. The rest of the decade featured impressive economic growth, a falling crime rate, successful reform of the welfare system and a reasonably peaceful world. Perhaps the problems weren't so bad in the first place, or perhaps the political system produced politicians, like Bill Clinton, Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich, who were able to deal with the problems. But, in any case, the country got back on course. That's not to say all was well in the 1990s, especially in foreign policy. Responsibilities in places ranging from Bosnia to Rwanda to Afghanistan were shirked, and gathering dangers weren't dealt with. Still, the sour complaints and dire predictions of 1992—oh, my God, the budget deficit will do us in! —were quickly overtaken by events. What' s more, the fear of many conservatives that we might be at the mercy of unstoppable forces of social disintegration turned out to be wrong. Indeed, the dire predictions were rendered obsolete so quickly that one wonders whether we were, in 1992, really just indulging in some kind of post-cold-war victory. Sometimes the public mood is…well, moody. Today we're moody again. We are obviously fighting a difficult and, until recently, badly managed war in Iraq, whose outcome is uncertain. This accounts for much of the pessimism. It also doesn't help that the political system seems incapable of dealing with big problems like immigration, an energy policy and health care. Still, is the general feeling that everything is going to the dogs any more justified today than it was 15 years ago? Not really. Think of it this way: Have events in general gone better or worse than most people would have predicted on Sept. 12, 2001? There's been no successful second attack here ill the U. S. —and very limited terrorist successes in Europe or even in the Middle East. We've had 5 1/2 years of robust economic growth, low unemployment and a stock-market recovery. Social indicators in the U. S. are mostly stable or improving—abortions, teenage births and teenage drug use are down and education scores are up a bit. As for American foreign policy since 9/11, it has not produced the results some of us hoped for, and there are many legitimate criticisms of the Bush Administration's performance. But, in fact, despite the gloom and doom from critics left and right (including, occasionally, me), the world seems to present the usual mixed bag of difficult problems and heartening developments. The key question, of course, is the fate of Iraq. A decent outcome—the defeat of al-Qaeda in what it has made the central front in the war on terrorism and enough security so there can be peaceful rule by a representative regime—seems to me achievable, if we don' t lose our nerve here at home. With success in Iraq, progress elsewhere in the Middle East will be easier. The balance sheet is uncertain. But it is by no means necessarily grim.