单选题Sleep is a funny thing. We' re taught that we should get seven or eight hours a night, but a lot of us get by just fine on less, and some of us actually sleep too much. A study out of the University of Buffalo last month reported that people who routinely sleep more than eight hours a day and are still tired are nearly three times as likely to die of stroke--probably as a result of an underlying disorder that keeps them from snoozing soundly. Doctors have their own special sleep problems. Residents are famously sleep deprived. When I was training to become a doctor, it was not unusual to work 40 hours in a row without rest. Most of us took it in stride, confident we could still deliver the highest quality of medical care. Maybe we shouldn' t have been so sure of ourselves. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association points out that in the morning after 24 hours of sleeplessness, a person' s motor performance is comparable to that of someone who is legally intoxicated. Curiously, surgeons who believe that operating under the influence is grounds for dismissal often don' t think twice about operating without enough sleep. "I could tell you horror stories," says Jaya Agrawal, president of the American Medical Student Association, which runs a website where residents can post anonymous anecdotes. Some are terrifying. "I was operating after being up for over 36 hours, "one writes. "I literally fell asleep standing up and nearly face planted into the wound. " "Practically every surgical resident I know has fallen asleep at the wheel driving home from work," writes another. "I know of three who have hit parked cars. Another hit a convenience store on the roadside, going [105kin/h]. " "Your own patients have become the enemy," writes a third," because they are the one thing that stands between you and a few hours of sleep. " Agrawal' s organization is supporting the Patient and Physician Safety and Protection Act of 2001, introduced last November by Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan. Its key provisions, modeled on New York State's regulations, include an 80-hour workweek and a 24-hour work-shift limit. Most doctors, however, resist such interference. Dr. Charles Binkley, a senior surgery resident at the University of Michigan, agrees that something needs to be done but believes "doctors should be bound by their conscience, not by the government. " The U. S. controls the hours of pilots and truck drivers. But until such a system is in place for doctors, patients are on their own. If you' re worried about the people treating you, you should feel free to ask how many hours of sleep they have had. Doctors, for their part, have to give up their pose of infallibility and get the rest they need.

单选题According to the passage, sound journalistic judgment ______.

单选题If the opinion polls are to be believed, most Americans are coming to trust their government more than they used to. The habit has not yet spread widely among American Indians, who suspect an organization which has so often patronized them, lied to them and defrauded them. But the Indians may soon win a victory in a legal battle that epitomizes those abuses. Elouise Cobell, a banker who also happens to be a member of the Blackfeet tribe in Montana, is the leading plaintiff in a massive class-action suit against the government. At issue is up to $10 billion in trust payments owed to some 500,000 Indians. The suit revolves around Individual Indian Money (11M) accounts that are administered by the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Back in the 1880s, the government divided more than 11m acres of tribal land into parcels of 80 to 160 acres that were assigned to individual Indians. Because these parcels were rarely occupied by their new owners, the government assumed responsibility for managing them. As the Indians' trustee, it leased the land out for grazing, logging, mining and oil drilling--but it was supposed to distribute the royalties to the Indian owners. In fact, officials admit that royalties have been lost or stolen. Records were destroyed, and the government lost track of which Indians owned what land. The plaintiffs say that money is owing to 500,000 Indians, but even the government accepts a figure of about 300,000. For years, Cobell heard Indians complain of not getting payment from the government for the oil-drilling and ranching leases on their land. But nothing much got done. She returned to Washington and, after a brush-off from government lawyers, filed the suit. Gale Norton, George Bush's interior secretary was charged with contempt in November because her department had failed to fix the problem. In December, Judge Lam berth ordered the interior Department to shut down all its computers for ten weeks because trust-fund records were vulnerable to hackers. The system was partly restored last month and payments to some Indians, which had been interrupted l resumed. And that is not the end of it. Ms Norton has proposed the creation of a new Bureau of Indian Trust Management, separate from the BIA. Indians are cross that she suggested this without consulting them. Some want the trust funds to be placed in receivership, under a , neutral supervisor. Others have called for Congress to establish an independent commission, including Indians, to draw up a plan for reforming the whole system. A messy injustice may at last be getting sorted out.

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}} When it comes to suing doctors, Philadelphia is hardly the city of brotherly love. A combination of sprightly lawyers and sympathetic juries has made Philadelphia a hotspot for medical-malpractice lawsuits. Since 1995, Pennsylvania state courts have awarded an average of $ 2m in such cases, according to Jury Verdict Research, a survey firm. Some medical specialists have seen their malpractice insurance premiums nearly double over the past year. Obstetricians are now paying up to $104,000 a year to protect themselves. The insurance industry is largely to blame. Carol Golin, the Monitor's editor, argues that in the 1990s insurers tried to grab market share by offering artificially low rates (betting that any losses would be covered by gains on their investments). The stock-market correction, coupled with the large legal awards, has eroded the insurers' reserves. Three in Pennsylvania alone have gone bust. A few doctors--particularly older ones--will quit. The rest are adapting. Some are abandoning litigation-prone procedures, such as delivering babies. Others are moving parts of their practice to neighboring states where insurance rates are lower. Some from Pennsylvania have opened offices in New Jersey. New doctors may also be deterred from setting up shop in litigation havens, however prestigious. Despite a Republican president, tort reform has got nowhere at the federal level. Indeed doctors could get clobbered indirectly by a Patients' Bill of Rights, which would further expose managed care companies to lawsuits. This prospect has fuelled interest among doctors in Pennsylvania's new medical malpractice reform bill, which was signed into law on March 20th. It will, among other things, give doctors $ 40m of state funds to offset their insurance premiums, spread the payment of awards out over time and prohibit individuals from double dipping--that is, suing a doctor for damages that have already been paid by their health insurer. But will it really help? Randall Bovbjerg, a health policy expert at the Urban Institute, argues that the only proper way to slow down the litigation machine would be to limit the compensation for pain and suffering, so-called "non-monetary damages". Needless to say, a fixed cap on such awards is resisted by most trial lawyers. But Mr Bovbjerg reckons a more nuanced approach, with a sliding scale of payments based on well-defined measures of injury, is a better way forward. In the meantime, doctors and insurers are bracing themselves for a couple more rough years before the insurance cycle turns. Nobody disputes that hospital staff make mistakes: a 1999 Institute of Medicine report claimed that errors kill at least 44,000 patients a year. But there is little evidence that malpractice lawsuits on their own will solve the problem.

单选题Some managers treat things as "business as usual" when

单选题A word processor can be looked on as satisfying a need rather than a want if ______.

单选题A patent is an exclusive right given to an inventor for his or her invention. In other words, a patent is a monopoly right given to the inventor for the invention. A patent confers on the inventor the right to price and to sell the invention in any way he or she desires, in the United States, patents are granted by the Patent Office for 17 years. Although economists generally condemn monopoly as a form of market organization since monopoly imposes costs on the economy, patents present a more subtle case for monopoly theory. Specifically, can patent monopolies be justified? In general, economists complain about the costs of monopoly because they believe that the same industry could be organized competitively. A patent monopoly grant for 17 years presents a different problem. That is, the purpose of the patent system is to encourage invention. The issue is not monopoly versus competition but, more fundamentally, invention versus no invention. Is the world better off with the invention, even though it is monopolized for 17 years? In other words, what are the costs and benefits of a patent? Consider the simple case of a new consumer product with a positive demand, such as a camera utilizing a new exposure process. The costs of the patent monopoly are simply the deadweight costs of monopoly measured by the lost consumers' surplus from the 17-year patent monopoly. This cost must be assessed carefully in the context of an invention, however. What are the benefits of the patent system? First, there is the increase in consumer well-being brought about immediately by a desirable invention. In 17 years, the patent monopoly ends, and a second source of benefits arises: The price of cameras will fall to a competitive level, and consumers will reap the benefits of the camera at a lower price. In sum, theory of monopoly helps us to assess the costs and benefits of the patent. One can quibble about patent monopolies, arguing, for example, that they are granted for too long a time. In the end, the patent system creates goods and services and technologies that did not previously exist. In this respect it is a valuable System for the economy. The patent system also underscores the importance of property rights to ideas as a source of economic growth and progress.

单选题The author probably believes that

单选题The word "Pyrrhic"(Line 2, Para. 5) can be substituted by

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 for 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, polygyny is not, as so frequently indicated, universally a result of human immorality. It is simply not true, in this aspect of culture 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Few insects have inspired as much fear and hatred as the diminutive fire ants, less than half an inch long but living in colonies of more than 250,000 others. Everyone in the southern United States gets to know fire ants sooner or later by painful experience. Fire ants live in large earthen mounds and are true social insects--that means they have a caste system (division of labor), with a specialized caste that lays eggs (queen) and a worker caste of sterile females. There are several reasons that they are considered pests. About 60% of people living in areas where fire ants occur are stung every year. Of these, about 1% have some degree of allergic reaction ( called anaphylaxis ) to the sting. Their large mounds are unsightly and can damage mowing equipment. Fire ants sometimes enter electrical and mechanical equipment and can short out switches or chew through insulation. Finally, as fire ants move into new areas, they reduce diversity of native ants and prey on larger animals such as ground-nesting birds and turtles. Even though fire ants are pests in many circumstances, they can actually be beneficial in others. There is evidence that their predatory activities can reduce the numbers of some other important pests. In cotton, for example, they prey on important pests that eat cotton plants such as bollworms and budworms. In Louisiana sugarcane, an insect called the sugarcane borer used to be a very important pest before fire ants arrived and began preying on it. Fire ants also prey on ticks and fleas. Whether fire ants are considered pest or not depend on where they are found, but one thing is sure--we had best get used to living with them. Eradication attempts in the 1960s and 1970s failed for a number of reasons, and scientists generally agree that complete elimination of fire ants from the United States is not possible. A new, long-term approach to reducing fire ant populations involves classical biological control. When fire ants were accidentally brought to the United States, most of their parasites and diseases were not. Classical biological control involves identifying parasites and diseases specific to fire ants in South America, testing them to be sure that they don't attack or infect native plants or animals, and establishing them in the introduced fire ant population in the United States. Since fire ants are about 5 to 7 times more abundant here than in South America, scientists hope to reduce their numbers using this approach.

单选题 Transatlantic friction between companies and regulators has grown as Europe's data guardians have become more assertive. Francesca Bignami, a professor at George Washington University's law school, says that the explosion of digital technologies has made it impossible for watchdogs to keep a close eye on every web company operating in their backyard. So instead they are relying more on scapegoating prominent wrongdoers in the hope that this will deter others. But regulators such as Peter Schaar, who heads Germany's federal data-protection agency, say the gulf is exaggerated. Some European countries, he points out, now have rules that make companies who suffer big losses of customer data to report these to the authorities. The inspiration for these measures comes from America. Yet even Mr. Schaar admits that the internet's global scale means that there will need to be changes on both sides of the Atlantic. He hints that Europe might adopt a more flexible regulatory stance if America were to create what amounts to an independent data-protection body along European lines. In Europe, where the flagship Data Protection Directive came into effect in 1995, the European Commission is conducting a review of its privacy policies. In America Congress has begun debating a new privacy bill and the Federal Trade Commission is considering an overhaul of its rules. Even if America and Europe do narrow their differences, internet firms will still have to struggle with other data watchdogs. In Asia countries that belong to APEC are trying to develop a set of regional guidelines for privacy rules under an initiative known as the Data Privacy Pathfinder. Some countries such as Australia and New Zealand have longstanding privacy laws, but many emerging nations have yet to roll out fully fledged versions of their own. Mr. Polonetsky sees Asia as "a new privacy battleground", with America and Europe both keen to tempt countries towards their own regulatory model. Canada already has something of a hybrid privacy regime, which may explain why its data-protection commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, has been so influential on the international stage. She marshaled the signatories of the Google Buzz letter and took Facebook to task last year for breaching Canada's data privacy laws, which led the company to change its policies. Ms Stoddart argues that American companies often trip up on data-privacy issues because of "their brimming optimism that the whole world wants what they have rolled out in America." Yet the same optimism has helped to create global companies that have brought huge benefits to consumers, while also presenting privacy regulators with tough choices. Shoehorning such firms into old privacy frameworks will not benefit either them or their users.

单选题Directions: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank. Weak dollar or no, $ 46,000-the price for a single year of undergraduate instruction amid the red brick of Harvard Yard-is{{U}} (1) {{/U}}But nowadays cost is{{U}} (2) {{/U}}barrier to entry at many of America's best universities. Formidable financial-assistance policies have{{U}} (3) {{/U}} fees or slashed them deeply for needy students. And last month Harvard announced a new plan designed to{{U}} (4) {{/U}}the sticker-shock for undergraduates from middle and even upper-income families too. Since then, other rich American universities have unveiled{{U}} (5) {{/U}}initiatives. Yale, Harvard's bitterest{{U}} (6) {{/U}}, revealed its plans on January 14th. Students whose families make {{U}}(7) {{/U}}than $60,000 a year will pay nothing at all. Families earning up to $ 200,000 a year will have to pay an average of 10% of their incomes. The university will{{U}} (8) {{/U}}its financial- assistance budget by 43%, to over $ 80m. Harvard will have a similar arrangement for families making up to $180,000. That makes the price of going to Harvard or Yale{{U}} (9) {{/U}}to attending a state-run university for middle-and upper-income students. The universities will also not require any student to take out{{U}} (10) {{/U}}to pay for their{{U}} (11) {{/U}}, a policy introduced by Princeton in 2001 and by the University of Pennsylvania just after Harvard's{{U}} (12) {{/U}}. No applicant who gains admission, officials say, should feel{{U}} (13) {{/U}}to go elsewhere because he or she can't afford the fees. None of that is quite as altruistic as it sounds. Harvard and Yale are, after all, now likely to lure more students away from previously{{U}} (14) {{/U}}options, particularly state-run universities, {{U}}(15) {{/U}}their already impressive admissions figures and reputations. The schemes also provide a{{U}} (16) {{/U}}for structuring university fees in which high prices for rich students help offset modest prices for poorer ones and families are less{{U}} (17) {{/U}}on federal grants and government-backed loans. Less wealthy private colleges whose fees are high will not be able to{{U}} (18) {{/U}}Harvard or Yale easily. But America's state-run universities, which have traditionally kept their fees low and stable, might well try a differentiated{{U}} (19) {{/U}}scheme as they raise cash to compete academically with their private{{U}} (20) {{/U}}. Indeed, the University of California system has already started to implement a sliding-fee scale.

单选题Many people of agencies disagree to the abstinence-only education NOT because

单选题"Popular art" has a number of meanings, impossible to define with any precision, which range from folklore to junk. The poles are clear enough, but the middle tends to blur. The Hollywood Western of the 1930's for example, has elements of folklore, but is closer to junk than to high art or folk art. There can be great trash, just as there is bad high art. The musicals of George Gershwin are great popular art, never aspiring to high art. Schubert and Brahms, however, used elements of popular music--folk themes--in works clearly intended as high art. The case of Verdi is a different one: he took a popular genre-bourgeois melodrama set to music (an accurate definition of nineteenth-century opera) and, without altering its fundamental nature, transmuted it into high art. This remains one of the greatest achievements in music, and one that cannot be fully appreciated without recognizing the essential trashiness of the genre. As an example of such a transmutation, consider what Verdi made of the typical political elements of nineteenth-century opera. Generally in the plots of these operas, a hero or heroine--usually portrayed only as an individual, unfettered by class--is caught between the immoral corruption of the aristocracy and the doctrinaire rigidity or secret greed of the leaders of the proletariat. Verdi transforms this naive and unlikely formulation with music of extraordinary energy and rhythmic vitality, music more subtle than it seems at first hearing. There are scenes and arias that still sound like calls to arms and were clearly understood as such when they were first performed. Such pieces lend an immediacy to the otherwise veiled political message of these operas and call up feelings beyond those of the opera itself. Or consider Verdi's treatment of character. Before Verdi, there were rarely any characters at all in musical drama, only a series of situations which allowed the singers to express a series of emotional states. Any attempt to find coherent psychological portrayal in these operas is misplaced ingenuity. The only coherence was the singer's vocal technique: when the cast changed, new arias were almost always substituted, generally adapted from other operas. Verdi's characters, on the other hand, have genuine consistency and integrity. Even if, in many casals, the consistency is that of pasteboard melodrama, the integrity of the character is achieved through the music: once he had become established. Verdi did not rewrite his music for differenf singers or countenance alterations or substitutions of somebody else's arias in one of his operas, as every eighteenth-century composer had done. When he revised an opera, it was only for dramatic economy and effectiveness.