单选题All the following are cited as examples of the importance of exercising foresight EXCEPT

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} A pair of dice, rolled again and again, will eventually produce two sixes. Similarly, the virus that causes influenza is constantly changing at random and, one day, will mutate in a way that will enable it to infect billions of people, and to kill millions. Many experts now believe a global outbreak of pandemic flu is overdue, and that the next one could be as bad as the one in 1918, which killed somewhere between 25m and 50m peo-pie. Today however, advances in medicine offer real hope that another such outbreak can be contained—if governments start preparing now. New research published this week suggests that a relatively small stockpile of an anti-viral drug—as little as 3m doses—could be enough to limit sharply a flu pandemic if the drugs were deployed quickly to people in the area surrounding the initial outbreak. The drug's manufacturer, Roche, is talking to the World Health Organisation about donating such a stockpile. This is good news. But much more needs to be done, especially with a nasty strain of avian flu spreading in Asia which could mutate into a threat to humans. Since the SARS outbreak in 2003 a few countries have developed plans in preparation for similar episodes. But progress has been shamefully patchy, and there is still far too little international co-ordination. A global stockpile of drugs alone would not be much use without an adequate system of surveillance to identify early cases and a way of delivering treatment quickly. If an out- break occurred in a border region, for example, a swift response would most likely depend on prior agreements between different countries about quarantine and containment. Reaching such agreements is rarely easy, but that makes the task all the more urgent. Rich countries tend to be better prepared than poor ones, but this should be no consolation to them. Flu does not respect borders. It is in everyone's interest to make sure that developing countries, especially in Asia, are also well prepared. Many may bridle at interference from outside. But if richer nation's were willing to donate anti-viral drugs and guarantee a supply of any vaccine that becomes available, poorer nations might be willing to reach agreements over surveillance and preparedness. Simply sorting out a few details now will have lives ( and recriminations) later. Will there be enough ventilators, makes and drugs? Where will people be treated if the hospitals overflow7 Will food be delivered as normal? Too many countries have no answers to these questions.

单选题In the last paragraph, "play down their visibility" refers to ______.

单选题The word "intriguing" in paragraph 3 refers to ______.

单选题What is the reason for the demonstrations in the streets of big Chinese cities?

单选题By calling these early computers "high-speed idiots", people were really implying that computers ______

单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on ANSER SHEET 1. Until the late 1940s, when television began finding its way into American homes, companies relied mainly on print and radio to promote their products and services. The advent of television {{U}}(1) {{/U}} a revolution in product and service. Between 1949 and 1951, advertising on television grew 960 percent. Today the Internet is once again {{U}}(2) {{/U}} promotion. By going online, companies can communicate instantly and directly with prospective customers. {{U}}(3) {{/U}} on the World Wide Web includes advertising, sponsorships, and sales promotions {{U}}(4) {{/U}} sweepstakes, contests, coupons, and rebates. In 1996 World Wide Web advertising revenues {{U}}(5) {{/U}}＄ 300 million. Effective online marketers don't {{U}}(6) {{/U}} transfer hard-copy ads to cyberspace. {{U}}(7) {{/U}} sites blend promotional and non-promotional information indirectly delivering the advertising messages. To {{U}}(8) {{/U}} visits to their sites and to create and {{U}}(9) {{/U}} customer loyalty, companies change information frequently and provide many opportunities for {{U}}(10) {{/U}} . A prototype for excellent {{U}}(11) {{/U}} promotion is the Ragu Web site. Here visitors can find thirty-six pasta recipes, take Italian lessons, and view an Italian film festival, {{U}}(12) {{/U}} they will find no traditional ads. {{U}}(13) {{/U}}subtle is the mix of product and promotion that visitors hardly know an advertising message has been {{U}}(14) {{/U}} Sega of America, maker of computer games and hardware, uses its Web site for a {{U}}(15) {{/U}} of different promotions, such as {{U}}(16) {{/U}} new game characters to the public and supplying Web surfers the opportunity to {{U}}(17) {{/U}} games. Sega's home page averages 250,000 visits a day. To heighten interest in the site, Sega bought an advertising banner on Netscape {{U}}(18) {{/U}} increasing site visits by 15 percent. Online {{U}}(19) {{/U}} in Quaker Oats' Gatorade promotion received a free T-shirt in exchange for answering a few questions. Quaker Oats reports that the online promotion created product {{U}}(20) {{/U}} and helped the company know its customers better.

单选题According to the passage, what helps to explain why the population problem has come on "all of a sudden"?

单选题There are many reasons why food fads have continued to flourish. Garlic has long been touted (兜售) as an essential ingredient of physical prowess (能力) and as a flu (1) , squash has been thought by some to cure digestive disorders, and red pepper has been (2) to promote endurance. The natural human desire for a simple solution to a difficult problem (3) the stage for promoting miraculous potions (饮剂), pills and combination of chemicals. The (4) individuals who eagerly embrace any second-hand information with scientific overtones (暗示) provide the foundation for healthy business enterprises. A person who has never crossed the (5) of a health food store may be astonished, (6) or overjoyed. Countless elixirs (万应灵), herbs, powders and other fascinating extracts are only a (7) of the high-profit selection. The available literature includes pamphlets extolling (赞扬) the amazing return of youth one can (8) while drinking a potion filled with tropical weeds, as well as volumes (9) the reader of an almost (10) longevity. The store is directly keyed to arouse visitors' (11) over their health and to (12) on real and imagined problems by offering solutions that, (13) , cost more than the customers may be able to (14) Health food store patrons are often cajoled (劝诱) into buying tonics (补药) that promise to make the functioning of healthy organs even better, (15) whether an improvement is (16) for. Promotion of expensive products that consumers do not actually need takes (17) initiative and insight. (18) occasion, there may even be some slight (19) for truth in an entrepreneur's (20) to cure customer of ills—for a price.

单选题Scientists have long bickered over whether hypocrisy is driven by emotion or by reason. The role of emotion in moral judgments has upended the Enlightenment notion that our ethical sense is based on high-minded philosophy and cognition. In a new study that will not exactly restore your faith in human nature, psychologists David DeSteno and Piercarlo Valdesolo of Northeastern University instructed 94 people to assign themselves and a stranger one of two tasks, an easy one, looking for hidden images in a photo, or a hard one, solving math and logic problems. The participants could make the assignments themselves, or have a computer do it randomly. Then everyone was asked, how fairly did you act?, from "extremely unfairly" (1) to "extremely fairly" (7). Next they watched someone else make the assignments, and judged that person's ethics. Selflessness was a virtual no-show. 87 out of 94 people opted for the easy task and gave the next guy the onerous one. Hypocrisy, however, showed up with bells on. every single person who made the selfish choice judged his own behavior more leniently—on average, 4.5 vs. 3.1—than that of someone else who grabbed the easy task for himself, the scientists will report in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The gap suggests how that kind of hypocrisy is possible. For one thing, people's emotions might have gotten the better of them. When we judge our own transgressions less harshly than we judge the same transgressions in others, DeSteno said, it may be because "we have this automatic, gut-level instinct to preserve our self-image. " Adds Dan Batson of the University of Kansas, a pioneer in hypocrisy studies, "people have learned that it pays to seem moral, since it lets you avoid censure and guilt. But even better is appearing moral without having to pay the cost of actually being moral" —such as assigning yourself the tough job. To test the role of cognition in hypocrisy, DeSteno had volunteers again assign themselves an easy task and a stranger an onerous one. But before judging the fairness of their actions, they had to memorize seven numbers. This ploy keeps the brain's thinking regions too tied up to think much about anything else, and it worked, hypocrisy vanished. People judged their own (selfish) behavior as harshly as they did others', strong evidence that moral hypocrisy requires a high-order cognitive process. When the thinking part of the brain is otherwise engaged, we're left with gut-level reactions, and we intuitively and equally condemn bad behavior by ourselves as well as others. If our gut knows when we have erred and judges our transgressions harshly, moral hypocrisy might not be as inevitable as if it were the child of emotions and instincts, which are tougher to change than thinking. "Since it's a cognitive process, we have volitional control over it," argues DeSteno.

单选题The campaign staged by both BMW and Renault are to market

单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} If you see a diamond ring on the fourth finger of a woman's left hand, you probably know what it means: in America, this has long been the digit of choice for betrothal jewelry, and the lore of the trade traces the symbolism back to ancient times. But if you see a diamond ring on the fourth finger of a woman's right hand, you may or may not know that it signifies an independent spirit, or even economic empowerment and changing gender mores. "A lot of women have disposable income," Katie Couric said recently on the "Today" show after showing viewers her Change right-hander. "Why wait for a man to give her a diamond ring?" This notion may be traced back, approximately, to September. That's when the Diamond Information Center began a huge marketing campaign aimed at articulating the meaning of right-hand rings-and thus a rationale for buying them. "Your left hand says 'we' ," the campaign declares. "Your right hand says 'me' ." The positioning is brilliant: the wearer may be married or unmarried and may buy the ring herself or request it as a gift. And while it can take years for a new jewelry concept to work itself thoroughly into the mainstream, the tight-band ring already has momentum. At the higher end of the scale, the jewelry maker Kwiat, which supplies stores like Saks, offers a line of Kwiat Spirit Rings that can retail for as much as ＄5, 000, and "we're selling it faster than we're manufacturing it," says Bill Gould, the company's chief of marketing. At the other end of the stale, mass-oriented retailers that often take a wait-and-see attitude have already jumped on the bandwagon. Firms like Kwiat were given what Gould calls "direction" from the Diamond information Center about the new ring's attributes-multiple diamonds in a north-south orientation that distinguishes it from the look of an engagement ring, and so on. But all this is secondary to the newly minted meaning. "The idea," Morrison says, "is that beyond a trend, this could become a sort of cultural imperative." A tall order? Well, bear in mind that "a diamond is forever" is not a saying handed down from imperial Rome. It was handed down from an earlier generation of De Beers marketers. Joyce Jonas, a jewelry appraiser and historian, notes that De Beers, in the 40's and 50's, took advantage of a changing American class structure to turn diamond rings into an (attainable) symbol for the masses. By now, Jonans observes, the stone alone "is just a commodity" . And this, of course, is what makes its invented significance more Crucial than ever.

单选题Surprisingly enough, modern historians have rarely interested themselves in the history of the American South in the period before the South began to become self-consciously and distinctively " Southern"—the decades after 1815. Consequently, the cultural history of Britain"s North American empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been written almost as if the Southern colonies had never existed. The American culture that emerged during the Colonial and Revolutionary eras has been depicted as having been simply an extension of New England Puritan culture. However, Professor Davis has recently argued that the South stood apart from the rest of American society during this early period, following its own unique pattern of cultural development. The case for Southern distinctiveness rests_ upon two related premises: first, that the cultural similarities among the five Southern colonies were far more impressive than the differences, and second, that what made those colonies alike also made them different from the other colonies. The first, for which Davis offers an enormous amount of evidence, can be accepted without major recitations, the second is far more problematic. What makes the second premise problematic is the use of the Puritan colonies as a basis for comparison. Quite properly,Davis decries the excessive influence ascribed by historians to the Puritans in the formation of American culture. Yet Davis inadvertently adds weight to such ascriptions by using the Puritans as the standard against which to assess the achievements and contributions of Southern colonials. Throughout, Davis focuses on the important and undeniable differences between the Southern and Puritan colonies in motives for and patterns of early settlement, in attitudes toward nature and Native Americans, and in the degree of receptivity to metropolitan cultural influences. However, recent scholarship has strongly suggested that those aspects of early New England culture that seem to have been most distinctly Puritan, such as the strong religious orientation and the communal impulse, were not even typical of New England as a whole, but were largely confined to the two colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Thus, what in contrast to the Puritan colonies appears to Davis to be peculiarly Southern-acquisitiveness. A strong interest in polities and the law, and a tendency to cultivate metropolitan cultural models were not only more typically English than the cultural patterns exhibited by Puritan Massachusetts and Connecticut, but also almost certainly characteristic of most other early modern British colonies from Barbados north to Rhode Island and New Hampshire. Within the larger framework of American colonial life, then, not the Southern but the Puritan colonies appear to have been distinctive, and even they seem to have been rapidly assimilating to the dominant cultural patterns by the last Colonial period.