单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read 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}} The Catholic Church is changing in America at its most visible point: the parish church where believers pray, sing and clasp hands across pews to share the peace of God. Today there are fewer parishes and fewer priests than in 1990 and fewer of the nation's 65 million Catholics in those pews. And there's no sign of return. Some blame the explosive 2002 clergy sexual abuse scandal and its financial price tag. But a study of 176 Roman Catholic dioceses shows no statistically significant link between the decline in priests and parishes and the $ 772 million the church has spent to date on dealing with the scandal. Rather, the changes are driven by a constellation of factors: ·Catholics are moving from cities in the Northeast and Midwest to the suburbs, South and Southwest. ·For decades, so few men have become priests that one in five dioceses now can't put a priest in every parish. ·Mass attendance has fallen as each generation has become less religiously observant. ·Bishops--trained to bless, not to budget--lack the managerial skills to govern multimillion-dollar institutions. All these trends had begun years before the scandal piled on financial pressures to cover settlements, legal costs, care and counseling for victims and abusers. The Archdiocese of Boston, epicenter of the crisis, sold chancery property to cover $ 85 million in settlements last year, and this year will close 67 churches and recast 16 others as new parishes or worship sites without a full-time priest. Archbishop Sean O'Malley has said the crisis and the {{U}}reconfiguration plan{{/U}} are "in no way" related. He cites demographic shifts, the priest shortage and aging, crumbling buildings too costly to keep up. Fargo, N. D. , which spent $ 821,000 on the abuse crisis, will close 23 parishes, but it's because the diocese is short of more than 50 priests for its 158 parishes, some with fewer than a dozen families attending Mass. They know how this ~eels in Milwaukee. That archdiocese shuttered about one in five parishes from 1995 to 2003. The city consolidations "gave some people who had been driving back into the city from new homes in the suburbs a chance to say they had no loyalty to a new parish and begin going to one near their home,' says Noreen Welte, director of parish planning for the Milwaukee Archdiocese. "It gave some people who already were mad at the church for one reason or another an excuse to stop going altogether. "

单选题Dan Niles thinks that the PC market______.

单选题Exposure to asbestos fibers is harmful to people's health,______

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Positive surprises from government reports on retail sales, industrial production, and housing in the past few months are leading economists to revise their real gross domestic product forecasts upward, supporting the notion that the recession ended in December or January. Bear in mind: This recovery won't have the vitality normally associated with an upturn. Economists now expect real GDP growth of about 1. 5% in the first quarter. That's better than the 0. 4% the consensus projected in December, but much of the additional growth will come from a slower pace of inventory drawdowns, not from surging demand. Moreover, the economy won't grow fast enough to help the labor markets much. The only good news there is that jobless claims have fallen back from their spike after September 11 and that their current level suggests the pace of layoffs is easing. The recovery also does not mean the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates soon. The January price indexes show that inflation remains tame. Consequently, the Fed can take its time shifting monetary policy from extreme accommodation to relative neutrality. Perhaps the best news from the latest economic reports was the January data on industrial production. Total output fell only 0. 1%, its best showing since July. Factory output was flat, also the best performance in six months. Those numbers may not sound encouraging, but manufacturers have been in recession since late 2000, The data suggest that the factory sector is finding a bottom from which to start its recovery. Production of consumer goods, for instance, is almost back up to where it was a year ago. That's because consumer demand for motor vehicles and other goods and the housing industry remained healthy during the recession, and they are still growing in early 2002. Besides, both the monthly homebuilding starts number and the housing market index for the past two months are running above their averages for all of 2001, suggesting that homebuilding is off to a good start and probably won't be a big drag on GDP growth this year. Equally important to the outlook is how the solid housing market will help demand for home-related goods and services. Traditionally, consumers buy the bulk of their furniture, electronics and textiles within a year of purchasing their homes. Thus, spending on such items will do well this year, even as car sales slip now that incentives are less attractive. Look for the output of consumer goods to top year-ago levels in coming months. Even the business equipment sector seems to have bottomed out. Its output rose 0. 4% in January, led by a 0.6% jump computer gear. A pickup in orders for capital goods in the fourth quarter suggests that production will keep increasing--although at a relaxed pace--in coming months.

单选题Alan "Ace" Greenberg chose his nickname to improve his chances with girls at the University of Missouri. But it is an apt (1) of his wading skills on Wall Street. This week, as the 73-year-old (2) down (3) chairman of Bear Stearns, the investment bank where he has worked since 1949 is in a high. It (4) an increase in post-tax profits in the second quarter of 43% on a year earlier, (5) a time when many of its Wall Street rivals have (6) . On June 26th Merrill Lynch (7) a warning that its profits in the second quarter would fall by half, far (8) of expectations. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have also reported lower profits. Strange that this surprised. (9) Alan Greenspan's frenetic cuts (10) interest rates, times are good for underwriters and waders of bonds, core activities for Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, (11) also recorded a sharp increase in profits. It has been a terrible (12) for equity underwriters and for advisers on the small amounts of mergers and acquisitions (M＆A) this year. Merrill, Goldman and Morgan Stanley are three of the investment banks that gained (13) during the boom in equity and M＆A business, and they are now (14) the most. Of the three, Merrill is weakest in bonds. It cut (15) its fixed-income activities after the collapse of Lung-Term Capital Management (LTCM) in 1998. As it happens, both Bear Stearns and Lehman have long been criticised for their weakness in equities. Mr Greenberg is famous for worrying about even the price of a paper-clip at Bear Stearns. This used to seem terribly (16) ,but these days other Wall Street firms are (17) about costs. Lay-offs are (18) though not yet alarmingly-not least, because banks saw how Merrill Lynch lost (19) when the markets rebounded quickly after the LTCM crisis. Still, if few (20) of improvement show soon, expect real blood-letting on Wall Street.

单选题Current Group, a Germantown-based technology firm, has taken over an ordinary looking house in Bethesda and turned it into a laboratory for smart-grid technology, the system the company believes will bring the nation's electricity grids into the digital age. In the front yard stands a utility pole hooked up to a special transformer that connects the power lines to high-speed Internet. Hundreds of sensors attached to the lines monitor how power flows through the home. That information is then sent back to the utility company. The process lets a utility more efficiently manage the distribution of electricity by allowing two-way communication between consumers and energy suppliers via the broadband network on the power lines. Based on data they receive from hundreds of homes, utilities can monitor usage and adjust output and pricing in response to demand. Consumers can be rewarded with reduced rates by cutting back on consumption during peak periods. And computerized substations can talk to each other so overloaded circuits hand off electricity to those that have not fully loaded, helping to prevent blackouts. Some utility companies have launched initiatives to give consumers data about their energy consumption habits in an effort to lower energy bills. Smart-grid technology takes such programs further by automating electricity distribution, which would make grids more reliable and efficient. By partnering with utilities, the company hopes to tap into $4.5 billion in stimulus grants intended to encourage smart-grid development. When he announced the funding, President Obama pointed to a project in Boulder, Colo. , as an example of a successful smart-grid experiment. Current is one of the companies working on the project. Current's chief executive Tom Casey believes the technology will help utility companies better distribute electricity produced by renewable resources, such as solar panels or wind farms. " A smart grid's system can be paired up with the renewable resources so that when the renewable source is varying, the overall load can be varied as well, " Casey told the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. " This will reduce or eliminate the need for backup coal or gas-based power generation plants. /

单选题The history of responses to the work of the artist Sandro Botticelli (1444 ～ 1510) suggests that widespread appreciation by critics is a relatively recent phenomenon. Writing in 1550, Vasari expressed an unease with Botticelli's work, admitting that the artist fitted awkwardly into his evolutionary scheme of the history of art. Over the next two centuries, academic art historians defamed Botticelli in favor of his fellows Florentine, Michelangelo. Even when anti-academic art historians of the early nineteenth century rejected many of the standards of evaluation adopted by their predecessors, Botticelli's work remained outside of accepted taste, pleasing neither amateur observers nor connoisseurs. (Many of his best paintings, however, remained hidden away in obscure churches and private homes. ) The primary reason for Botticelli's unpopularity is not difficult to understand: most observers, up until the midnineteenth century, did not consider him to be noteworthy, because his work, for the most part, did not seem to these observers to exhibit the traditional characteristics of fifteenth-century Florentine art. For example, Botticelli rarely employed the technique of strict perspective and, unlike Michelangelo, never used chiaroscuro. Another reason for Botticelli's unpopularity may have been that his attitude toward the style of classical art was very different from that of his contemporaries. Although he was thoroughly exposed to classical art, he showed little interest in borrowing from the classical style. Indeed, it is paradoxical that a painter of large-scale classical subjects adopted a style that was only slightly similar to that of classical art. In any case, when viewers began to examine more closely the relationship of Botticelli's work to the tradition of fifteenth-century Florentine art, his 'reputation began to grow. Analyses and assessments of Botticelli made between 1850 and 1870 by the artists of the Pre Raphaelite movement, as well as by the writer Pater (although he, unfortunately, based his assessment on an incorrect analysis of Botticelli's personality), inspired a new appreciation of Botticelli throughout the English-speaking world. Yet Botticelli's work, especially the Sistine frescoes, did not generate worldwide attention until it was finally subjected to a comprehensive and scrupulous analysis by Home in 1908. Home rightly demonstrated that the frescoes shared important features with paintings by other fifteenth-century Florentines features such as skillful representation of anatomical proportions, and of the human figure in motion. However, Home argued that Botticelli did not treat these qualities as ends in themselves--rather, that he emphasized clear depletion of a story, a unique achievement and one that made the traditional Florentine qualities less central. Because of Home's emphasis crucial to any study of art, the twentieth century has come to appreciate Bottieelli's achievements.

单选题One of the most important social developments that helped to make possible a shift in thinking about the r01e of public education was the effect of the baby boom of the 1950s and 1960s on the schools. In the 1920s, but especially in the Depression conditions of the 1930s, the United States experienced a declining birth rate—every thousand women aged fifteen to forty-four gave birth to about 118 live children in 1920, 89.2 in 1930, 75.8 in 1936, and 80 in 1940. With the growing prosperity brought on by the Second World War and the economic boom that followed it, young people married and established households earlier and began to raise larger families than had their predecessors during the Depression. Birth rates rose to 102 per thousand in 1946, 106.2 in 1950, and 118 in 1955. Although economics was probably the most important determinant, it is not the only explanation for the baby boom. The increased value placed on the idea of the family also helps to explain this rise in birth rates. The baby boomers began streaming into the first grade by the mid-1940s and became a flood by 1950. The public school system suddenly found itself overtaxed. While the number of schoolchildren rose because of wartime and postwar conditions, these same conditions made the schools even less prepared to cope with the flood. The wartime economy meant that few new schools were built between 1940 and 1945. Moreover, during the war and in the boom times that followed, large numbers of teachers left their profession for better-paying jobs elsewhere in the economy. Therefore, in the 1950s and 1960s, the baby boom hit an antiquated and inadequate school system. Consequently, the "custodial rhetoric" of the 1930s and early 1940s no longer made sense; that is, keeping youths aged sixteen and older out of the labor market by keeping them in school could no longer be a high priority for an institution unable to find space and staff to teach younger children aged five to sixteen. With the baby boom, the focus of educators and of laymen interested in education inevitably turned toward the lower grades and back to basic academic skills and discipline. The system no longer had much interest in offering nontraditional, new, and extra services to older youth.

单选题The term e-commerce refers to all commercial transactions conducted over the Internet, including transactions by consumers and business-to-business transactions. Conceptually, e-commerce does not (1) from well-known commercial offerings such as banking by phone, "mail order" catalogs, or sending a purchase order to supplier (2) fax. E-commerce follows the same model (3) in other business transactions; the difference (4) in the details. To a consumer, the most visible form of e-commerce consists (5) online ordering. A customer begins with a catalog of possible items, (6) an item, arranges a form of payment, and (7) an order. Instead of a physical catalog, e-commerce arranges for catalogs to be (8) on the Internet. Instead of sending an order on paper or by telephone, e-commerce arranges for orders to be sent (9) a computer network. Finally, instead of sending a paper representation of payment such as a check, e-commerce (10) one to send payment information electronically. In the decade (11) 1993, e-commerce grew from an (12) novelty to a mainstream business influence. In 1993, few (13) had a web page, and (14) a handful allowed one to order products or services online. Ten years (15) , both large and small businesses had web pages, and most (16) users with the opportunity to place an order. (17) , many banks added online access, (18) online banking and bill paying became (19) . More importantly, the value of goods and services (20) over the Internet grew dramatically after 1997.

单选题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 $ 1.58 million 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% in its first two months. Scant attention was paid to modern Indian art until the end of the 1990s. Then wealthy Indians, particularly those living abroad, began to take an interest. Dinesh Vazirani, who runs Saffronart, a leading Indian auction site, says 60% of his sales go to buyers overseas. The focus now is on six auctions this month. Two took place in India last week; work by younger artists such as Surendran Naif 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 the 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The term "disruptive technology" is popular, but is widely misused. It refers not simply to a clever new technology, hut to one that undermines an existing technology--and which therefore makes life very difficult for the many businesses which depend on the existing way of doing things. Twenty years ago, the personal computer was a classic example. It swept aside an older mainframe-based style of computing, and eventually brought IBM, one of the world's mightiest firms at the time, to its knees. This week has been a coming-out party of sorts for another disruptive technology, "voice over internet protocol" (VOIP), which promises to be even more disruptive, and of even greater benefit to consumers, than personal computers. VOIP's leading proponent is Skype, a small firm whose software allows people to make free calls to other Skype users over the internet, and very cheap calls to traditional telephones--all of which spells trouble for incumbent telecoms operators. On September 12th, eBay, the leading online auction house, announced that it was buying Skype for ＄2.6 billion, plus an additional ＄1.5 billion if Skype hits certain performance targets in coming years. This seems a vast sum to pay for a company that has only ＄60m in revenues and has yet to turn a profit. Yet eBay was not the only company interested in buying Skype. Microsoft, Yahoo!, News Corporation and Google were all said to have also considered the idea. Perhaps eBay, rather like some over-excited bidder in one of its own auctions, has paid too much. The company says it plans to use Skype's technology to make it easier for buyers and sellers to communicate, and to offer new "click to call" advertisements, but many analysts are sceptical that eBay is the best owner of Skype. Whatever the merits of the deal, however, the fuss over Skype in recent weeks has highlighted the significance of VOIP, and the enormous threat it poses to incumbent telecoms operators. For the rise of Skype and other VOIP services means nothing less than the death of the traditional telephone business, established over a century ago. Skype is merely the most visible manifestation of a dramatic shift in the telecoms industry, as voice Galling becomes just another data service delivered via high-speed internet connections. Skype, which has over 54m users, has received the most attention, but other firms routing calls partially or entirely over the internet have also signed up millions of customers.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} It may be just as well for Oxford University's reputation that this week's meeting of Congregation, its 3 552-strong governing body, was held in secret, for the air of civilized rationality that is generally supposed to pervade donnish conversation has lately turned fractious. That's because the vice-chancellor, the nearest thing the place has to a chief executive, has proposed the most fundamental reforms to the university since the establishment of the college system in 1249; and a lot of the dons and colleges don' t like it. The trouble with Oxford is that it is unmanageable. Its problems—the difficulty of recruiting good dons and of getting rid of bad ones, concerns about academic standards, severe money worries at some colleges—all spring from that. John Hood, who was recruited as vice-chancellor from the University of Auckland and is now probably the most- hated antipodean in British academic life, reckons he knows how to solve this, and has proposed to reduce the power of dons and colleges and increase that of university administrators. Mr. Hood is right that the university's management structure needs an overhaul. But radical though his proposals seem to those involved in the current row, they do not go far enough. The difficulty of managing Oxford stems only partly from the nuttiness of its system of governance; the more fundamental problem lies in its relationship with the government. That's why Mr. Hood should adopt an idea that was once regarded as teetering on the lunatic fringe of radicalism, but these days is discussed even in polite circles. The idea is independence. Oxford gets around ￡ 5 000 ( $ 9 500) per undergraduate per, year from the government. In return, it accepts that it can charge students only ~ 1 150 (rising to ~ 3 000 next year) on top of that. Since it probably costs at least ~ 10 000 a year to teach an undergraduate, that leaves Oxford with a deficit of ~ 4 000 or so per student to cover from its own funds. If Oxford declared independence, it would lose the ~ 52m undergraduate subsidy at least. Could it fill the hole? Certainly. America's top universities charge around￡ 20,000 per student per year. The difficult issue would not be money alone: it would be balancing numbers of not-so-brilliant rich people paying top whack with the cleverer poorer ones they were cross subsidising. America's top universities manage it: high fees mean better teaching, which keeps competition hot and academic standards high, while luring enough donations to provide bursaries for the poor. It should be easier to extract money from alumni if Oxford were no longer state-funded.