单选题There is hope for the 21st century if women can

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} If American investors have learned any lesson in the last 25 years, it is to buy shares on the dips. The slide in 2000--2002 may have been longer and deeper than they were used to but normal service was eventually resumed, driving the Dow Jones Industrial Average to a record high on October 1st. Among American financial commentators, it is almost universally accepted that shares always rise over the long run. And one ought to expect shares (which are risky) to deliver a higher return than risk free assets such as government bonds. Nevertheless, investors ought also to remember the world's second largest economy, Japan. Its most popular stock-market average, the Nikkei 225, peaked at 38,915 on the last trading day of the 1980s; this week, nearly 18 years later, it is still only around 17,000, less than half its peak. Buying on the dips did not work either. Professionals of the London Business School examined the record of 16 stock markets which were in continuous operation over the course of the 20th century. In itself, this selection showed survivorship bias by excluding the likes of Russia and China. The academies found that only three other countries could match the American record of having no 20-year periods with negative real returns. Other investors were far less lucky. Japanese, French, German and Spanish investors all suffered instances where they had to wait 50--60 years to earn a positive real return. It was no good following the famous advice to "put the shares in a drawer and forget about them"; the furniture would not have lasted that long. Besides survivorship bias, there is another problem with the belief that stock markets must always go up. Investors will keep buying until prices reach stratospheric(稳定的) levels. That clearly happened in Japan in the late 1980s, and after seven years, it is still not much more than half its peak level. A significant proportion of the return from equities in the second half of the 20(上标)th century came from a re-rating of shares; investors were willing to pay a higher multiple for profits. But re-rating cannot continue forever. If investors want a simple parallel with share prices, they need only mm to the American housing market. Back in 2005 an economic adviser to the president said," We've never had a decline in housing prices on a nationwide basis. What I think is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize." Lots of people took the same view and were willing to borrow (and lend) on a vast scale on the grounds that higher house prices would always bail them out. They are now counting their losses. Investors in equities should beware of over-committing themselves on the basis of a similar belief Just ask the Japanese.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} A variety of significant, attractive short-term benefits will drive the development of modern self-sufficient homes. These include security from severe weather, climate changes, and natural disasters; security from infectious diseases and related health problems; a fresh and nutritious diet; a dependable food supply; and security from global unrest. But the real benefit of Earth Homes will be the long-term sustainability of our planet. It should be no secret that the planet is experiencing unusual weather and climate abnormalities. The 10 hottest years in recorded history have all been in the last 15 years; the 1990s were the hottest decade on record. The Midwestern heat wave of 1995 killed 669 people in Chicago. In 1996, we had a season of record heat spells, and 1997 was the single wan nest year on record--until 1998 shattered global temperature records. Record-high temperatures throughout the southern United States during the summer of 1998 forced the shutdown of Walt Disney World's water parks because of the threat of a viral encephalitis outbreak. The United Nations and insurers blame unusual weather for thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in damage. Many scientists agree that the emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentration of the greenhouse gases. These increases will enhance the greenhouse effect, resulting in warming of the earth's surface. In 1990, scientists predicted that, if greenhouse gas emissions are not sharply decreased, we might experience a 1C to 3C rise in global temperatures. They suggested that we would have to cut in half our use of coal, oil, and gas in order to lower our emissions enough to maintain concentrations of greenhouse gases at the current levels. Proof of warning includes a decrease in the amount of snow that covers the Northern Hemisphere, a simultaneous decrease in Arctic sea ice, continued melting of alpine glaciers, and a rise in sea level. Rain has even been reported for the first time in Antarctica, and an ice-free patch of ocean about a mile wide has recently opened near the North Pole. Meanwhile, studies have shown that the carbon dioxide concentration in our atmosphere has been steadily increasing since 1958. Even though the rate of emissions from fossil fuels has been reduced, concentration has risen consistently. In 1995, the size of the ozone hole over Antarctica doubled to about the size of Europe. For the first time in recorded history, the hole stretched over populated areas, exposing residents in southern Chile and Argentina to very high levels of ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Studies have shown that a 1% decrease in ozone in the stratosphere produces a 2% increase in UV radiation reaching the ground, posing more risks to humans.

单选题The 1990s have been designated the Decade Against Drug Abuse by the United Nations. But, (1) less than three years to go before the end of the decade, governments and health organizations (2) that they have made (3) progress in reducing drug, alcohol and tobacco abuse. Today, consumption of all these substances is increasingly steadily worldwide. (4) every country now has problems with (5) drugs. And the world is producing and consuming more alcohol and tobacco than ever. Between 1970 and 1990 beer production (6) rose by over 80 per cent. And, (7) the number of smokers keeps on (8) ,by the second or third (9) of the next century there could be 10 million deaths each year (10) smoking related illnesses. Drugs are also a huge burden (11) the world economy. In the United States, for example, it's estimated that alcohol and illegal drug use costs the country tens of billions of dollars each year, mainly (12) health care. When the cost of tobacco related illnesses is added, (13) total more than doubles. Drugs are also closely (14) crime. Many police forces no longer (15) between illegal and legal drugs when fighting crime. In Australia, for example, experts (16) that police in some parts of the country spend between 70 and 80 per cent of their time dealing with alcohol-related incidents. One explanation for the increase in drug (17) is simply that people have more money to spend. Tobacco and alcohol companies are now (18) much more on developing countries to take (19) of greater wealth there. And criminals involved in the illegal drug trade are following (20) ,introducing drugs into countries where they were previously hardly use.

单选题When a population doubles, the country involved needs twice as much of everything, including ______.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} It is no longer just dirty blue-collar jobs in manufacturing that are being sucked offshore but also white-collar service jobs, which used to be considered safe from foreign competition. Telecoms charges have tumbled, allowing workers in far-flung locations to be connected cheaply to customers in the developed world. This has made it possible to offshore services that were once non-tradable. Morgan Stanley's Mr. Roach has been drawing attention to the fact that the "global labour arbitrage" is moving rapidly to the better kinds of jobs. It is no longer just basic data processing and call centres that are being outsourced to low-wage countries, but also software programming, medical diagnostics, engineering design, law, accounting, finance and business consulting. These can now be delivered electronically from anywhere in the world, exposing skilled white-collar workers to greater competition. The standard retort to such arguments is that outsourcing abroad is too small to matter much. So far fewer than lm American service-sector jobs have been lost to off-shoring. Forrester Research forecasts that by 2015 a total of 3.4m jobs in services will have moved abroad, but that is tiny compared with the 30m jobs destroyed and created in America every year. The trouble is that such studies allow only for the sorts of jobs that are already being off-shored, when in reality the proportion of jobs that can be moved will rise as IT advances and education improves in emerging economies. Alan Blinder, an economist at Princeton University, believes that most economists are underestimating the disruptive effects of off-shoring, and that in future two to three times as many service jobs will be susceptible to off-shoring as in manufacturing. This would imply that at least 30% of all jobs might be at risk. In practice the number of jobs off-shored to China or India is likely to remain fairly modest. Even so, the mere threat that they could be shifted will depress wages: Moreover, says Mr. Blinder, education offers no protection. Highly skilled accountants, radiologists or computer programmers now have to compete with electronically delivered competition from abroad, whereas humble taxi drivers, janitors and crane operators remain safe from off-shoring. This may help to explain why the real median wage of American graduates hat fallen by 6% since 2000, a bigger decline than in average wages. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the pay gap between low-paid, low-skilled workers and high-paid, high-skilled workers widened significantly. But since then, according to a study by David Autor, Lawrence Katz and Melissa Kearney, in America, Britain and Germany workers at the bottom as well as at the top have done better than those in the middle-income 'group. Office cleaning cannot be done by workers in India. It is the easily standardised skilled job? in the middle, such as accounting, that are now being squeezed hardest. A study by Bradford Jensen and Lori Kletzer, at the Institute for International Economics in Washington D. C., confirms that workers in tradable services that are exposed to foreign competition tend to be more skilled than workers in non-tradable services and tradable manufacturing industries.

单选题As pointed out in the passage, the exposition of the structure and texture of a flower is a good example of

单选题In what case might the escape clauses apply in reform-averse nations?

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}} A child may lean against a doorpost with his or her arms folded. To the onlooker, it may look like a benign posture—however, there may be a victimized child who understands that this is the bully's "shorthand" code of conveying the message: "Hand me your lunch as you walk by me, or else." Bullying may be expressed in many forms. Boys are generally targeted more than girls. Boys tend to use physical aggression when they bully .by hitting, kicking, and fighting. Girls, on the other hand, more often use {{U}}exclusionary{{/U}} techniques to bully—a form of aggression often referred to as relational aggression. Girls often start rumors, form cliques to keep certain people out, and ignore other children in attempts to show dominance over another child. Many children who are victimized fit into one of two types: the passive victim, and the provocative victim. While people often feel bad about passive victims, provocative victims often elicit less compassion from others. Sometimes it appears that the provocative victim has "brought on" his or her own fate—but does any child deserve to be the target of repeated physical or verbal aggression? Why might so-called provocative victims actively participate in being the target of bullying: For example, are their provocative gestures simply a clumsy way of attempting to interact with others? One feels compassion for the inhibited child because he is reserved; a social misfortune in our society, but an aggressive child is given none of this. The dynamics of the bully/victim relationship need to be understood in a larger context (Pepler, Craig & O'Connell, 1999). It is not only the bully and the victim that is involved in a system of interaction: The bullying context includes multiple levels of the child's social environment. The bully may enlist the help of "henchmen" (those who assist the bully, but often do not have the initiative or leadership to initiate bullying). Also, bystanders (whether actively encouraging the bullying act or passively standing by) play a role in maintaining the pattern of bullying. Even the students who habitually flee the site of a bullying act play a role in maintaining the bully/victim interaction. In handling the situation, it is important not to focus only on the one or two students that are directly involved, but on the playground and school as a whole. Studies have shown that in order to break down the stability of peer bullying you must initiate change on many levels: Not only in teaching the bullied child how to assert himself or herself and to deflect attacks, but also to raise awareness about the problem of bullying and encourage the school community at large to take a united stance against bullying.

单选题Many countries have a tradition of inviting foreigners to rule them. The English called in William of Orange in 1688, and, depending on your interpretation of history, William of Normandy in 1066. Both did rather a good job. Returning the compliment, Albania asked a well-bred Englishman called Aubgrey Herbert to be their king in the 1920s. He refused—and they ended up with several coves called Zog. America, the country of immigrants, has no truck with imported foreign talent. Article two of the Constitution says that "no person except a natural-born citizen... shall be eligible to the office of the president". This is now being challenged by a particularly irresistible immigrant: Arnold Schwarzenegger. Barely a year has passed since the erstwhile cyborg swept to victory in California's recall election, yet there is already an Amend-for-Arnold campaign collecting signatures to let the Austrian-born governor have a goat the White House. George Bush senior has weighed in on his behalf. There are several "Arnold amendments" in Congress: one allows foreigners who have been naturalized citizens for 20 years to become president. (The Austrian became American in 1983.) It is easy to dismiss the hoopla as another regrettable example of loopy celebrity politics. Mr. Schwarzenegger has made a decent start as governor, but he has done little, as yet, to change the structure of his dysfunctional state. Indeed, even if the law were changed, he could well be elbowed aside by another incomer, this time from Canada: the Democratic governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm, who appears to have fewer skeletons in her closet than the hedonistic actor. Moreover, changing the American constitution is no doddle. It has happened only 17 times since 1791 (when the first ten amendments were codified as the bill of rights). To change the constitution, an amendment has to be approved by two-thirds of both houses of Congress, and then to be ratified by three-quarters of the 50 states. The Arnold amendment is hardly in the same category as abolishing slavery or giving women the vote. And, as some wags point out, Austrian imports have a pretty dodgy record of running military superpowers.

单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} Menorca or Majorca? It is that time of the year again. The brochures are piling up in travel agents while newspapers and magazines bulge with advice about where to go. But the traditional packaged holiday, a British innovation that provided many timid natives with their first experience of warm sand, is not what it was. Indeed, the industry is anxiously awaiting a High Court ruling to find out exactly what it now is. Two things have changed the way Britons research and book their holidays: low-cost airlines and the internet. Instead of buying a ready made package consisting of a flight, hotel, car hire and assorted entertainment from a tour operator's brochure, it is now easy to put together a trip using an online travel agent like Expedia or Travelocity, which last July bought Lastminute. com for ￡577m (＄1 billion), or from the proliferating websites of airlines, hotels and car-rental firms. This has led some to sound the death knell for high street travel agents and tour operators. There have been upheavals and closures, but the traditional firms are starting to fight back, in part by moving more of their business online. First Choice Holidays, for instance, saw its pre tax profit rise by 16% to ￡114m ( ＄196m) in the year to the end of October. Although the overall number of holidays booked has fallen, the company is concentrating on more valuable long-haul and adventure trips. First Choice now sells more than half its trips directly, either via the internet, over the telephone or from its own travel shops. It wants that to reach 75% within a few years. Other tour operators are showing similar hustle. MyTravel managed to cut its loss by almost half in 2005. Thomas Cook and Thomson Holidays, now both German owned, are also bullish about the coming holiday season. Highstreet travel agents are having a tougher time, though, not least because many leading tour operations have cut the commissions they pay. Some high-street travel agents are also learning to live with the internet, helping people book complicated trips that they have researched online, providing advice and tacking on other services: This is seen as a growth area. But if an agent puts together separate flights and hotel accommodation, is that a package, too? The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) says it is and the agent should hold an Air Travel Organisers- Licence, which provides financial guarantees to repatriate people and provide refunds. The scheme dates from the early 1970s, when some large British travel firms went bust, stranding customers on the Costas. Although such failures are less common these days, the CAA had to help out some 30,000 people last year. The Association of British Travel Agents went to the High Court in November to argue such bookings are not traditional packages and so do not require agents to acquire the costly licences. While the court decides, millions of Britons will happily click away buying online holidays, unaware of the difference.

单选题Though pundits were quick to declare that the election of Barack Obama represented the emergence of a "post- racial" America, the macroeconomy has provided a corrective. During the American economy"s last deep recession, in the early 1980s, black unemployment soared to twice the level among whites, passing 21% in 1983. And according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics, time has changed little. The current unemployment rate among black Americans is almost 16%; among whites the figure is under 10%. The yawning gap between blacks and whites persists across demographic lines. The current "mancession" has hit male-dominated professions hardest. But white men face a relatively mild unemployment rate of just over 10% compared with over 18% among black men. For the worst-off, the data are catastrophic. Among young black men without a high-school diploma, nearly half have no jobs. These rates are based on a labour-force number which excludes those in prison; if there were not five times as many blacks behind bars as whites, the figures would look even worse. There is no shortage of explanations for the gap. States with weaker labour markets, like South Carolina and Michigan, also tend to have larger black populations than low-unemployment states like Iowa and Montana. Predominantly black neighbourhoods are often a long way from where jobs are concentrated, in largely white suburbs, so those without cars cannot get to them. Blacks are also at a disadvantage when it comes to relying on friends and family connections to find jobs; there is not the same network of family businesses that whites and Latinos have. Some studies have found that this factor may explain as much as 70% of the difference in black and white unemployment rates, and may also explain the difference between black and Latino jobless rates. Among young men, for instance, the near-20% Hispanic unemployment rate is much closer to that for whites (17%) than blacks (30%). And discrimination, too, plays a part. What is clear is that the unemployment problem in black communities will not end with the recession. The employment-to-population ratio among black adults is only just above 50%, and it is closer to a shocking 40% for young black men; for adult whites it is 59%. Black workers are also unemployed for about five weeks longer, on average, than the rest of the population. Some 45% of unemployed blacks have been out of work for 27 weeks or longer, compared with just 36% of unemployed whites. That means continued loss of skills, and a longer and harder road back into the workforce.