单选题What's a label worth? A lot, it seems, when it comes to towels in a New York shop. Two Harvard University researchers, Michael Hiscox and Nicholas Smyth conducted an experiment on two sets of towels. One lot carried a label with the logo "Fair and Square" and the following message: These towels have been made under fair labor conditions, in a safe and healthy working environment which is free of discrimination, and where management has committed to respecting the rights and dignity of workers. The other set had no such label. Over five months, the researchers observed the impact of making various changes such as switching the label to the other set of towels and raising prices. The results were striking: not only did sales of towels increase when they carried the Fair and Square label, they carried on increasing each time the price was raised. No wonder companies are keen to appeal to ethically minded consumers, whether on labor standards or green credentials. On greenery, British consumers are divided into four broad groups. About one in ten is passionately green and will go out of their way to shop accordingly. At the other end of the spectrum one-quarter are not interested. In-between are those who care but want green consumption to be easy, and those who are vaguely concerned but don't see how they can make a difference. That represents an opportunity: three-quarters of British consumers are interested in the green theme in some way. But even the keenest ethical consumer faces complicated trade-offs, and sometimes the apparently obvious ethical choice turns out to be the wrong one. Surely it must be greener for Britons to buy roses from the Netherlands than ones air-freighted from Kenya? In fact, a study at Cranfield University showed the carbon footprint of the Dutch roses to be six times as large because they had to be grown in heated greenhouses. Consumers are right to be suspicious of the ethical claims made for many products. A recent study of the labels of 1 018 products in big stores in North America by TerraChoice, an environmental marketing agency, found that almost all of them were guilty of some form of "green washing". They did not tell outright lies, but nor did they tell the whole truth.

单选题Gerald was absolutely certain of its veracity.

单选题The computer will analyze the ______ data and give us a report.

单选题Man: Pam, I don't understand the problem. You've known for months this report was due today. Woman: I know... but I'm afraid I need another few days. The data was harder to interpret than I thought it would be. Question: What does the woman mean?

单选题The television station is supported by ______ from foundations and other sources

单选题This passage is probably a _____

单选题Important newspapers are supposed to carry authentic news reports and try to be informative.

单选题This college graduate tried our company a third time, ______ to be turned down again.

单选题The students were given complimentary passes for the new movie.

单选题Peter, (together with) his wife and (two sons), (are) to arrive (on the) evening flight.A. together withB. two sonsC. areD. on the

单选题{{B}}Passage Three{{/B}} Experienced baseball fielders can tell how far a ball is going to travel just by listening to the crack of the bat. If they didn't, they wouldn't stand a chance of catching it, claims a physicist in New York. "When a baseball is hit straight at an outfielder, he cannot quickly judge the angle of the scent and the distance the ball will travel," says Robert Adair, a physicist at Yale University. If he relied purely upon visual information, the fielder would have to wait for about one-and-a-half seconds before he could tell accurately if the pitcher hit the ball long or short. By this time the ball may have travelled too far for him to reach it in time. To stand a fighting chance of catching it, according to Adair, fielders must listen to the sound the ball hitting the bat to judge how far it will travel. There is anecdotal evidence to support this, he says. A former centre fielder told Adair: "If I heard a crack I ran out, if I heard a clunk, I ran in." To test his hypothesis, Adair calculated how quickly a fielder could change direction if he had misjudged whether the ball was going long or short. The difference between the "crack" and "clunk” can he explained by how well the batter has hit the ball, and could mean a difference in running distance of as much as 30 metres, he told delegates at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Chicago last week. Scientists already knew that to hit a ball long the batter must strike it somewhere near the vibrational node of the bat, known as the sweet spot. Balls hit on the sweet spot generate fewer energy-sapping vibrations in the bat, allowing greater energy transfer to the ball. Conversely, mishit balls make the bat vibrate strongly and so do not travel as far. Adair is quick to point out that this only applies to wooden bats, which are used in major league baseball. Aluminum bats, on the other hand, tend to produce a fairly uniform "ping” sound regardless of where you hit them.

单选题They make better use of the time they have, and they are less likely to succumb to fatigue in stressful jobs.

单选题The rapid expansion of cities during the Industrial Revolution {{U}}created{{/U}} a housing crisis.

单选题Numerous experiments have demonstrated that mass is ______ to energy.

单选题Our culture has caused most Americans to assume not only that our language is universal but that the gestures we use are understood by everyone. We do not realize that waving good-bye is the way to summon a person from the Philippines to one's side, or that in Italy and some Latin-American countries, curling the finger to oneself is a sign of farewell. Those private citizens who sent packages to our troops occupying Germany after World War Ⅱ and marked the items GIFT to escape duty payments did not bother to find out that "gift" means poison in German. Moreover, we like to think of ourselves as friendly, yet we prefer to be at least 3 feet or an arm's length away from others. Latins and Middle Easterners like to come closer and touch, which makes Americans uncomfortable. Our linguistic (语言上的) and cultural blindness and the casualness with which we take notice of the developed tastes, gestures, customs and languages of other countries, are losing us friends, business and respect in the world. Even here in the United States, we make few concessions to the needs of foreign visitors. There are no information signs in four languages on our public buildings or monuments; we do not have multilingual (多语的) guided tours. Very few restaurant menus have translations, and multilingual waiters, bank clerks and policemen are rare. Our transportation systems have maps in English only and often we ourselves have difficulty understanding them. When we go abroad, we tend to cluster in hotels and restaurants where English is spoken. The attitudes and information we pick up are conditioned by those natives-usually the richer --who speak English. Our business deals, as well as the nation's diplomacy, are conducted through interpreters. For many years, America and Americans could get by with cultural blindness and linguistic ignorance. After all, America was the most powerful country of the free world, the distributor of needed funds and goods. But all that is past. American dollars no longer buy all good things, and we are slowly beginning to realize that our proper role in the world is changing. A 1979 Harris poll reported that 55 percent of Americans want this country to play a more significant role in world affairs , we want to have a hand in the important decisions of the next century, even though it may not always be the upper hand.

单选题Recent studies have {{U}}posed{{/U}} the question as to whether there is a link between film violence and real violence.

单选题We can't rule out the possibility that he was murdered by his wife.

单选题There isn't sound proof to support his biological theory.

单选题The human brain contains 10 thousand million cells and each of these may have a thousand connections. Such enormous numbers used to discourage us and cause us to dismiss the possibility of making a machine with humanlike ability, but now that we have grown used to moving forward at such a pace we can be less sure. Quite soon, in only 10 or 20 years perhaps, we will be able to assemble a machine as complex as the human brain, and if we can we will. It may then take us a long time to render it intelligent by loading in the right software (软件) or by altering the architecture but that too will happen. I think it certain that in decades, not centuries, machines of silicon (硅) will arise first to rival and then exceed their human ancestors. Once they exceed us they will be capable of their own design. In a real sense they will be able to reproduce themselves. Silicon will have ended carbon's long control. And we will no longer be able to claim ourselves to be the finest intelligence in the known universe. As the intelligence of robots increases to match that of humans and as their cost declines through economies of scale we may use them to expand our frontiers, first on earth through their ability to withstand environments, harmful to ourselves. Thus, deserts may bloom and the ocean beds be mined. Further ahead, by a combination of the great wealth this new age will bring and the technology it will provide, the construction of a vast, mancreated world in space, home to thousands or millions of people, will be within our power.

单选题"Employees have the responsibility to say here's what I want, here's what I need, here's what would make me stay." Says author and consultant Beverly Kaye.