单选题What's hot for 2007 among the very rich? A $ 7.3 million diamond ring. A trip to Tanzania to hunt wild animals. Oh, and income inequality. Sure, some leftish billionaires like George Soros have been railing against income inequality for years. But increasingly, centrist and right-wing billionaires are starting to worry about income inequality and the fate of the middle class. In December, Mortimer Zuckerman wrote a column in U. S. News & World Report, which he owns. "Our nation's core bargain with the middle class is disintegrating," lamented (哀叹) the 117th-richest man in America. "Most of our economic gains have gone to people at the very top of the income ladder. Average income for a household of people of working age, by contrast, has fallen five years in a raw." He noted that, "Tens of millions of Americans live in fear that a major health problem can reduce them to bankruptcy." Wilbur Ross Jr. has echoed Zuckerman's anger over the bitter struggles faced by middle-class Americans. "It's an outrage that any American's life expectancy should be shortened simply because the company they worked for went bankrupt and ended health-care coverage," said the former chairman of the International Steel Group. What's happening? The very rich are just as trendy as you and I, and can be so when it comes to politics and policy. Given the recent change of control in Congress, the popularity of measures like increasing the minimum wage, and efforts by California's governor to offer universal health care, these guys don't need their own personal weathermen to know which way the wind blows. It's possible that plutocrats are expressing solidarity with the struggling middle class as part of an effort to insulate themselves from confiscatory tax policies. But the prospect that income inequality will lead to higher taxes on the wealthy doesn't keep plutocrats up at night. They can live with that. No, what they fear was that the political challenges of sustaining support for global economic integration will be more difficult in the United States because of what has happened to the distribution of income and economic insecurity. In other words, if middle-class Americans continue to struggle financially as the ultrawealthy grow ever wealthier, it will be increasingly difficult to maintain political support for the free flow of goods, services, and capital across borders. And when the United States places obstacles in the way of foreign investors and foreign goods, it's likely to encourage reciprocal action abroad. For people who buy and sell companies, or who allocate capital to markets all around the world, that's the real nightmare.

单选题As a result of the economic depression, output has been ______ reduce.

单选题China is losing ground to other emerging markets including Brazil in the drive to learn English, according to a study ranking worldwide proficiency in the international language of commerce. English proficiency is at a premium as the balance of power between China and English-speaking countries such as the UK and US shifts and Beijing seeks to carve out a more powerful leadership role on the world stage. On last month's state visit to the UK, first lady Peng Liyuan impressed with her fluent English — although her husband, Xi Jinping, depended upon translators. Despite this, some regional governments in China have recently opted to cut the time spent teaching and testing English in Chinese public high schools, lowering the weighting of English in the national university entrance exam, the gaokao. The study, due for public release on Tuesday, shows China fell 10 places to 47th in a ranking of 70 countries compiled by EF Education First, which based its rankings on test data from more than 900, 000 adults sitting online tests. EF said most of the countries that moved ahead of China this year were from Latin America. "These Latin American countries have kicked off ambitious national initiatives focused on English-language training, including Brazil's English Without Borders programme and Mexico's Project 100, 000," EF said in a statement. "The Chinese government, on the other hand, has questioned how much emphasis should be placed on English training in the public education system. The education group said China had initially scaled the top ranks by devoting plenty of class time to English instruction, whereas continued improvement would require "more sophisticated approaches focused on communicative mastery rather than testing abilities" . But some would-be students are also querying the value of studying overseas, hitherto a popular choice. Employees bearing postgraduate degrees from overseas command similar salaries to their peers who stayed home, according to Jennifer Feng, chief human resources expert at 51 job, the leading Chinese employment agency. That may explain the slowdown in growth of the number of Chinese enrolled in US higher education. Last year the expansion in their numbers was the slowest in seven years, according to the Institute of International Education and the US state department. China remains the biggest country of origin for international students at US universities. The US Council of Graduate Schools said late last year that the number of Chinese first-time enrolments at postgraduate level had fallen for the first time in at least a decade.

单选题A fossil is a {{U}}remnant{{/U}} of a once-living organism. A. bone B. solvent C. picture D. vestige

单选题I could not wish for a more______occasion to announce my plan to enlarge our establishment.

单选题The paradoxical aspect of the myths about Demeter, when we consider the predominant image of her as a tranquil and serene goddess, is her______search for her daughter.

单选题A light drizzle was falling as my sister Jill and I ran out of the Methodist Church, eager to get home and play with the presents that Santa had left for us and our baby sister, Sharon. Across the street from the church was a Pan American gas station where the Greyhound bus stopped. It was closed for Christmas, but I noticed a family standing outside the locked door, huddled under the narrow overhang in an attempt to keep dry. I wondered briefly why they were there but then forgot about them as I raced to keep up with Jill. Once we got home, there was barely time to enjoy our presents. We had to go off to our grandparents' house for our annual Christmas dinner. As we drove down the highway through town, I noticed that the family were still there, standing outside the closed gas station. My father was driving very slowly down the highway. The closer we got to the turn off for my grandparents' house, the slower the car went. Suddenly, my father U-turned in the middle of the road and said, "I can't stand it!" "What?" asked my mother. "They've got children. It's Christmas. I can't stand it. " When my father pulled into the service station, I saw that there were five of them—the parents and three children — two girls and a small boy. My father rolled down his window. "Merry Christmas," he said. "Howdy," the man replied. He was very tall and had to stoop slightly to peer into the car. "You are waiting for the bus?" my father asked. The man said that they were. They were going to Birmingham, where he had a brother and prospects of a job. "Well, that bus isn't going to come along for several hours, and you're getting wet standing here. Winborn is just a couple miles up the road. They've got a shed with a cover there and some benches," My father said, "Why don't you all get in the car and I'll run you up there." The man thought about it for a moment, and then he beckoned to his family. They climbed into the car. They had no luggage, only the clothes they were wearing. Once they settled in, my father looked back over his shoulder and asked the children if Santa had found them yet. Three gloomy faces gave him his answer. "Well I didn't think so," my father said, winking at my mother, "because when I saw Santa this morning, he told me that he was having trouble finding all, and he asked me if he could leave your toys at my house. We'll just go to get them before I take you to the bus stop. " All at once, the three children's faces lit up, and they began to bounce around in the back seat, laughing and chattering. When we got out of the car at our house, the three children ran through the front door and straight to the toys that were spread out under our Christmas tree. One of the girls spied Jill's doll and immediately hugged it to her breast. I remember that the little boy grabbed Sharon's ball. And the other girl picked up something of mine. All this happened a long time ago, but the memory of it remains clear. That was the Christmas when my sisters and I learned the joy of making others happy.

单选题People appear to be born to compute. The numerical skills of children develop so early and so inexorably that it is easy to imagine an internal clock of mathematical maturity guiding their growth. Not long after learning to walk and talk, they can set the table with impressive accuracy— one plate, one knife, one spoon, one fork, for each of the five chairs. Soon they are capable of noting that they have placed five knives, spoons, and forks on the table, and a bit later, that this amounts to fifteen pieces of silverware. Having thus mastered addition, they move on to subtraction. It seems almost reasonable to expect that if a child were secluded on a desert island at birth and retrieved seven years later, he or she could enter a second-grade mathematics class without any serious problems of intellectual adjustment. Of course, the truth is not so simple. This century, the work of cognitive psychologists has illuminated the subtle forms of daily learning on which intellectual progress depends. Children were observed as they slowly grasped—or as the case might be bumped into—concepts that adults take for granted, as they refused, for instance, to concede that quantity is unchanged as water pours from a short stout glass into a tall thin one. Psychologists have since demonstrated that young children, asked to count the pencils in a pile, readily report the number of blue or red pencils, but must be coaxed into finding the total. Such studies have suggested that the rudiments of mathematics are mastered gradually, and with effort. They have also suggested that the very concept of abstract numbers—the idea of a oneness, a twoness, a threeness that applies to any class of objects and is a prerequisite for doing anything more mathematically demanding than setting a table—is itself far from innate.

单选题In a reaction against a too-rigid, overrefined classical curriculum, some educational philosophers have swung sharply to an espousal of "life experience" as the sole source of learning. Using their narrow interpretation of John Dewey"s theories as a base for support, they conclude that only through "doing" can learning take place. Spouting such phrases as, "Teach the child, not the subject. " they demand, without sensing its absurdity, and end to rigorous study as a means of opening the way to learning. While not all adherents to this approach would totally eliminate a study of great books, the influence of this philosophy has been felt in the public school curricula, as evidenced by the gradual subordination of great literature. What is the purpose of literature? Why read, if life alone is to be our teacher? James Joyce states that the artist reveals the human situation by recreating life out of life; Aristotle that art presents universal truths because its form is taken from nature. Thus, consciously or otherwise, the great writer reveals the human situation most tellingly, extending our understanding of ourselves and our world. We can soar with the writer to the heights of man"s aspirations, or plummet with him to tragic despair. The works of Steinbeck, Anderson, and Salinger; the poetry of Whitman, Sandburg, and Frost; the plays of Ibsen, Miller, and O"Neil: all present starkly realistic portrayals of life"s problems. Reality? Yes! But how much wider is the understanding we gain than that attained by viewing life through the keyhole of our single existence. Can we measure the richness gained by the young reader venturing down the Mississippi with Tom and Huck, or cheering Ivanhoe as he battles the Black Knight; the deepening understanding of the mature reader of the tragic South of William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, of the awesome determination—and frailty—of Patrick White"s Australian pioneers? This function of literature, the enlarging of our own life sphere, is of itself of major importance. Additionally, however, it has been suggested that solutions of social problems may be suggested in the study of literature. The overweening ambitions of political leaders—and their sneering contempt for the law—did not appear for the first time in the writings of Bernstein and Woodward; the problems, and the consequent actions, of the guilt-ridden did not await the appearance of the bearded psychoanalyst of the twentieth century. Federal Judge Learned Hand has written, " I venture to believe that it is as important to a judge called upon to pass on a question of constitutional law, to have at least a bowing acquaintance with Thucydides, Gibbon, and Carlyle, with Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton, with Montaigne and Rabelais, with Plato, Bacon, Hume, and Kant, as with the books which have been specifically written on the subject. For in such matters everything turns upon the spirit in which he approaches the questions before him. " But what of our dissenters? Can we overcome the disapproval of their " life experience classroom" theory of learning? We must start with the field of agreement—that education should serve to improve the individual and society. We must educate them to the understanding that the voice of human experience should stretch our human faculties, and opens us to learning. We must convince them—in their own personal language perhaps—of the " togetherness" of life and art; we must prove to them that far from being separate, literature is that part of life which illumines life.

单选题The effect is ______, he said, because sleep-restricted people report not feeling sleepy, even though their performance on tasks declines markedly.

单选题To his inquiry if she were hurt, she made some incoherent reply______ she did not know.

单选题Native to the western United States, mariposa lilies have narrow ______like large blades of grass.

单选题______explanations, such as blaming obesity on a drop in fat consumption, ignore scientific reality.

单选题It is imperative that students ______their term papers on time.

单选题While he was in Beijing, he spent all his time______some important museums and buildings.

单选题 The miserable fate of Enron's employees will be a landmark in business history, one of those awful events that everyone agrees must never be allowed to happen again. This urge is understandable and noble: thousands have lost virtually all their retirement savings with the demise of Enron stock. But making sure it never happens again may not be possible, because the sudden impoverishment of those Enron workers represents something even larger than it seems. It's the latest turn in the unwinding of one of the most audacious promises of the 20th century. The promise was assured economic security—even comfort—for essentially everyone in the developed world. With the explosion of wealth, that began in the 19th century it became possible to think about a possibility no one had dared to dream before. The fear at the center of daily living since caveman days—lack of food, warmth, shelter—would at last lose its power to terrify. That remarkable promise became reality in many ways. Governments created welfare systems for anyone in need and separate programs for the elderly (Social Security in the U.S.). Labour unions promised not only better pay for workers but also pensions for retirees. Giant corporations came into being and offered the possibility—in some cases the promise—of lifetime employment plus guaranteed pensions? The cumulative effect was a fundamental change in how millions of people approached life itself, a reversal of attitude that most rank as one of the largest in human history. For millennia the average person's stance toward providing for himself had been. Ultimately I'm on my own. Now it became, ultimately I'll be taken care of. The early hints that this promise might be broken on a large scale came in the 1980s. U.S. business had become uncompetitive globally and began restructuring massively, with huge Layoffs. The trend accelerated in the 1990s as the bastions of corporate welfare faced reality. IBM ended its no-layoff policy. AT but that could be regarded as a freebie, since nothing compels a company to match employee contributions at all. At least two special features complicate the Enron case. First, some shareholders charge top management with illegally covering up the company's problems, prompting investors to hang on when they should have sold. Second, Enron's 401(k) accounts were locked while the company changed plan administrators in October, when the stock was falling, so employees could not have closed their accounts if they wanted to. But by far the largest cause of this human tragedy is that thousands of employees were heavily overweighed in Enron stock. Many had placed 100% of their 401(k) assets in the stock rather than in the 18 other investment options they were offered. Of course that wasn't prudent, but it's what some of them did. The Enron employees' retirement disaster is part of the larger trend away from guaranteed economic security. That's why preventing such a thing from ever happening again may be impossible. The huge attitudinal shift to I'll-be-taken-care-of took at least a generation. The shift back may take just as long. It won't be complete until a new generation of employees see assured economic comfort as a 20th-century quirk, and understand not just intellectually but in their bones that, like most people in most times and places, they're on their own.

单选题For some time scientists have believed that cholesterol plays a major role in heart disease because people with familial hypercholesterolemia, a genetic defect, have six to eight times the normal level of cholesterol in their blood and they invariably develop heart disease. These people lack cell-surface receptors for low-density lipoproteins (LDL's), which are the fundamental carriers of blood cholesterol to the body cells that use cholesterol. Without an adequate number of cell-surface receptors to remove LDL's from the blood, the cholesterol-carrying LDL's remain in the blood, increasing blood cholesterol levels. Scientists also noticed that people with familial hypercholesterolemia appear to produce more LDL's than normal individuals. How, scientists wondered, could a genetic mutation that causes a slowdown in the removal of LDL's from the blood also result in an increase in the synthesis of this cholesterol-carrying protein? Since scientists could not experiment on human body tissue, their knowledge of familial hypercholesterolemia was severely limited. However, a breakthrough came in the laboratories of Yoshio Watanabe of Kobe University in Japan in 1980. Watanabe noticed that a male rabbit in his colony had ten times the normal concentration of cholesterol in its blood. By appropriate breeding, Watanabe obtained a strain of rabbits that had very high cholesterol levels. These rabbits spontaneously developed heart disease. To his surprise, Watanabe further found that the rabbits, like humans with familial hypercholesterolemia, lacked LDL receptors. Thus, scientists could study these Watanabe rabbits to gain a better understanding of familial hypercholesterolemia in humans. Prior to the breakthrough at Kobe University, it was known that LDL's are secreted from the liver in the form of a precursor, called very low-density lipoproteins (VLDL's) , which carry triglycerides as well as relatively small amounts of cholesterol. The triglycerides are removed from the VLDL's by fatty and other tissues. What remains is a remnant particle that must be removed from the blood. What scientists learned by studying the Watanabe rabbits is that the removal of the VLDL remnant requires the LDL receptor. Normally, the majority of the VLDL remnants go to the liver where they bind to LDL receptors and are degraded. In the Watanabe rabbit, due to a lack of LDL receptors on liver cells, the VLDL remnants remain in the blood and are eventually converted to LDL's. The LDL receptors thus have a dual effect in controlling LDL levels. They are necessary to prevent oversynthesis of LDL's from VLDL remnants and they are necessary for the normal removal of LDL's from the blood. With this knowledge, scientists are now well on the way toward developing drugs that dramatically lower cholesterol levels in people afflicted with certain forms of familial hypercholesterolemia.

单选题Passage One Bill Clinton wrestles with the complexities of his economic plan, a surprising trend that could ultimately make life a lot easier for the new president may be developing. A handful of analysts believe that technology is beginning to help improve productivity in the service sector, If they are right, middle-class living standards which have stagnated for the past 20 years could start to improve. The service sector gets little attention in most popular discussions of America's economic problems. Manufacturing, where US workers go head-to-head with foreign competitors, is supposed to be the crucial area; services, which are mostly sheltered from international competition, are regarded as secondary at best. If anything, the growth of the service sector is seen as a symptom of our manufacturing decline, as steelworkers lose their high-paying jobs and become minimum-wage hamburger flippers. But serious analysts know that it is our performance in services not manufacturing that is the bigger economic problem. In fact, US manufacturing performed reasonably well during the 1980s, with productivity growing at 2.9% per year. That was almost as fast as manufacturing productivity grew during the "good years" in 1950s and 1960s, and it was taster than productivity growth in most other advanced countries. So why didn't we feel better? Because near stagnation in service productivity-growth at only about 1.0% annually-held our living standard down. Dominant service sector. The truth is that modern America is primarily a service economy. Currently, 70% of US workers are in the service sector, versus only 20% in manufacturing. If we could eliminate our persistent trade deficits in manufacturing, the prosperity would shift, but only slightly: A rough estimate is that completely eliminating our current trade deficit would raise the share of manufacturing in employment by only about 0.5%. In other word, like it or not, most Americans will work in the service sector for the foreseeable future. That means, in turn, that the productivity of the US work force as a whole depends mostly on the productivity of service workers. But it is really possible to raise service productivity? Some service jobs, like housecleaning and hair cutting, seem resistant to technological change at least until we learn to build robot maids and barbers. In the past, however, we have seen major improvements in service productivity. During the 1950s and 1960s, for example, a linked set of technological and social changes-widespread availability Of private ears and home refrigerators, the growth of supermarkets and an improved road system-led to huge increases in retail productivity. An earlier era saw a surge in office productivity because of such revolutionary innovations as typewriters, carbon paper and vertical file cabinets. Indeed the most significant American business success story of the late 20th century may well be Wal-Mart, which has applied extensive computerization and home-grown version of Japan's "just-in-time" inventory methods to revolutionize retailing. Analysts like Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley now believe that additional productivity gains in the office are possible. Computers, it seems, are finally being used to eliminate paperwork: back offices are shrinking, and corporate hierarchies are getting flatter. If you squint, you can see these micro changes starting to show up in the macro numbers. We are now officially a year and a half into an economic recovery, yet unemployment remains stubbornly high. One of the reasons for this lingering joblessness is that productivity is rising faster than expected, primarily in the service sector. If America eventually returns to full employment, the total economy could be bigger and more productive. Technology investment is helping to fuel these changes. Preliminary data show that while overall investment in this recovery is weak by historical standards, computer-related investment is soaring. It looks as if the service sector has decided that it now really knows how to make information technology work. Like any radical change, the coming revolution in service productivity will have its victims. Skilled weavers were impoverished by the power loom, and small food stores were savaged by the rise of the supermarket. This time, it's the middle managers who will lose. The past recession took an unprecedented toll of skilled, white-collar workers, and many of these jobs may never come back. But most of America could benefit from rising service productivity in the 1990s and that would be welcome news for Bill Clinton.

单选题The Working Time Regulations (WTRs) introduced a new right to paid holidays for most workers. However, some workers were not covered when the WTRs came into force in October 1998. Since the regulations were amended, with effect from 1 August 2003, the majority of these workers have been entitled to paid holidays, and since 1 August 2004 the regulations have also applied to junior doctors. Workers who qualify are entitled to no fewer than four weeks of paid holiday a year, and public holidays (normally eight days in England and Wales) count towards this. However. workers and employers can agree longer holidays. For the first year of work, special accrual rules apply. For each month of employment, workers are entitled to one twelfth of the annual holiday. After the first year of employment, you can take your holiday entitlement at any time, with your employer"s approval. Before taking holidays, you must give your employer notice of at least twice the length of the holiday you want to take: for instance, to take a five-day holiday, you must give at least ten days" notice. If your employer does not want you to take that holiday, they can give you counter-notice equal to the holiday, for example, five days" notice not to take a five-day holiday. If the employer wants you to take holiday at a given time, e. g. when there is a shutdown at the same time every year, they must give you notice of at least twice the length of the holiday. There is no right for the worker to take that holiday at a different time. Holiday cannot be carried over to the next year, unless your contract of employment allows this to happen. Nor can you be paid in lieu of your holiday. However, when you leave the job, you are entitled to receive payment for any outstanding holiday, provided your contract specifically allows for this. It may be that your contract gives you better rights, or your holiday rights might be specified in a collective agreement. Your union representative can advise you on this. Answer the following questions, using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage.

单选题For 18 months, Iran repeatedly rebuffed all U. S proposals to free the hostages.