单选题
After SABMiller lost a bidding war for
China's Harbin Brewery Group to Anheuser-Busch Coso two years ago, it looked as
if America's King of Beers would reign over the Middle Kingdom as well.
Anheuser-Busch, after all, had already sealed a deal with China's leading
brewery, Tsingtao, and with Harbin in its stable it looked unbeatable.
But SABMiller had a Plan B that could well give it the throne after all.
Since losing Harbin, London-based SAB has focused its energies on a 12-year-old
joint venture, China Resources Snow Breweries Ltd., that is now thriving. In
June, CR Snow, which includes 46 breweries across the country, surpassed
longtime leader Tsingtao for the No. 1 spot. For the 12 months through June, CR
Snow produced nearly 40 million barrels, vs. 37 million for Tsingtao. As a
result, CR Snow boasts 14.9% of the Chinese market, compared with Tsingtao's
13.9%. "Our growth has been on the back of a very consistent and targeted
strategy," says Wayne Hall, SABMiller's finance director in China.
Both companies want to be the toast of China. As beer sales in the U.S.
and Western Europe have lost their fizz, they're growing at 8% — plus annually
in China. That has helped China overtake the U.S. as the world's top beer
market. SAB was early to see the promise of China, where it has
been brewing since 1994. Yet instead of targeting big cities such as Shanghai
and Beijing, as its competitors did, SABMiller scooped up breweries in less
{{U}}affluent{{/U}} areas, including the northeastern rust belt and the populous
inland province of Sichuan. This contrarian strategy has allowed SABMiller to
build up a national footprint at bargain prices. While Anheuser ponied up $ 700
million — as much as $ 62 per barrel of annual brewing capacity — for Harbin,
SABMilIer has typically paid $ 30 - $ 40 per barrel for its breweries.
"SABMiller has made a mint by purposely buying cheaper assets," says Bear,
Stearns & Co. analyst Anthony Bucalo. SABMiller has been smart
in its positioning of the flagship Snow brand. To appeal to upwardly mobile
youth, it slapped a shiny, modern label on the 50-year-old brew and launched a
national ad campaign emphasizing the beer's freshness, complete with sweepstakes
that reward winners with outdoor vacations. The marketing push is paying off as
it presses into the big cities. China now accounts for nearly 20% of SABMiller's
total volumes, and Snow has become China's No. 1 brand. Soon, it will probably
surpass Miller Lite as the biggest seller in the company's
cooler.
单选题Questions 11—14
单选题Questions 27-30
单选题The term "winners" in the passage is used to refer to schools with ______.
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Questions
16-20 The freedom to lead different types of life is
reflected in the person's capacity set. The capacity of a person depends on a
variety of factors, including personal characteristics and social
arrangements. A full accounting of individual freedom must, of course, go beyond
the capacities of personal living and pay attention to the person's other
objectives ( e.g. social goals not directly related to one's own life), but
human capacities constitute an important part of individual freedom.
Freedom, of course, is not an unproblematic concept. For example, if we do
not have the courage to choose to live in a particular way, even though we could
live that way if we so choose, can it be said that we do have the freedom to
live that way, i.e. the correspondent capacity? It is not any purpose here to
brush under the carpet difficult questions of this-and-other-type. In so far as
there are genuine ambiguities in the concept of freedom, that should be
reflected in corresponding ambiguities in the characterization of capacity. This
relates to a methodological point, which I have tried to defend elsewhere, that
if an underlying idea has an essential ambiguity, a precise formulation of that
idea must try to capture that ambiguity rather than hide or eliminate
it. Comparisons of freedom raise interesting issues of
evaluation. The claim is sometimes made that freedom must be valued
independently of the values and preferences of the person whose freedom is being
assessed, since it concerns the "range" of choice a person has--not how she
values the elements in that range or what she chooses from it. I do not believe
for an instant that this claim is sustainable (despite some superficial
plausibility), but had it been correct, it would have been a rather momentous
conclusion, driving a wedge between the evaluation of achievements and that of
freedom. It would, in particular, be then possible to assess the freedom of a
person independently of--or prior to--the assessment of the alternatives between
which the person can choose.
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单选题Questions 23~26
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I have just come home after viewing
some astonishing works of art that were recently discovered in Church Hole cave
in Nottinghamshire. They are not drawings, as one would expect, but etchings,
and they depict a huge range of wild animals. The artists who created them lived
around 13,000 years ago, and the images are remarkable on a variety of counts.
First of all, their sheer number is staggering. There are ninety all together.
Moreover, fifty-eight of them are on the ceiling. This is extremely rare in cave
art, according to a leading expert, Dr. Wilbur Samson of Central Midlands
University. "Wall pictures are the norm," he says. "But more importantly, the
Church Hole etchings are an incredible artistic achievement. They can hold their
own in comparison with the best found in continental Europe." I am not a student
of the subject, so I have to take his word for it. However, you do not have to
be an expert to appreciate their beauty. In fact, it is the
wider significance of the etchings that is likely to attract most attention in
academic circles, since they radically alter our view of life in Britain during
this epoch. It had previously been thought that ice-age hunters in this country
were isolated from people in more central areas of Europe, but the Church Hole
images prove that ancient Britons were part of a culture that had spread right
across the continent. And they were at least as sophisticated culturally as
their counterparts on the mainland. An initial survey of the
site last year failed to reveal the presence of the etchings. The reason lies in
the expectations of the researchers. They had been looking for the usual type of
cave drawing or painting, which shows up best under direct light. Consequently,
they used powerful torches, shining them straight onto the rock face. However,
the Church Hole images are modifications of the rock itself, and show up best
when seen from a certain angle in the natural light of early morning. Having
been fortunate to see them at this hour, I can only say that I was deeply and
unexpectedly moved. While most cave art often seems to have been created in a
shadowy past very remote from us, these somehow, convey the impression that they
were made yesterday. Dr. Samson feels that the lighting factor
provides important information about the likely function of these works of art.
"I think the artists knew very well that the etchings would hardly be visible
except early in the morning. We can therefore deduce that the chamber was used
for rituals involving animal worship, and that they were conducted just after
dawn as a preliminary to the day's hunting." To which I can only
add that I felt deeply privileged to have been able to view Church Hole. It is a
site of tremendous importance culturally and is part of the heritage, not only
of this country, but the world as a whole.
单选题 Without regular supplies of some hormones our
capacity to behave would be seriously impaired; without others we would soon
die. Tiny amounts of some hormones can modify moods and actions, our inclination
to eat or drink, our aggressiveness or submissiveness, and our reproductive and
parental behavior. And hormones do more than influence adult behavior; early in
life they help to determine the development of bodily form and may even
determine an individual's behavioral capacities. Later in life the changing
outputs of some endocrine glands and the body's changing sensitivity to some
hormones are essential aspects of the phenomena of aging.
Communication within the body and the consequent integration of behavior were
considered the exclusive province of the nervous system up to the beginning of
the present century. The emergence of endocrinology as a separate discipline can
probably be traced to the experiments of Bayliss and Starling on the hormone
secretion. This substance is secreted from cells in the intestinal walls when
food enters the stomach; it travels through the bloodstream and stimulates the
pancreas to liberate pancreatic juice, which aids in digestion. By showing that
special cells secrete chemical agents that are conveyed by the bloodstream and
regulate distant target organs or tissues. Bayliss and Starling demonstrated
that chemical integration could occur without participation of the nervous
system. The term "hormone" was first used with reference to
secretion. Starling derived the term from the Greek hormone, meaning "to excite
or set in motion". The term "endocrine" was introduced shortly thereafter.
"Endocrine" is used to refer to glands that secrete products into the
bloodstream. The term "endocrine" contrasts with "exocrine", which is applied to
glands that secrete their products though ducts to the site of action. Examples
of exocrine glands are the tear glands, the sweat glands, and the pancreas,
which secrete pancreatic juice through a duct into the intestine. Exocrine
glands are also called duct glands, while endocrine glands are called ductless
glands.
单选题No matter if you"re leafing through those glossy admissions brochures, attending an information session on campus or browsing a college fair with your teen, there"s always one big thought at the back of the mind of every parent: Wait, how much is this college degree going to cost me?
Thankfully, there are some new tools out there to make figuring out costs a little easier. This September the Department of Education released its College Scorecard, a project designed to help parents and students make more informed decisions about higher education. The tool provides information on college costs, graduation rates, average starting salaries, post-graduation and information that can help people pick the best school for their financial and academic needs.
With the College Scorecard, you see a breakdown of what you"d actually pay for a college education, based on your family"s income. This is the most important aspect of this tool, because while the "sticker price" of a school may be high, you most likely won"t pay full price to go there. For example, although Harvard"s list price is around $60,000 according to its admissions website, the average family will pay just over $14,000 per year once you factor in grants and financial aid.
The tool lets you compare schools" stats side by side, including their financial information. In the search function, you can filter out what kind of degree you want (two-year or four-year), location, public or private, size, major or program and more to make a really specific comparison. If any schools catch your eye, you can click on "View More Details" for a comprehensive summary (SAT/ACT scores to get in, what typical student debt is like, etc.). You can also search for a specific school to get all the stats you want on it.
You can also check out NPR"s college cost calculator, which uses the College Scorecard raw data of 150 major colleges and universities to show you right off the bat the net price (price of college minus financial aid, grants and scholarships) for various incomes compared to that scary sticker price. It"s a quick but less detailed summary looking specifically at costs.
While these tools can"t determine the exact dollar amount you"ll have to pay, they do give you a better ballpark estimate of what college costs you are expected to be able to pay. Knowing that now will help you decide what school makes the best financial sense for your family.
单选题Most growing plants contain much more water than all other materials combined. C. R. Barnes has suggested that it is as proper to term the plant a water structure as to call a house composed mainly of brick a brick building. Certain it is that all essential processes of plant growth and development occur in water. The mineral elements from the soil that are usable by the plant must be dissolved in the soil solution before they can be taken into the root. They are carried to all parts of the growing plant and are built into essential plant materials while in a dissolved state. The carbon dioxide from the air may enter the leaf as a gas but is dissolved in water in the leaf before it is combined with a part of the water to form simple sugars—the base material from which the plant body is mainly built. Actively growing plant parts are generally 75 to 90 percent water. Structural parts of plants, such as woody stems no longer actively growing, may have much less water than growing tissues.
The actual amount of water in the plant at any one time, however, is only a very small part of what passes through it during its development. The processes of photosynthesis, by which carbon dioxide and water are combined-in the presence of chlorophyll and with energy derived from light-to form sugars, require that carbon dioxide from the air enter the plant. This occurs mainly in the leaves. The leaf surface is not solid but contains great numbers of minute openings, through which the carbon dioxide enters. The same structure that permits the one gas to enter the leaf, however, permits another gas—water vapor—to be lost from it. Since carbon dioxide is present in the air only in trace quantities (3 to 4 parts in 10,000 parts of air) and water vapor is near saturation in the air spaces within the leaf (at 80°F, saturated air would contain about 186 parts of water vapor in 10,000 parts of air), the total amount of water vapor lost is many times the carbon dioxide intake. Actually, because of wind and other factors, the loss of water in proportion to carbon dioxide intake may be even greater than the relative concentrations of the two gases. Also, not all of the carbon dioxide that enters the leaf is synthesized into carbohydrates.
单选题Britain, somewhat proudly, has been crowned the most watched society in the world. The country boasts 4.2 million security cameras (one for every 14 people) , a number expected to double in the next decade. A typical Londoner makes an estimated 300 closed-circuit television (CCTV) appearances a day, according to the British nonprofit surveillance Studies Network, an average easily met in the short walk between Trafalgar Square and the Houses of Parliament. Public opinion on this state of affairs is generally positive, according to recent polls. And how useful is CCTV in busting bad guys? Not much, according to Scotland Yard. In terms of cost benefit, the enormous expenditure has done very little in actually preventing and solving crime. Right under Big Brother- s nose, a new class of guerrilla artists and hackers are comrnandeering the boring, grainy images of vacant parking lots and empty corridors for their own purposes. For about $ 80 at any electronics supply store and some technical know-how, it is possible to tap into London's CCTV hotspots with a simple wireless receiver (sold with any home-security camera) and a battery to power it. Dubbed "video sniffing," the pastime evolved out of the days before broadband became widely available, when "war-chalkers" scouted the city for unsecured Wi-Fi networks and marked them with chalk using special symbols. Sniffing is catching on in other parts of Europe, spread by a small but globally connected community of practitioners. "It's actually a really relaxing thing to do on a Sunday," says Joao Wilbert, a master's student in interactive media, who slowly paces the streets in London like a treasure hunter, carefully watching a tiny handheld monitor for something to flicker onto the screen. The excursions pick up obscure, random shots from the upper corners of restaurants and hotel lobbies, or of a young couple shopping in a house wares department nearby. Eerily, baby cribs are the most common images. Wireless child monitors work on the same frequency as other surveillance systems, and are almost never encrypted or secured. Given that sniffing is illegal, some artists have found another way to obtain security footage: they ask for it, in a letter along with a check for £10. In making her film "Faceless," Austrian- born artist Manu Luksch made use of a little-known law, included within Britain- s Data Protection Act, requiring CCTV operators to release a copy of their footage upon the request of anyone captured on their cameras. "Within the maximum period of 40 days I received some recordings in my mail," says Luksch. "And I thought, Wow, that works well. Why not make a feature length, science-fiction love story?" After four years of performing, staging large dance ensembles in public atriums and submitting the proper paperwork, Luksch produced a haunting, beautifully choreographed film and social commentary, in which the operators have blocked out each and every performer's face, in compliance with Britain- s privacy laws. "The Duelists," one of the more well known CCTV movies, was shot by filmmaker David Valentine entirely with the security cameras in a mall in Manchester. He was able to cajole his way into the control booth for the project, but he is also credited with having advanced video sniffing to an art form and social tool. He's collaborated with MediaShed, an organization based in Southend- on-Sea just outside London that works with homeless youth, using sniffing as a way to gain their interest and re-engage them with society. In some cases video sniffing has morphed into a form of hacking, in which the sniffer does more than just watch. Using a transmitter strong enough to override the frequency that most cameras use, sniffers can hijack wireless networks and broadcast different images back to the security desk. Most sniffers, hijackers and artists using CCTV are critical of the present level of surveillance, but they' re also interested in establishing a dialogue about what is typically a secretive arrangement. The ability to tap into wireless surveillance systems and take them over points out a flaw in the elaborate security apparatus that has evolved around us. As anthropologists tell us. the act of observation changes what's being observed. Cameras "reorder the environment," says Graham Harwood, artistic director of the group Mongrel, which specializes in digital media. That's especially true of saturated London. Like "flash mobs" and "wifipicning," both large, spontaneous gatherings of people centered around communications technology, sniffing and hijacking could become the next high-tech social phenomenon. Of course, it will likely disappear quickly once the surveillance industry catches on to the shenanigans and beefs up its security. But the cameras will remain*
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单选题A visitor from Barcelona arrives at a Madrid government office in mid-afternoon. And is surprised to find only the cleaning lady there. "Don"t they work in the afternoons?" he asks. "No," she replies, "They don"t work in the mornings. In the afternoons they don"t come."
Lazy Madrid, busy Barcelona: it is just one of many stereotypes about Spain"s great rivals. Mostly, the stereotypes are born of Barcelona"s bitterness at its second-class status. Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, a proudly autonomous region, but Madrid is the capital of Spain. This causes resentment. It makes Barcelona the largest city in Western Europe not to be a national, capital. Worse, Barcelona (Catalonia"s capital since the ninth century) regards Madrid (a creation of Philip Ⅱ in the 16th century) as an upstart. And, after being bossed about for so long, who can blame them? Over the years governments in Madrid did their best to strip Barcelona of political power. They tried to squash the Catalan Language. They even decided what the modern city should look like: in 1860 an order from Madrid overruled Barcelona"s choice of plan for its big expansion, and opted for a grid layout. Barcelona has the liberalism that often characterizes port cities. As Catalans see is. While Madrid bathes in bureaucracy, Barcelona gets on with business. Anold-fashioned seriousness in Madrid, isolated high up on Spain"s central plateau, contrasts with the light-heartedness of Barcelona, open to Europe and aggressively avant-garde. Upon to a point, these old caricatures still hold true. No visitor to government buildings in the two cities can fail to be struck by the contrast between them. In Madrid, there are creaky wooden floor, antique furniture and walls covered with paintings by Spanish old masters. In Barcelona, the city of Gaudi and Miro, designer chairs and tables are evidence of the place"s obsession with modernism. Meetings of the Catalan cabinet are held in room with a large, modern painting by Antoni Tapies. And yet, these days, the similarities between two cities are at least striking as the contrasts. Madrid is hardly lazy any more. Visitors find it hard to keep up with the pace of the place. Nor is it old-fashioned. Indeed, it has become almost outrageously modern. To judge by the local cuisine, you would think the place was a port. although far from the sea, seafood is a miraculous Madrid specialty. As banks and business have been drawn to Madrid and industrial centre as an administrative one, Barcelona, meanwhile, in Spain"s traditional industrial heartland, has been experiencing a rise in bureaucracy.
The rivalry between Madrid and Barcelona is bound to remain fierce, not least on the soccer field, where Real Madrid and Barcelona compete for Spanish supremacy. Barcelona will continue to press for yet more power to be devolved to it from Madrid: it is calling for the Senate, Spain"s upper house of parliament, to be moved to the Catalan capital. But with a lot of local autonomy restored, and with the success of the 1992 Olympics behind it, the chip on Barcelona"s shoulder is becoming ever harder to detect.
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单选题Questions 11-14
单选题Like the space telescope he championed, astronomer Lyman Spitzer faced some perilous moments in his career. Most notably, on a July day in 1945, he happened to be in the Empire State building when a B- 25 Mitchell bomber lost its way in fog and crashed into the skyscraper 14 floors above him. Seeing debris falling past the window, his curiosity got the better of him, as Robert Zimmerman recounts in his Hubble history, The Universe in a Mirror. Spitzer tried to poke his head out the window to see what was going on, but others quickly convinced him it was too dangerous. Spitzer was not the first astronomer to dream of sending a telescope above the distorting effects of the atmosphere, but it was his tireless advocacy, in part, that led NASA to launch the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990. Initially jubilant, astronomers were soon horrified to discover that Hubble's 2.4-metre main mirror had been ground to the wrong shape. Although it was only off by 2.2 micrometers, this badly blurred the teleseope's vision and made the scientists who had promised the world new images and science in exchange for $1.5 billion of public money the butt of jokes. The fiasco, inevitably dubbed "Hubble Trouble" by the press, wasn't helped when even the limited science the crippled Hubble could do was threatened as its gyroscopes, needed to control the orientation of the telescope, started to fail one by one. By 1993, as NASA prepared to launch a rescue mission, the situation looked bleak. The telescope "probably wouldn't have gone on for more than a year or two" without repairs, says John Grunsfeld, an astronaut who flew on the most recent Hubble servicing mission. Happily, the rescue mission was a success. Shuttle astronauts installed new instruments that corrected for the flawed mirror, and replaced the gyroscopes. Two years later, Hubble gave us the deepest ever view of the universe, peering back to an era just 1 billion years after the big bang to see the primordial building blocks that aggregated to form galaxies like our own. The success of the 1993 servicing mission encouraged NASA to mount three more (in 1997, 1999 and 2002). Far from merely keeping the observatory alive, astronauts installed updated instruments on these missions that dramatically improved Hubble's power. It was "as if you took in your Chevy Nova [for repairs] and they gave you back a Lear jet," says Steven Beckwith, who from 1998 to 2005 headed the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, where Hubble's observations are planned. Along the way, in 1998, Hubble's measurements of supernovas in distant galaxies unexpectedly revealed that the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing pace, propelled by a mysterious entity now known as dark energy. In 2001 the space observatory also managed to make the first measurement of a chemical in the atmosphere of a planet in an alien solar system. Despite its successes, Hubble's life looked like it would be cut short when in 2004, NASA's then administrator Scan O'Keefe announced the agency would send no more servicing missions to Hubble, citing unacceptable risks to astronauts in the wake of the Columbia shuttle disaster of 2003, in which the craft exploded on reentry, killing its crew. By this time, three of Hubble's gyroscopes were already broken or ailing and no one was sure how long the other three would last. Citizen petitions and an outcry among astronomers put pressure on NASA, and after a high-level panel of experts declared that another mission to Hubble would not be exceptionally risky, the agency reversed course, leading to the most recent servicing mission, in May 2009. No more are planned. The remainder of the shuttle fleet that astronauts used to reach Hubble is scheduled to retire by the year's end. And in 2014, NASA plans to launch Hubble's successor, an infrared observatory called the James Webb Space Telescope, which will probe galaxies even further away and make more measurements of exoplanet atmospheres. According to Grunsfeld, now STScl's deputy director, plans are afoot for a robotic mission to grab Hubble when it reaches the end of its useful life, nudging it into Earth's atmosphere where most of it would be incinerated. Only the mirror is sturdy enough to survive the fall into an empty patch of ocean. But let's not get ahead of ourselves--Hubble is far from finished. The instruments installed in May 2009, including the Wide Field Camera 3, which took this image of the Butterfly nebula, 3800 light years away, have boosted its powers yet again. It might have as much as a decade of life left even without more servicing. "It really is only reaching its full stride now, after 20 years," says Grunsfeld. A key priority for Hubble will be to explore the origin of dark energy by probing for it at earlier times in the universe's history. Hubble scientist Malcolm Niedner of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is not willing to bet on what its most important discovery will be. "More than half of the most amazing textbook-changing science to emerge from this telescope occurred in areas we couldn't even have dreamed of," he says. "Expect the unexpected. /
