单选题

单选题Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following talk.

单选题Questions 21-25 No one can be a great thinker who does not realize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think. Not that it is solely or chiefly to form great thinkers that freedom of thinking is required. On the contrary, it is as much or even more indispensable to enable average human beings to attain the mental stature of which they are capable. There have been and may again great individual thinkers in a general atmosphere of mental slavery. But there never has been nor ever will be in that atmosphere an intellectually active people. Where any people have made even a temporary approach to such a character, it has been because the dread of heterodox speculation was for a time suspended. Where there is a tacit convention that principles are not to be disputed, where the discussion of the greatest questions which can occupy humanity is considered to be closed, one cannot hope to find that generally high scale of mental activity which has made some periods of history so remarkable! Never when controversy avoided the subjects which are large and important enough to kindle enthusiasm, were the minds of a people stirred up from their foundations and the impulse given which raised even persons of the most ordinary intellect to something of the dignity of thinking beings. He who knows only his side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons of the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment and unless he contends himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels the most inclination. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or to bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them form persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated persons are in this condition--even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusions may be true, but they might be false for anything they know; they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them and considered what such persons may have to say. Consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrines which they themselves profess.

单选题Right now, Prince Charles is probably wishing he had hit the slopes after all. Britain"s Prince of Wales decided last year to begin reducing his carbon footprint—the amount of carbon dioxide created by his activities—by cutting down on his flights abroad, including an annual skiing vacation in Switzerland. Though we should all be in the position to make such sacrifices, Charles didn"t win plaudits for his holiday martyrdom. Instead British green groups, seconded by Environment Secretary David Miliband, spanked the Prince for deciding to fly to the U.S. on Jan. 27 to pick up a prestigious environmental award, arguing that the carbon emissions created by his travel canceled out his green cred. It"s too easy to mock His Royal Highness; in England it"s practically the national sport. But his critics may be onto something. Jets are uniquely polluting, and the carbon they emit at high altitudes appears to have a greater warming effect than the same amount of carbon released on the ground by cars or factories. On an individual level, a single long-haul flight can emit more carbon per passenger than months of SUV driving. Though air travel is responsible for only 1.6% of total greenhouse gas emissions, in many countries it"s the fastest-growing single source—and with annual airline passengers worldwide predicted to double to 9 billion by 2025, that growth is unlikely to abate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) put it bluntly last year: "The growth in aviation and the need to address climate change cannot be reconciled." One of the biggest problems, as the IPCC points out, is that the carbon emitted by air travel currently has "no technofix". As messy a source of pollution as electricity generation and ground transportation are, technologies do exist that could drastically cut carbon from power plants and cars. Not so for planes: the same aircraft models will almost certainly be flying on the same kerosene fuel for decades. Admittedly, the airline industry has improved efficiency over the past 40 years, with technological upgrades more than doubling efficiency. There are tweaks in aircraft operations that could nip carbon emissions even further. Virgin Atlantic airlines tycoon Richard Branson, who pledged $ 3 billion in the fight against climate change, advocates having planes towed on the ground rather than taxiing, which he has said could cut a yet unspecified portion of fuel on long flights. Emissions trading for the air industry could help as well, with airlines given carbon caps and then being required to purchase credits from other industries if they exceed their limits. But there"s nothing on the horizon for aircraft with the carbon-cutting potential of hydrogen engines or solar energy. "It"s not like having leaky home windows you can fix with double glazing," says Leo Murray, a spokesman for the green group Plane Stupid, which led the criticism of Prince Charles. Nor is there any replacement for long-haul air travel itself. I can take a train from Boston to Washington, but until we can figure out how to travel via fireplace, Harry Potter-style, the only way I"m getting from Tokyo to New York City is in aircraft that may emit more than 5,200 lbs. (about 2,400 kg) of carbon per passenger, round-trip, according to one estimate. On an individual level, you can try to make your flight carbon neutral by donating to, say, a forestry project that will soak up the greenhouse gases you have created. An increasing number of airlines and travel agents do offer such options. The London-based CarbonNeutral Company reports that requests for carbon offsetting from individual travelers have jumped over the past six months. But the still tiny number of neutralized flights can hardly compensate for the rapid increases in global air travel. So is grounding ourselves the only answer? That seems to be the conclusion of environmentalists in Britain, who also went after Prime Minister Tony Blair for a recent holiday trip to Miami. Though Blair belatedly promised to begin offsetting his leisure travel, he insisted that telling people to fly less was simply impractical—and he"s probably right. Some environmentalists suggest that we could learn to live more locally, but good luck keeping them in Brighton after they"ve seen Beijing—and vice versa. Our best bet for now may be to limit any business and leisure flights that we can and offset the rest. So when you"re pondering that luxury Swiss vacation, ask yourself: What would Prince Charles do?

单选题How we look and how we appear to others probably worries us more when are in our teens or early twenties than at any other time in our life. Few of us are content to accept ourselves as we are, and few are brave enough to ignore the trends of fashion. Most fashion magazines or TV advertisements try to persuade us that we should dress in a certain way or behave in a certain manner. If we do, they tell us, we will be able to meet new people with confidence and deal with every situation confidently and without embarrassment. Changing fashion, of course, does not apply just to dress. A barber today does not cut a boy's hair in the same way as he used to, and girls do not make up in the same way as their mothers and grandmothers did. The advertisers show us the latest fashionable styles and we are constantly under pressure to follow the fashion in case our friends think we are odd or dull. What causes fashions to change? Sometimes convenience or practical necessity or just the fancy of an influential person can establish a fashion. Take hats for example, in cold climates, early buildings were cold inside, so people wore hats indoors as well as outside. In recent times, the late President Kennedy caused a depression in the American hat industry by not wearing hats. More American men followed his example. There is also a cyclical pattern in fashion. In the 1920s in Europe and America, short skirts became fashionable. After World War Two, they dropped to ankle length, then they got shorter and shorter and miniskirt was in fashion. After a few more years, skirts became longer again. Today, society is much freer and easier than it used to be. It is no longer necessary to dress like everyone else. Within reason, you can dress as you like or do your hair the way you like instead of the way you should because it is the fashion. The popularity of jeans and the "untidy" look seems to be a reaction against the increasingly expensive fashion of the top fashion houses. At the same time, appearance is still important in certain circumstances and then we must choose our clothes carefully. It would be foolish to go to an interview for a job in a law firm wearing jeans and a sweater; and it would be discourteous to visit some distinguished scholar looking as if we were going to the beach or a night club. However, you need never feel depressed if you don't look like the latest fashion photo. Look around you and you'll see that no one else does either!

单选题A meager diet may give you health and long life, but it"s not much fun—and it might not even be necessary. We may be able to hang on to most of that youthful vigor even if we don"t start to diet until old age. Stephen Spindler and his colleagues from the University of California at Riverside have found that some of an elderly mouse"s liver genes can be made to behave as they did when the mouse was young simply by limiting its food for four weeks. The genetic rejuvenation won"t reverse other damage caused by time for the mouse, but could help its liver metabolize drugs or get rid of toxins. Spindler"s team fed three mice a normal diet for their whole lives, and fed another three on half-rations. Three more mice were switched from the normal diet to half-feed for a month when they were 34 months old—equivalent to about 70 human years. The researchers checked the activity of 11,000 genes from the mouse livers, and found that 46 changed with age in the normally fed mice. The changes were associated with things like inflammation and free radical production—probably bad news for mouse health. In the mice that had dieted all their lives, 27 of those 46 genes continued to behave like young genes. But the most surprising finding was that the mice that only started dieting in old age also benefited from 70 percent of these gene changes. "This is the first indication that these effects kick in pretty quickly," says Huber Warner from the National Institute on Aging near Washington, D.C.. No one yet knows if calorie restriction works in people as it does in mice, but Spindler is hopeful. "There"s attracting and tempting evidence out there that it will work," he says. If it does work in people, there might be good reasons for rejuvenating the liver. As we get older, our bodies are less efficient at metabolizing drugs, for example. A brief period of time of dieting, says Spindler, could be enough to make sure a drug is effective. But Spindler isn"t sure the trade-off is worth it. "The mice get less disease, they live longer, but they"re hungry," he says. "Even seeing what a diet does, it"s still hard to go to a restaurant and say: "I can only eat half of that"." Spindler hopes we soon won"t need to diet at all. His company, Life Span Genetics in California, is looking for drugs that have the effects of calorie restriction.

单选题Every generation has its emblematic boy"s toy. Once upon a time there was the golf cart: a little toy car specifically designed for middle-aged men too rich to care about looking ridiculous. Later came the beach buggy, a briefly fashionable, wildly impractical, single-terrain vehicle. One might include the motorcycle or the snowmobile on this list, were they not, in certain contexts, quite useful, but there is no doubt which pointless recreational vehicle has captured the imagination of the landed, middle-aged celebrity: it"s the quad bike. What is it about this squat, ungainly, easy-to-flip machine that celebrities love so much? As recreational vehicles go, the quad bike is hardly sophisticated. They are to the countryside what the jet-ski is to Lake Windermere. "There"s nothing cool about a quad", says Simon Tiffin, editor of a well-known magazine. "It"s a strange thing to want to hare round beautiful bits of the country in a petrol-guzzling machine." But celebrities love quad bikes. Musicians, comedians, DJs, actors and sportsmen have all been photographed aboard quads. "They"re the latest rich person"s toy", says Tiffin. "Spoilt children get them for Christmas." Provided you~ ye got a large estate to go with it, however, the quad bike can remain a secret indulgence. You can go out and tear up your own piece of countryside without anyone knowing you"re doing it. The quad bike"s nonsensical name—"quad" means four, but "bike" is an abbreviation of "bicycle", which means two—that comes to six—hints at its odd history. Originally the ATV, or all-terrain vehicle, as quads are sometimes known, was developed in Japan as a three-wheeled farm vehicle, an inexpensive mini-tractor that could go just about anywhere. In the 1980s the more stable four-wheeled quad was officially introduced—enthusiasts had been converting their trikes for some time—again primarily for farming, but its recreational appeal soon became apparent. At the same time a market for racing models was developing. Paul Anderson, a former British quad racing champion, says the quad"s recreational appeal lies in its potential to deliver a safe thrill. It"s a mix between a motorbike and driving a car; when you turn a corner, you"ve got to lean into the corner, and then if the ground"s greasy, the rear end slides out, he says. "Plus they"re much easier to ride than a two-wheeled motorcycle." The quad bike, in short, provides middle-aged excitement for men who think a Harley might be a bit dangerous. Anderson is keen to point out that quad bikes are, in his experience, much safer than motorcycles. "With quad racing it"s very rare that we see anybody having an accident and getting injured," he says. "In the right hands, personally, I think a quad bike is a very safe recreational vehicle", he adds. Outside of racing, quad bikes are growing in popularity and injuries have trebled in the last five years. Although retailers offer would-be purchasers basic safety instructions and recommend that riders wear gloves, helmets, goggles, boots and elbow pads, there is no licence required to drive a quad bike and few ways to encourage people to ride them wisely. Employers are required to provide training to workers who use quad bikes, but there is nothing to stop other buyers hurting themselves. For the rest of the world, quad bikes are here to stay. They feature heavily in the programmes of holiday activity centres, they have all but replaced the tractor as the all-purpose agricultural workhorse and now police constables ride them while patrolling the Merseyside coastline. It has more or less usurped the beach buggy, the dirt bike and the snowmobile, anywhere they can go the quad bike can. They even race them on ice. You can"t drive round Lake Windermere on one, or at least nobody"s tried it yet. Just wait.

单选题It is hard to escape the fact that in developed societies, despite progress, innovation and prosperity, there is something not quite right. In some cases, it is hard for people to put a finger on it: a feeling of emptiness and not belonging, a lack of defined relationships and solid social structures. In other respects, it is readily quantifiable: rates of drug abuse, violent crime and depression and suicide are rocketing. Why are we so unhappy? It seems that the Enlightenment brought forth unparalleled liberty in economic, social and political life, but we are now undergoing a midlife crisis. The politics of happiness is nothing new. Aristotle once said that happiness is the goal of life. But for me, the person who brings the great conundrum of personal happiness alive is Robert Kennedy. In a beautifully crafted speech, he said what "makes life worthwhile" is "the health of our children, the quality of their education, the joy of their play", "the strength of our marriages.., our devotion to our country" and our "wit… wisdom and courage". And he pointed out that none of these could be measured by gross national product. Nor should we be surprised by the politics of happiness. Ask people, how they are, and they will answer in terms of their family life, community life and work life, rather than just what they are paid. Despite this, it is a notoriously difficult subject for politicians to grasp. One reason is that happiness and well-being are generally not well served by statistical analysis. Politicians, obsessed with inputs and outputs, targets and controls, are flummoxed by immeasurable concepts such as the value people place on spending time with their families. Another reason is that electoral cycles lend themselves to a culture of short-termism, with a need for immediate and quantifiable measurements. One such measurement is GDP. In many ways, increasing this has been the raison d’etre for many center-right political parties since the 1980s. Back then, many developed economies were in a state of economic malaise, with persistently high inflation and unemployment. We needed something to reverse this stagnation and put us back onto the path of prosperity. Thankfully, we got that. Today we need to be just as revolutionary to put us back on track to social prosperity: to respond to that yearning for happiness. That is why I have been arguing in Britain that we need to refocus our energies on general well-being (GWB). It means recognizing the social, cultural and moral factors that give true meaning to our lives. In particular, it means focusing on a sustainable environment and building stronger societies. And yes, it also means recognizing that there is more to life than money: indeed, that quality of life means more than the quantity of money. I think the center-right can be the champions of this cause. The center-left never really get the well-being agenda because they treat individuals as units of account. And they find it difficult to understand how it cannot be delivered simply by the push of a legislator"s pen. Instead, the politics of well-being is a politics that needs to be founded on sharing responsibility. Of course, government must take its own responsibilities. But that needs to be part of a wider cultural change: a cultural change that will occur as a consequence of legislation, leadership and social change. What"s the government"s role? It is to show leadership and set the framework. Showing leadership means leading the change in the many areas that impact on well-being. For example, everyone would agree that spending more time with family is crucial to happiness. Here governments should be pioneers of flexible working with public-sector employees. Setting the right framework means creating incentives and removing barriers to remodel the context within which the whole of society makes choices. Take the environment. Everyone would agree that a cleaner local environment would enhance our well-being. By setting a framework that creates a price for carbon in our economy and encourages green innovation, the government can help people make the better choice. Ultimately, society"s happiness requires us all to play our part. Indeed, playing our part is part of being happy. That is why we need a revolution in responsibility. Corporate responsibility means businesses taking a proactive role, and taking account of their employees" lives. Civic responsibility means giving power back to local government, community organizations and social enterprises so they can formulate local solutions to local problems. And personal responsibility means we all do out bit, be it in cleaning up our local environment or participating in local politics. Professor Nell Browne at Bowling Green State University recently wrote an article: "If Markets Are So Wonderful, Why Can"t I Find Friends at the Store?" It is not that markets are bad or that we are doomed to a life of perpetual unhappiness. Rather, given our advances in terms of political freedom, economic enterprise and cultural ingenuity, life could, and should, be more satisfying. That is why focusing on general well-being could be the big, defining political concept of the 21st century. And by recognizing the responsibility every section of society has, we also have the means to enhance it.

单选题Much new knowledge is admittedly remote from the immediate interests of the ordinary man in the street. He is not intrigued or impressed by the fact that a noble gas like xenon can form compounds—something that until recently most chemists swore was impossible. While even this knowledge may have an impact on him when it is embodied in new technology, until then, he can afford to ignore it. A good bit of new knowledge, on the other hand, is directly related to his immediate concerns, his job, his politics, his family life, even his sexual behavior. A poignant is the dilemma that parents find themselves in today as a consequence of successive radical changes in the image of the child in society and in our theories of childrearing. At the turn of the century in the United States, for example, the dominant theory reflected the prevailing scientific belief in the importance of heredity in determining behavior. Mothers who had never heard of Darwin or Spencer raised their babies in ways consistent with the world views of these thinkers. Vulgarized and simplified, passed from person to person, these world views were reflected in the conviction of millions of ordinary people that "bad children are a result of bad stock", that "crime is hereditary", etc. In the early decades of the century, these attitudes fell back before the advance of environmentalism. The belief that environment shapes personality, and that the early years are the most important, created a new image of the child. The work of Watson and Pavlov began to creep into the public ken. Mothers reflected the new behaviorism, refusing to feed infants on demand, refusing to pick them up when they cried, weaning early to avoid prolonged dependency. A study by Martha Wolfenstein has compared the advice offered parents in seven successive editions of INFANT CARE, a handbook issued by the United Stats Children"s Bureau between 1914 and 1951. She found distinct shifts in the preferred methods for dealing with weaning and thumb-sucking. It is clear from this study that by the late thirties still another image of the child had gained ascendancy. Freudian concepts swept in like a wave and revolutionized childrearing practices. Suddenly, mothers began to hear about "the rights of infants" and the need for "oral gratification". Permissiveness became the order of the day.

单选题Questions 6～10 Campaigning on the Indian frontier is an experience by itself. Neither the landscape nor the people find their counterparts in any other portion of the globe. Valley walls rise steeply five or six thousand feet on every side. The columns crawl through a maze of giant corridors down which fierce snow-fed torrents foam under skies of brass. Amid these scenes of savage brilliancy there dwells a race whose qualities seem to harmonize with their environment. Except at harvest-time, when self- preservation requires a temporary truce, the Pathan tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a warrior, a politician and a theologian. Every large house is a real feudal fortress made, it is true, only of sun-baked clay, but with battlements, turrets, loopholes, drawbridges, etc. complete. Every village has its defense. Every family cultivates its vendetta; every clan, its feud. The numerous tribes and combinations of tribes all have their accounts to settle with one another. Nothing is ever forgotten, and very few debts are left unpaid. For the purposes of social life, in addition to the convention about harvest-time, a most elaborate code of honor has been established and is on the whole faithfully observed. A man who knew it and observed it faultlessly might pass unarmed from one end of the frontier to another. The slightest technical slip would, however, be fatal. The life of the Pathans is thus full of interest; and his valleys, nourished alike by endless sunshine and abundant water, are fertile enough to yield with little labor the modest material requirements of a sparse population. Into this happy world the nineteenth century brought two new facts: the rifle and the British government. The first was an enormous luxury and blessing; the second, an unmitigated nuisance. The convenience of the rifle was nowhere more appreciated than in the Indian highlands. A weapon which would kill with accuracy at fifteen hundred yards opened a whole new vista of delights to every family or clan which could acquire it. One could actually remain in one's own house and fire at one's neighbor nearly a mile away. One could lie in wait on some high crag, and at hitherto unheard-of ranges hit a horseman far below. Even villages could fire at each other without the trouble of going far from home. Fabulous prices were therefore offered for these glorious products of science. Rifle- thieves scoured all India to reinforce the efforts of the honest smuggler. A steady flow of the coveted weapons spread its genial influence throughout the frontier, and the respect which the Pathan tribesmen entertained for Christian civilization was vastly enhanced. government on the other hand was entirely unsatisfactory. The great organizing, advancing, absorbing power to the southward seemed to be little better than a monstrous spoil-sport. If the Pathans made forays into the plains, not only were they driven back (which after all was no more than fair), but a whole series of subsequent interferences took place, followed at intervals by expeditions which toiled laboriously through the valleys, scolding the tribesmen and exacting fines for any damage which they had done. No one would have minded these expeditions if they had simply come, had a fight and then gone away again. In many cases this was their practice under what was called the "butcher and bolt policy" to which the government of India long adhered. But towards the end of the nineteenth century these intruders began to make roads through many of the valleys, and in particular the great road to Chitral. They sought to ensure the safety of these roads by threats, by forts and by subsidies. There was no objection to the last method so far as it went. But the whole of this tendency to road-making was regarded by the Pathans with profound distaste. All along the road people were expected to keep quiet, not to shoot one another, and above all not to shoot at travelers along the road. It was too much to ask, and a whole series of quarrels took their origin from this source.

单选题 Questions 21-25 We can begin our discussion of "population as global issue" with what most persons mean when they discuss "the population problem": too many people on earth and a too rapid increase in the number added each year. The facts are not in dispute, it was quite right to employ the analogy that likened demographic growth to "a long, thin powder fuse that burns steadily and haltingly until it finally reaches the charge and explodes. " To understand the current situation, which is characterized by rapid increases in population, it is necessary to understand the history of population trends. Rapid growth is a comparatively recent phenomenon. Looking back at the 8,000 years of demographic history, we find that populations have been virtually stable or growing very slightly for most of human history. For most Of our ancestors, life was hard, often nasty, and very short. There was high fertility in most places, but this was usually balanced by high mortality. For most of human history, it was seldom the case that one in ten persons would live past forty, while infancy and childhood were especially risky periods. Often, societies were in clear danger of extinction because death rates could exceed their birthrates. Thus, the population problem throughout most of history was how to prevent extinction of the human race. This pattern is important to notice. Not only does it put the current problems of demographic growth into a historical perspective, but it suggests that the cause of rapid increase in population in recent years is not a sudden enthusiasm for more children, but an improvement in the conditions that traditionally have caused high mortality. Demographic history can be divided into two major periods, a time of long, slow growth which extended from about 8,000 B. C. till approximately A. D. 1650. In the first period of some 9,600 years, the population increased from some 8 million to 500 million in 1650. Between 1650 and the present, the population has increased from 500 million to more than 4 billion. And it is estimated that by the year 2000 there will be 6.2 billion people throughout the world. One way to appreciate this dramatic difference in such abstract numbers is to reduce the time frame to something that is more manageable. Between 8,000 ]3. C and 1650, an average of only 50,000 persons was being added annually to the world's population each year. At present, this number is added every six hours. The increase is about 80,000,000 persons annually.

单选题

单选题Humans have always been fascinated by dreams. The vivid dreams people remember and talk about are REM dream—the type that occur almost continuously during periods of rapid eye movement (REM) during sleep. But people also have NREM dreams—dreams that occur during periods without rapid eye movement called NREM sleep—although they are typically less frequent and less memorable than REM dreams. REM dreams have a story like or dream like quality and are more visual, vivid, and emotional than NREM dreams. Interestingly, blind people who lose their sight before age five usually do not have visual dreams, but they have vivid dreams involving the other senses. A popular belief about dreams is that an entire dream takes place in an instant, but in fact, it is not true. Sleep researchers have discovered that it takes about as long to dream a dream as it would to experience the same thing in real life. Although some people insist that they do not dream at all, researchers say that all people dream unless they consume alcohol or take drugs that suppress REM sleep. Are dreaming and REM sleep essentially one and the same? Some researchers have questioned an assumption long held by some sleep experts that dreaming is simply the brain"s effort to make sense of the random firing of neurons that occurs during REM sleep. Are the brain mechanisms responsible for REM sleep the same ones that create the rich dream world we experience? The answer may be no. It is known that dreams do occur outside of REM sleep. Moreover, the REM state can exist without dreams. These two facts suggest that different but complementary brain mechanisms are responsible for REM sleep and the dreaming that normally occurs within it. There is mounting evidence, says British researcher Mark Solms, that dreaming and REM sleep, while normally occurring together, are not one and the same. Rather, the REM state is controlled by neural mechanisms in the brain stem, while areas farther up in the forebrain provide the common pathway that gives us the complex and often vivid mental experiences we call dreams. Other researchers suggest that REM sleep aids in information processing, helping people sift through daily experience to organize and store in memory information that is relevant to them. Animal studies provide strong evidence for a relationship between REM sleep and learning. Some studies have revealed that animals increase their REM sleep following learning sessions. Other studies have indicated that when animals are deprived of REM sleep after new learning, their performance of the learned task is impaired the following day. But depriving subjects of NREM sleep had no such effect in the studies. Research has shown that REM sleep serves an information-processing function in humans and is involved in the consolidation of memories after human learning. Researchers found that research participants learning a new perceptual skill showed an improvement in performance, with no additional practice, eight to ten hours later if they had a normal night"s sleep or if the researchers disturbed only their NREM sleep. Performance did not improve, however, in those who were deprived of REM sleep. There is no doubt that REM sleep serves an important function, even if psychologists do not know precisely what that function is. The fact that newborns have such a high percentage of REM sleep has led to the conclusion that REM sleep is necessary for maturation of the brain in infants. Furthermore, when people are deprived of REM sleep as a result of general sleep loss or illness, they will make up for the loss by getting an increased amount of REM sleep after the deprivation. This increase in the percentage of REM sleep to make up for REM deprivation is called a "REM rebound." Because the intensity of REM sleep is increased during a REM rebound, nightmares often occur.

单选题Questions 11～15 For one brief moment in April, Larry Ellison came within a few dollars of being the richest man in the world. The computer tycoon was holding a global conference call on a Wednesday morning, when the value of his company surged. It was the moment he almost overtook Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, as the wealthiest on the planet. For a few seconds, as share of traders marked Microsoft down and Oracle up, Ellison came within US $ 200,000 of Gates. The self-proclaimed "bad boy" of Silicon Valley found himself worth more than US $ 52 billion, up from a mere US $10 billion this time last year. Then Microsoft"s share price, which had plunged in recent weeks, recovered and the moment passed. Once, Ellison, founder of the software company Oracle, would have danced around his desk cursing like a pirate at failing to bring down Gates, a rival he had constantly made fun of in public. But Silicon Valley insiders said he remained calm, and muttered: "One day, one day very, very soon." He knew his moment was close. Unlike Gates, he is not big on charity, preferring to spend his money his way. He has his own private air force, a military-style crew based at San Jose airport near Redwood City, to help him fly his Gulfstream V jet (with two marbled bathrooms), a Marchetti fighter plane imported from Italy, and a handful of other aircraft, including a trainer for his son. He also plans to import a Russian Mig-29 fighter (capable of 1,500 mph). Why does he want one? So that, he joked, he can blast Gates" home near Seattle. Cars are cheap and cheerful by comparison. He has a relatively modest Porsche Boxster, two specially altered Mercedes and a US $ 900,000 silver McLaren. In San Francisco he owns a magnificent house in Pacific Heights, one of Western America"s most expensive stretches of real estate. The house is a technical marvel. When he inserts his key, the opaque glass door turns transparent, revealing a Japanese garden in the middle of the house. For reasons he knows best, Ellison is obsessed with Japanese culture. Though he says he once briefly dated the actress Sharon Stone, Ellison is better known for the number than the fame of his wives. It is said he introduced himself with: "Can I buy you a car?" In one year he gave at least four US $ 50,000 cars to young ladies. While Gates comes from a strong family, Ellison still does not know who his father was. He was born to an unmarried mother and adopted by his Russian uncle and aunt. A brilliant but unpredictable self-promoter, he dropped out of college, drove to California in a battered Thunderbird car and ended up working with computer technicians at a bank. "He always had a champagne lifestyle on beer money," his first wife said. He set up Oracle in 1977 as a super-salesman with 3 programmers, creating software for businesses. It almost collapsed when it promised more than it could deliver, but since then its fortunes have soared. Now it employs 43,000 people and has designed data-processing systems used by Britain"s M15 spy service as well as big western companies. Oracle"s software is more Internet- friendly than Gates" Windows, one factor behind the company"s recent share price rise. Since his company got big, Ellison has promised shareholders that he will spend more time in the office. But can he escape being the thrill-seeker he is at heart? As summer approaches, he may find it hard to resist the lure of his yachts, Sakura, one of the longest in the world, and Sayonara (Japanese for "see you later"), which he races furiously. It is dangerous sport, even for guests. Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch once nearly lost a finger when he grabbed a rope during a race onboard the Sayonara. Ellison joked at least he could "still wrote checks". Regardless of distractions, Ellison will not give up in his battle against Gates. He hates to lose. Ellison declares that any such dominance by one man, like Microsoft in computer industry, is unhealthy. He has obviously forgotten his own plan for a global empire, which he wanted to call the Universal Titanic Octopus Corporation.

单选题Which of the following is closest in meaning to the word "fiasco" in Paragraph 4?

单选题The first person I came across who'd got the measure of e-mall was an American friend who was high up in a big corporation. Some years ago, when this method of communication first seeped into business life from academia, his company in New York and its satellites across the globe were among the first to get it. In the world's great seats of learning, e-mail had for some years allowed researchers to share vital new jokes. And if there was cutting-edge wit to be had, there was no way my friend's corporation would be without it. One evening in New York, he was late for a drink we'd arranged. "Sorry," he said, "I've been away and had to deal with 998 e-mails in my queue." "Wow," I said, "I'm really surprised you made it before midnight." "It doesn't really take that tong," be explained, "if you simply delete them all." True to form, he had developed a strategy before most of us had even heard of e-mail. If any information he was sent was sufficiently vital, his lack of response would ensure the sender rang him up. If the sender wasn't important enough to have his private number, the communication couldn't be sufficiently important. My friend is now even more senior in the same company, so the strategy must work, although these days, I don't tend to send him many e-mails. Almost every week now, there seems to be another report suggesting that we are all being driven crazy by the torment of e-mall. But if this is the case, it's only because we haven't developed the same discrimination in dealing with e-mail as we do with post. Have you ever mistaken an important letter for a piece of unsolicited advertising and thrown it out? Of course you haven't. This is because of the obliging stupidity of 99 per cent of advertisers, who just can't help making their mailshots look like the junk mail that they are. Junk e-mail looks equally unnecessary to read. Why anyone would feel the slightest compulsion to open the sort of thing entitled "SPECIALOFFER@junk.com" I cannot begin to understand. Even viruses, those sneaky messages that contain a bug which can corrupt your whole computer system, come helpfully labelled with packaging that shrieks "danger, do not open". Handling e-mail is an art. Firstly, you junk anything with an exclamation mark or a string of capital letters, or from any address you don't recognise or feel confident about. Secondly, while I can't quite support my American friend’s radical policy, e-mails don't all have to be answered. Because e-mailing is so easy, there's a tendency for correspondence to carry on for ever, but it is permissible to end a strand of discussion by simply not discussing it any longer— or to accept a point of information sent by a colleague without acknowledging it. Thirdly, a reply e-mail doesn't have to be the same length as the original. We all have e-mail buddies who send long, chatty e-mails, which are nice to receive, but who then expect an equally long reply. Tough. The charm of e-mail can lie in the simple, suspended sentence, with total disregard for the formalities of the letter sent by post. You are perfectly within the bounds of politeness in responding to a marathon e-mail with a terse one-liner, like: "How distressing. I'm sure it will clear up./

单选题Right now, Prince Charles is probably wishing he had hit the slopes after all. Britain's Prince of Wales decided last year to begin reducing his carbon footprint--the amount of carbon dioxide created by his activities--by cutting down on his flights abroad, including an annual skiing vacation in Switzerland. Though we should all be in the position to make such sacrifices, Charles didn't win plaudits for his holiday martyrdom. Instead British green groups, seconded by Environment Secretary David Miliband, spanked the Prince for deciding to fly to the U. S. on Jan. 27 to pick up a prestigious environmental award, arguing that the carbon emissions created by his travel canceled out his green cred. It's too easy to mock His Royal Highness; in England it's practically the national sport. But his critics may be onto something. Jets are uniquely polluting, and the carbon they emit at high altitudes appears to have a greater warming effect than the same amount of carbon released on the ground by cars or factories. On an individual level, a single long-haul flight can emit more carbon per passenger than months of SUV driving. Though air travel is responsible for only 1.6% of total greenhouse gas emissions, in many countries it's the fastest-growing single source--and with annual airline passengers worldwide predicted to double to 9 billion by 2025, that growth is unlikely to abate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) put it bluntly last year: "The growth in aviation and the need to address climate change cannot be reconciled. " One of the biggest problems, as the IPCC points out, is that the carbon emitted by air travel currently has "no tech no fix. " As messy a source of pollution as electricity generation and ground transportation are, technologies do exist that could drastically cut carbon from power plants and cars. Not so for planes, the same aircraft models will almost certainly be flying on the same kerosene fuel for decades. Admittedly, the airline industry has improved efficiency over the past 40 years, with technological upgrades more than doubling efficiency. There are tweaks in aircraft operations that could nip carbon emissions even further. Virgin Atlantic airlines tycoon Richard Branson, who pledged $ 3 billion in the fight against climate change, advocates having planes towed on the ground rather than taxiing, which he has said could cut a yet unspecified portion of fuel on long flights. Emissions trading for the air industry could help as well, with airlines given carbon caps and then being required to purchase credits from other industries if they exceed their limits. But there's nothing on the horizon for aircraft with the carbon- cutting potential of hydrogen engines or solar energy. "It's not like having leaky home windows you can fix with double glazing," says Leo Murray, a spokesman for the green group Plane Stupid, which led the criticism of Prince Charles. Nor is there any replacement for long-haul air travel itself. I can take a train from Boston to Washington, but until we can figure out how to travel via fireplace, Harry Potter-style, the only way I'm getting from Tokyo to New York City is in aircraft that may emit more than 5,200 Ibs. (about 2,400 kg) of carbon per passenger, round-trip, according to one estimate. On an individual level, you can try to make your flight carbon neutral by donating to, say, a forestry project that will soak up the greenhouse gases you have created. An increasing number of airlines and travel agents do offer such options. The London-based CarbonNeutral Company reports that requests for carbon offsetting from individual travelers have jumped over the past six months. But the still tiny number of neutralized flights can hardly compensate for the rapid increases in global air travel. So is grounding ourselves the only answer? That seems to be the conclusion of environmentalists in Britain, who also went after Prime Minister Tony Blair for a recent holiday trip to Miami. Though Blair belatedly promised to begin offsetting his leisure travel, he insisted that telling people to fly less was simply impractical--and he's probably right. Some environmentalists suggest that we could learn to live more locally, but good luck keeping them in Brighton after they've seen Beijing--and vice versa. Our best bet for now may be to limit any business and leisure flights that we can and offset the rest. So when you're pondering that luxury Swiss vacation, ask yourself: What would Prince Charles do?

单选题Single mums are better at raising their kids than two parents—at least in the bird world. Mother zebra finches have to work harder and raise fewer chicks on their own, but they also produce more attractive sons who are more likely to get a mate. The finding shows that family conflict is as important an evolutionary driving force as ecological factors such as hunting and food supply. With two parents around, there"s always a conflict of interests, which can have a detrimental effect on the quality of the offspring. In evolutionary terms, the best strategy for any parent in the animal world is to find someone else to care for their offspring, so they can concentrate on breeding again. So it"s normal for parents to try to pass the buck to each other. But Ian Hartley from the University of Lancaster and his team wondered how families solve this conflict, and how the conflict itself affects the offspring. To find out, they measured how much effort zebra finch parents put into raising their babies. They compared single females with pairs, by monitoring the amount of food each parent collected, and removing or adding chicks so that each pair of birds was raising four chicks, and each single mum had two--supposedly the same amount of work. But single mums, they found, put in about 25 percent more effort than females rearing with their mate. To avoid being exploited, mothers with a partner hold back from working too hard if the father is being lazy, and it"s the chicks that pay the price. "The offspring suffer some of the cost of this conflict," says Hartley. The cost does not show in any obvious decrease in size or weight, but in how attractive they are to the opposite sex. When the chicks were mature, the researchers tested the "fitness" of the male offspring by offering females their choice of partner. Those males reared by single mums were chosen more often than those from two-parent families. Sexual conflict has long been thought to affect the quality of care given to offspring, says zoologist Rebecca Kilner at Cambridge University, who works on conflict of parents in birds. "But the experimental evidence is not great. The breakthrough here is showing it empirically." More surprising, says Kilner, is Hartley"s statement that conflict may be a strong influence on the evolution of behaviour, clutch size and even appearance. "People have not really made that link," says Hartley. A female"s reproductive strategy is usually thought to be affected by hunting and food supply. Kilner says conflict of parents should now be taken into account as well.

单选题Questions 1-5 To understand the marketing concept, it is only necessary to understand the difference between marketing and selling. Not too many years ago, most industries concentrated primarily on the efficient production of goods, and then relied on "persuasive salesmanship" to move as much of these goods as possible. Such production and selling focuses on the needs of the seller to produce goods and then convert them into money. Marketing, on the other hand, focuses on the wants of consumers. It begins with first analyzing the preferences and demands of consumers and then producing goods that will satisfy them. This eye- on-the-consumer approach is known as the marketing concept, which simply means that instead of trying to sell whatever is easiest to produce or buy for resale, the makers and dealers first endeavor to find out what the consumer wants to buy and then go about making it available for purchase. This concept does not imply that business is benevolent or that consumer satisfaction is given priority over profit in a company. There are always two sides to every business transaction--the firm and the customer—and each must be satisfied before trade occurs. Successful merchants and producers, however, recognize that the surest route to profit is through understanding and catering to customers. A striking example of the importance of catering to the consumer presented itself in mid-1985, when Coca Cola changed the flavor of its drink. The non-acceptance of the new flavor by a significant portion of the public brought about a prompt restoration of the Classic Coke, which was then marketed alongside the new. King Customer ruled!

单选题WhatisSallydoing?[A]Readingaletter.[B]Washingclothes.[C]Makingaphonecall.