Part Ⅰ Reading ComprehensionDirections: There are 4 reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C, and D. You should decide on the best choice and mark your answer on the ANSWER SHEET by blackening the corresponding letter in the brackets.
Today, a high-level finance manager is just as likely to be a casual-looking 21-year-old as a balding executive. They have all either started their own companies or head a division within an existing firm. Most are under 30.
Many of them share a tendency to think, speak and act fast. A detailed psychological study carried out recently on young business start-uppers aged over 25 revealed some common characteristics.
The head psychologist at the University of Northumbria, Dr. Martyn Dyer-Smith, says "We found that they are opportunists. They have that entrepreneurial ability to take whatever is in front of them and turn it to their advantage. Any fool can make US $ 2 if they are in the right place at the right time, what is much harder is to actually plan their business. Originally I had a hypothesis that they planned a long time ahead, but I was wrong. What came across was a surprisingly short planning time. They took the opportunities as and when they came up."
What cannot be underestimated, though, is self-confidence.
"There is an amazing, almost abnormal, belief in themselves and (they) go very much on intuition." Says Dyer-Smith.
While there is no typical pattern to what puts someone in the fast lane, there are some common threads: living up to the expectations of parents, channeling excessive amounts of energy into business, or finding a way to overcome personal barriers such as dyslexia (a reading disability) or learning difficulties, for example.
The biggest surprise was the lack of young women. This was particularly unexpected, given the recent publicity about how girls are performing better than boys at school and becoming more confident and ambitious.
But young women are opting for more secure careers rather than gambling with their future. With only a handful of female role models, some girls are not even considering being their own boss, let alone working on a concept fresh out of school, according to Dr Susan Vinnicombe, director of the center for the Development of Women Business Leader. "Women are going more into the corporate structure and doing well there. But perhaps the reason that they are not doing business for themselves at an earlier age is because women's attitudes are different. They perceive risk in a different way to men, who are not worried about borrowing huge amounts of money if it's going to help their business in the long term. Women are more cautious and more hesitant ," she says.
Vinnicombe sees the lack of female entrepreneurs as part of a larger problem about women and the IT industry. Given that the computer world is one of the key areas for growth, where youth is an asset, it is "remarkable" that so many women are missing out on it.
"The number of women in IT has actually dropped in the past 10 years. There is a real problem with attracting them to the IT industry, as girls don't seem to want to do it at university. It's become such a worrying issue that I know the government is looking into ways to attract them." Once upon a time, innovation at Procter & Gamble flowed one way: from the United States outward. While the large Cincinnati-based corporation was no stranger to foreign markets, it usually sold them products that were already familiar to most Americans. Many Japanese families, for instance, swaddle their babies in Pampers diapers, and lots of Venezuelans brush their teeth with Crest. And of course (company executive assumed) American at home wanted these same familiar, red-white and blue brands. We might buy foreign-made cars, or chocolates, or cameras but household cleaners and detergents?
Recently, however, P&G broke with this long-standing tradition. Ariel, a P&G laundry detergent, was born overseas, and is a familiar sight on store shelves in Europe and Latin America. Now bilingual packages of Ariel Ultra, a super-concentrated cleaner, are appearing on supermarket shelves in Los Angeles.
Ariel's appearance in the United States reflects demographic changes making Hispanics the nation's fastest-growing ethnic group. Ariel is a hit with this population. In fact, many Mexican immigrants living in Southern California have been "importing" Ariel from Tijuana, Mexico. "Hispanics knew this product and wanted it," says P&G spokeswoman Marie Salvado. "We realized that we couldn't convince them to buy (our) other laundry detergents." P&G hopes that non-Hispanic consumers will give Ariel a try too.
Ariel's already strong presence in Europe may provide a springboard for the company to expand into other markets as well. Recently P&G bought Rakona, Czechoslovakia's top detergent maker. Ariel, currently a top seller in Germany, is likely to be one of the first new brands to appear in Czech supermarkets. And Ariel is not the only foreign idea that the company hopes to transplant back to its home territory. Chinch, an all-purpose spray cleaner similar to popular European products, is currently being test-marketed in California and Arizona. Traditionally Americans have used separate cleaners for different types of surfaces, but market research shows that American preferences are becoming more like those in other countries.
Insiders note that this new reverse flow of innovation reflects more sweeping changes at Procter & Gamble. The firm has hired many new Japanese, German, and Mexican managers who view P&G's business not as a one-way flow of American ideas, but a two-way exchange with other markets. Says Bonita Austin of the investment firm Wertheim-Schroeder, "When you met with P&G's top managers years ago, you wouldn't have seen a single foreign face." Today "they could even be in the majority."
As Procter & Gamble has found, the United States is no longer an isolated market. Americans are more open than ever before to buying foreign-made products and to selling U. S.-made products overseas. The climate of Earth is changing. Climatologists are confident that over the past century, the global average surface temperature has increased by about half a degree Celsius. This warming is thought to be at least partly the result of human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of forests for agriculture. As the global population grows and national economies expand, the global average temperature is expected to continue increasing by an additional 1.0 to 3.5℃ by the year 2100.
Climate change is one of the most important environmental issues facing humankind. Understanding the potential impacts of climate change for natural ecosystems is essential if we are going to manage our environment to minimize the negative consequences of climate change and maximize the opportunities that it may offer. Because natural ecosystems are complex, nonlinear systems, it follows that their responses to climate change are likely to be complex. Climate change may affect natural ecosystems in a variety of ways. In the short term, climate change can alter the mix of plant species in land ecosystems such as grasslands. In the long term, climate change has the potential to dramatically alter the geographic distribution of major vegetation types--savannas, forests, and tundra. Climate change can also potentially alter global ecosystem processes, including the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. Moreover, changes in these ecosystem processes can affect and be affected by changes in the plant species of the ecosystem and vegetation type. All of the climate change-induced alterations of natural ecosystems affect the services that these ecosystems provide to humans.
The global average surface temperature increase of half a degree Celsius observed over the past century has been in part due to differential changes in daily maximum and minimum temperatures, resulting in a narrowing of the diurnal temperature range. Decreases in the diurnal temperature range were first identified in the United States, where large-area trends showed that maximum temperatures have remained constant or increased only slightly, whereas minimum temperature have increased at a faster rate. In this issue, Alward et al. report on the different sensitivities of rangeland plants to minimum temperatures increases. The most damning thing that can be said about the world's hest-endowed and richest country is that it is not only not the leader in health status, but that it is so low in the ranks of the nations. The United States ranks 18th among nations of the world in male life expectancy at birth, 9th in female life expectancy at birth, and 12th in infant mortality. More importantly, huge variations are evident in health status in the United States from one place to the next and from one group to the next.
The forces that affect health can be aggregated into four groupings that lends to analysis of all health problems. Clearly the largest aggregate of forces resides in the person's environment. His own behavior, in part derived from his experiences with his environment, is the next greatest force affecting his health. Medical care services, treated as separate from other environmental factors because of the special interest we have in them, make a modest contribution to health status. Finally the contributions of heredity to health are difficult to judge. We are templated at conception as to our basic weaknesses and strengths, but many hereditary attributes never become manifest because of environmental and behavioral forces which act before the genetic forces come to maturity, and other hereditary attributes are increasingly being palliated by medical care.
No other country spends what we do per capita for medical care. The care available is among the best technically, even if used too lavishly and thus dangerously, but none of the countries which stand above us in health status have such a high proportion of medically disenfranchised persons. Given the evidence that medical care is not that valuable and access to care not that bad, it seems most unlikely that our bad showing is caused by the significant proportion who are poorly served. Other hypotheses have greater explanatory power: excessive poverty, both actual and relative, and excessive affluence.
Excessive poverty is probably more prevalent in the U.S. than in any of the countries that have a better infant mortality rate and female life expectancy at birth. This is probably true also for all but four or five of the countries with a longer male life expectancy. In the notably poor countries that exceed us in male survival, difficult living conditions are a more accepted way of life and in several of them, a good basic diet, basic medical care and basic education, and lifelong employment opportunities are an everyday fact of life. In the U. S. a national unemployment level of 10 percent may be 40 percent in the ghetto(黑人居住地) while less than 4 percent elsewhere. The countries that have surpassed us in health do not have such severe or entrenched problems. Nor are such a high proportion of their people involved in them.
Excessive affluence is not so obvious a cause of ill health, but, at least until recently, few other nations could afford such unhealthful ways of living. Excessive intake of animal protein and fats, dangerous imbibing of alcohol and use of tobacco and drugs (prescribed and proscribed), and dangerous recreational sports and driving habits are all possible only because of affluence. Our heritage, desires, opportunities, and our machismo, combined with the relatively low cost of bad foods and speedy vehicles, make us particularly vulnerable to our affluence. And those who are not affluent try harder. Our unacceptable health status, then, will not be improved appreciably by expanded medical resources nor by their redistribution so much as by a general attempt to improve the quality of life for all. Part Ⅱ VocabularyDirections: There are 30 incomplete sentences in this part. For each sentence there are four choices marked A, B, C, and D. Choose the ONE that best completes the sentence and then mark your answer on the ANSWER SHEET by blackening the corresponding letter in the brackets.
Part Ⅲ ClozeDirections: For each numbered blank in the following passage, fill in a suitable word in each blank on the ANSWER SHEET.
When Donald arrived for his first group-therapy session he was in a wheelchair, suffering from malignant melanoma and severely depressed. But after he spent six months sharing stories and good times with other cancer 1 and learning relaxation techniques, his mood had improves considerably and 2 had his condition. 3 his attitude brightened, an important change took 4 inside his body: an increase in the activity of his "natural killer cells," a crucial link in the immune 5 . By year's end, though he still had cancer, Donald was able to dance for his group.
6 role, if any, does emotions play in 7 or curing illness? The question is older 8 western medicine, but it has been given new importance by modern science's discovery of innovative 9 to measure the mind's impact 10 the body's health. Scientists are studying whether, and to what 11 , disease can be affected by the use of 12 mind-body techniques as meditation, yoga, group therapy, guided imagery (visualizing the desired effect) 13 relaxation. There is little question that we can alter the course of disease 14 manipulating psychological factors. 15 to make this knowledge useful to physicians, we need to understand the mechanisms. When researchers can pin 16 the appropriate clinical uses for mind-body therapies, the result will be a revolution in medical 17 .
For many patients, the 18 has already begun. Increasingly, people are using mind-body therapies on their own, even 19 seeking conventional medical treatment. Stories of seemingly miraculous recoveries may grab the public's attention but the real work is being 20 quietly and out of sight. In laboratories around the world, medical researchers are exploring the mind-body connection, separating myth from reality, intuition from fact, belief from science. Part Ⅳ English-Chinese TranslationDirections: Read the following passage carefully and then translate the underlined sentences into Chinese.
Many a myth has grown up around the brain's asymmetry(不对称现象). 71. The left cerebral hemisphere is supposed to be the coldly logical, verbal and dominant half of the brain, while the right developed a reputation as the imaginative side, emotional, spatially aware but suppressed. Two personalities in one head. Yin and Yang, hero and villain.
To most neuroscientists, of course, these notions are seen as simplistic at best and nonsense at worst. So there was general satisfaction when a couple of years ago, a simple brain scanner test appeared to reveal the true story about one of neurology's greatest puzzles: Exactly what is the difference between the two sides of the human brain? Some clinical neurologists had been pursuing the idea that the difference between the two hemispheres lay in their style of working.
The left-brain, they reckoned, focused on detail. This would make it the natural home for all those mental skills that need us to act in a series of discrete steps or fix on a particular fragment of what we perceive--skills such as recognizing a friend's face in a crowd or "lining up" words to make a sentence.
By contrast, the right brain concentrated on the broad, background picture. The researchers believed it had a panoramic focus that made it good at seeing general connections; this hemisphere was best able to represent metaphorical aspects of speech.
For example, in a test in which split-brain patients had to match a series of household objects, the left brain would match by function while the right would match by appearance. So, when seeing a cake on a plate, the left brain would connect to a picture of a fork and spoon while the right brain would select a picture of a broad-brimmed hat. 72. This evidence appeared to support the idea of a highly modular brain in which, for example, thinking in logical categories was a strictly left hemisphere function while mental imagery and spatial awareness were handled on the right.
But this picture changed dramatically as soon as brain-scanning experiments began to show that both sides of the brain played an active role in such processes. 73. Rather it seemed to be the processing styles that distinguished the two halves--under the scanner, language turned out to be represented on both sides of the brain in matching areas of the cortex (皮质). Areas on the left dealt with the core aspects of speech such as grammar and word production while aspects such as intonation and emphasis lit up the right side. In the same way, the right brain proved to be good at working with a general sense of space, while equivalent areas in the left-brain fired when someone thought about objects as particular locations.1.
大脑的左半球被认为是冷静的、掌管逻辑和语言、起支配作用的半球,而大脑的右半球则掌管想象力,使人情绪容易波动,具有空间意识但处于压抑状态。大脑内部兼有阴与阳、英雄与恶棍的两种特征。
2.
这一证据似乎证实了人们对高度组件化的大脑的看法。例如,在大脑中,左半球严格地按照逻辑思考问题,而右半球则掌管意象和空间意识。
3.
似乎是处理方式区分了大脑的两个半球——在扫描器底下观察,语言最终呈现在大脑两边皮质相应的区域。左边的区域处理像语法和构词这些核心的语言问题,而像语调和重音这两个方面则激活了大脑右侧。
Part Ⅴ Chinese-English TranslationDirections: Translate the following paragraph into English and write your translation on the ANSWER SHEET.
1. 城市一直在破坏它们的周围环境,并常常为之付出代价。科学家发现,一座老城在泥土下掩埋了千百年就是因为砍树过多而被洪水淹没的。此外,城市会给市民带来许多问题。据估计,到2050年时,城镇居民的数量将在人类历史上第一次超过农村人数。随后30年内,城市居民人数将达到农村人口的两倍。人类的未来很大程度上将由城市的状况来决定,下几代人的生活质量和解决国家内部及国家之间冲突的机会将取决于各国政府是否能找到办法来控制城市的过快发展。
Cities have been destroying the environment around them and have paid a lot for it. Scientists discover that an old city bas been buried under the ground for thousands of years just because it was flooded by deforestation. In addition, a city will bring many problems to citizens. It is estimated that by 2050, the number of people in towns will have exceeded the number of people in rural areas for the first time in human history. Humamkind's future will depend largely on the conditions of cities. The living quality of the next few generations and the opportunities to solve the domestic and international conflicts will depend on whether the government of every nation can find solutions to controlling the excessively rapid development of cities.
Part Ⅵ WritingDirections: In this part, you are required to write a composition entitled Holiday Economy in no less than 200 words. Your composition should be based on the following outline:
1. 1. The aim of "Holiday Economy" and its positive effects.
2. Problems derived from "Holiday Economy".
3. My suggestions.
Holiday Economy
Holiday economy has been existent for some years since in 1999 the Central Government decided to have long holidays for the National Day and the Labor Day. Obviously, the economic benefits caused by long holidays has brought about the apperance of holiday economy in China, especially in those holiday and seaside resort areas. Undoubtedly, the aim of holiday economy is to stimulate and promote the development of China's macroeconomy. In fact, holiday economy has succeeded in adjusting and promoting China's macroeconomy.
Holiday economy has offered a huge commercial opportunity to service industries such as restaurants, hotels, housekeeping, traffic and telecommunication. For example, during the long holidays, people have more time than usual, they can travel, go shopping downtown, eat delicious food in restauramts. That's good for their service. But some shops and restaurants pay less attention than usual to the quality of their service. As a result, consumers are not satisfied with their service.
The following are my suggestions on how to develop holiday economy. During the long holidays, all the departments should cooperate with each other and do their service work well. Second, service depantments should improve the quality of their service. Compared with macroeconomy, holiday economy is microeconomy. Depending merely on holiday economy is not enough, so we must develop other forms of economy than holiday economy.