Cyberspace,data superhighway,multimedia,for those who have seen the future,and the linking of computers,televisions and telephones will change our lives for ever.Yet for all the talks of a forthcoming technological utopia,little attention has been given to the implications of these developments for the poor.As for all the new high technology,the West concerns itself with the “how”,while the question of “for whom” is put aside once again.
Economists are only now realizing the full extent to which the communication revolution has affected the world economy.Information technology allows the extension of trade across geographical and industrial boundaries,and transnational corporations take full advantage of it.Terms of trade and exchange,interest rates and money movements are more important than the production of goods.The electronic economy made by information technology allows the haves to increase their control on global markets — with a destructive impact on the havenots.
For them the result is unstable.Developing countries which rely on the production of a small range of goods for export are made to feel like small parts in the international economic machine.As “futures” are traded on computer screens,developing countries simply have less and less control of their destinies.
So what are the options of regaining control？One alternative for developing countries is to buy in the latest computers and telecommunications.Yet this leads to long-term dependency and perhaps permanent constraints on developing countries’ economies.
Communication technology is generally exported from the US,Europe or Japan；the patents,skills and ability remain in the hands of a few industrialized countries.It is also expensive,therefore imported products and services must be bought on credit usually provided by the very countries whose companies stand to gain.
41. From the passage we know that the development of high technology is in the interests of________.
A．the rich countries B．scientific development
C．the local elites D．the world economy
42．It can be inferred from the passage that________.
A．international trade should be expanded
B．the interests of the poor countries have not been given enough consideration
C．the exports of the poor countries should be increased
D．communication technology in developing countries should be modernized
43．Why does the author say that the electronic economy may have a destructive impact on developing countries?
A．Because it enables the developed countries to control the international market.
B．Because it destroys the economic balance of the poor countries.
C．Because it violates the national boundaries of the poor countries.
D．Because it inhibits the industrial growth of developing countries.
44．The development of modern communication technology in developing countries may________.
A．hinder their industrial production
B．cause them to lose control of their trade
C．force them to reduce their share of exports
D．cost them their economic independence
45．The author’s attitude towards the communication revolution is________.
A．positive B．critical
C．indifferent D．tolerant
Runners in a relay race pass a stick in one direction. However, merchants passed silk, gold, fruit, and glass along the Silk Road in more than one direction. They earned their living by traveling the famous Silk Road.
The Silk Road was not a simple trading network. It passed through thousands of cities and towns. It started from eastern China, across Central Asia and the Middle East, and ended in the Mediterranean Sea. It was used from about 200 BC to about 1300 AD, when sea travel offered new routes. It was sometimes called the world’s longest highway.
However, the Silk Road was made up of many routes, not one smooth path. They passed through what are now 18 countries. The routes crossed mountains and deserts and had many dangers of hot sun, deep snow and even battles. Only experienced traders could return safe.
The Silk Road got its name from its most prized product. Silk could be used like money to pay taxes or buy goods. But the traders carried more than just silk. Gold, silver, and glass from Europe were much found in the Middle East and Asia. Horses traded from other areas changed farming practices in China. Indian merchants traded salt and other valuable goods. Chinese merchants traded paper, which produced an immediate effect on the West. Apples traveled from central Asia to Rome. The Chinese had learned to graft (嫁接) different trees together to make new kinds of fruit.
They passed this science on to others, including the Romans. The Romans used grafting to grow the apple. Trading along the Silk Road led to world-wide business 2,000 years before the World Wide Web.
The people along the Silk Road did not share just goods. They also shared their beliefs. The Silk Road provided pathways for learning, diplomacy, and religion. It’s probable that traders along the Silk Road needed ______.
| A．to deal with a lot of difficulties | B．to know the making of products |
| C．to receive certain special training | D．to remember the entire trade route |
The Silk Road became less important because ______.
| A．it was made up of different routes | B．silk trading became less popular |
| C．people needed fewer foreign goods | D．sea travel provided easier routes |
New technologies could travel along the Silk Road because people ______.
| A．shared each other’s beliefs | B．learned from one another |
| C．traded goods along the route | D．earned their living by traveling |
What is the best title for the passage?
| A．The Silk Road: Past and Present | B．The Silk Road: East Meets West |
| C．The Silk Road: Routes Full of Dangers | D．The Silk Road: Pathways for Learning |
If you plan on visiting to Fiji, you are probably looking for some fun things to do. Below are four unusual places.
The Poseidon Resort
The Poseidon resort is an underwater resort that gives visitors a beautiful view of sea life. This resort covers 255 acres. It’s covered and surrounded by a lagoon (咸水湖) that covers 5,000 acres and is about 90 feet under water, giving you a beautiful view of sea life right before your eyes. This resort even has a hotel for those who would prefer to have the unusual experience of sleeping and waking up to the beautiful scenery all around them.
The Sabeto Mud Pool
If you’re looking for something unusual to do, you can’t pass up the mud pool at Sabeto. It is located in a mountain range with a huge group of Geothermal pools full of nice, warm mud. Getting down and into the mud in the pool is believed to have benefits for healthy skin. This is unusual, but adults and especially kids will love it.
Fire Walking
Fire walking in Fiji is believed to have originated on the island of Beau. Fire walking is when you walk on white-hot stones barefoot. To do this, you have to be mentally prepared for it. Trust me; there is a lot of preparation and strict rules that travelers follow in order to do this safely.
The Fiji Museum
The Fiji museum is unusual due to all the amazing artifacts you’ll see dating back 3,000-4,000 years. This museum has a certain attraction that makes it funny—a shoe. It’s been said that a man named Thomas Baker was eaten by the locals several centuries ago and the only thing left was his shoe. This museum is a great idea if you bring the whole family to Fiji.Visitors who have the unusual experience of sleeping at the Poseidon resort can _________.
| A．enjoy the excellent service in the hotel |
| B．open windows to see sea life swimming |
| C．see sea life around them in the room |
| D．only watch videos about sea life |
Which of the following things needs more courage and stricter rules?
| A．Trying fire walking |
| B．Visiting the Poseidon resort |
| C．Getting into the Sabeto Mud Pool |
| D．Visiting the Fiji museum |
The underlined word “artifacts” in Paragraph 5 means__________.
| A．historic things made by man |
| B．things invented not long ago |
| C．things that look very strange |
| D．useful things in people’s daily life |
I really hadn't meant to yell at them. But that grey afternoon saw it just as my son and daughter were making a terrible mess on the floor in the kitchen.
With a tiresome report to write, I felt bothered at my desk. Suddenly, it occurred to me that my kids were at fault. A voice inside me insisted that I do something quickly.
“OK, you two here, but what an awful thing you are attempting!” shouting angrily, I made for them, while it became evident that the boy wanted no part of me. “Get away from us!” he shouted back, there being expression of support from his sister.
All of a sudden, I found the fault in myself. Quickly I shaped my hands into pincers（螃蟹螯;钳子）and crawled towards them, “Crabby（似螃蟹的）Daddy is here. Ha, Ha, Ha, he likes to yell at children, and then eat them!” My son continued to keep me away, but now he was laughing and crying at the same time. My mission to repair the damage caused by my yelling seemed to work well. Still, I regretted not having controlled myself first in a right way that my children could do after.
Need I let them know how badly they were acting by blaming? This is a lesson that serves myself. It only shows just how to get rid of something（ill-feelings, responsibility）by blaming others. It's not my “best self”.
We have to search for our “best self” when with our children. They don't need perfect parents, but they do need parents who are always trying to get better. Here, I'm reminded of the words of a great thinker, “When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook…” Then, in our lifetime, couldn't we always speak to our kids in such a sweet voice since most of us consider them as the most precious in the world? And before we reach this level, what should we do when we come across various difficult cases with our children? The author couldn't help yelling at his kids this time probably because___________.
| A．the weather was so unpleasant | B．a Daddy has his right to do so |
| C．the kids didn't ask him to join them | D．he was tired of his boring work |
Which of the following made the author aware of his fault?
| A．No obvious reason. | B．The children’s reaction. |
| C．His self-control. | D．The mess made by the children. |
According to the passage the author will __________in another similar situation.
| A．play a crab again like this time | B．apologize to kids in a sincere way |
| C．avoid blaming kids in a hurry | D．beat them up about such things |
What will the writer go on to write about in the next paragraph(s)?
| A．How to behave ourselves properly when kids are at fault. |
| B．How to blame our children in a more interesting way. |
| C．How to deal with the terrible mess made by our kids. |
| D．How to persuade children to do what they are told to. |
Picture a typical MBA lecture theatre twenty years ago. In it the majority of students will have conformed to (符合) the standard model of the time: male, middle class and Western. Walk into a class today, however, and you’ll get a completely different impression. For a start, you will now see plenty more women—the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, for example, boasts that 40% of its new enrolment is female. You will also see a wide range of ethnic groups and nationals of practically every country.
It might be tempting, therefore, to think that the old barriers have been broken down and equal opportunity achieved. But, increasingly, this apparent diversity (多样化) is becoming a mask for a new type of conformity. Behind the differences in sex, skin tones and mother tongues, there are common attitudes, expectations and ambitions which risk creating a set of clones among the business leaders of the future.
Diversity, it seems, has not helped to address fundamental weaknesses in business leadership. So what can be done to create more effective managers of the commercial world? According to Valerie Gauthier, associate dean at HEC Paris, the key lies in the process by which MBA programmes recruit (招聘) their students. At the moment candidates are selected on a fairly narrow set of criteria such as prior (以前的) academic and career performance, and analytical and problem solving abilities. This is then coupled to a school’s picture of what a diverse class should look like, with the result that passport, ethnic origin and sex can all become influencing factors. But schools rarely dig down to find out what really makes an applicant succeed, to create a class which also contains diversity of attitude and approach—arguably the only diversity that, in a business context, really matters.
Professor Gauthier believes schools should not just be selecting candidates from traditional sectors such as banking, consultancy and industry. They should also be seeking individuals who have backgrounds in areas such as political science, the creative arts, history or philosophy, which will allow them to put business decisions into a wider context.
Indeed, there does seem to be a demand for the more rounded leaders such diversity might create. A study by Mannaz, a leadership development company, suggests that, while the bully-boy chief executive of old may not have been eradicated (根除) completely, there is a definite shift in emphasis towards less tough styles of management—at least in America and Europe. Perhaps most significant, according to Mannaz, is the increasing interest large companies have in more collaborative (合作的) management models, such as those prevalent (流行的) in Scandinavia, which seek to integrate the hard and soft aspects of leadership and encourage delegated responsibility and accountability.What characterizes the business school student population of today?
| A．Greater diversity. | B．Exceptional diligence. |
| C．Intellectual maturity. | D．Higher ambition. |
What is the author’s concern about current business school education?
| A．It will arouse students’ unrealistic expectations. |
| B．It will produce business leaders of a uniform style. |
| C．It focuses on theory rather than on practical skills. |
| D．It stresses competition rather than cooperation. |
What aspect of diversity does Valerie Gauthier think is most important?
| A．Age and educational background. | B．Attitude and approach to business. |
| C．Social and professional experience. | D．Ethnic origin and gender. |
What does Mannaz say about the current management style?
| A．It is eradicating the tough aspects of management. |
| B．It encourages male and female executives to work side by side. |
| C．It adopts the bully-boy chief executive model. |
| D．It is shifting towards more collaborative models. |
If a diver surfaces too quickly, he may suffer the bends. Nitrogen (氮) dissolved (溶解) in his blood is suddenly liberated by the reduction of pressure. The consequence, if the bubbles (气泡) accumulate in a joint, is sharp pain and a bent body—thus the name. If the bubbles form in his lungs or
his brain, the consequence can be death.
Other air-breathing animals also suffer this decompression (减压) sickness if they surface too fast: whales, for example. And so, long ago, did ichthyosaurs (鱼龙). That these ancient sea animals got the bends can be seen from their bones. If bubbles of nitrogen form inside the bone they can cut off its blood supply. This kills the cells in the bone, and consequently weakens it, sometimes to the point of collapse. Fossil (化石) bones that have caved in on themselves are thus a sign that the animal once had the bends.
Bruce Rothschild of the University of Kansas knew all this when he began a study of ichthyosaur bones to find out how widespread the problem was in the past. What he particularly wanted to investigate was how ichthyosaurs adapted to the problem of decompression over the 150 million years. To this end, he and his colleagues traveled the world’s natural-history museums, looking at hundreds of ichthyosaurs from the Triassic period and from the later Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
When he started, he assumed that signs of the bends would be rarer in younger fossils, reflecting their gradual evolution of measures to deal with decompression. Instead, he was astonished to discover the opposite. More than 15% of Jurassic and Cretaceous ichthyosaurs had suffered the bends before they died, but not a single Triassic specimen (标本) showed evidence of that sort of injury.
If ichthyosaurs did evolve an anti-decompression means, they clearly did so quickly—and, most strangely, they lost it afterwards. But that is not what Dr Rothschild thinks happened. He suspects it was evolution in other animals that caused the change.
Whales that suffer the bends often do so because they have surfaced to escape a predator (捕食动物) such as a large shark. One of the features of Jurassic oceans was an abundance of large sharks and crocodiles, both of which were fond of ichthyosaur lunches. Triassic oceans, by contrast, were mercifully shark- and crocodile-free. In the Triassic, then, ichthyosaurs were top of the food chain. In the Jurassic and Cretaceous, they were prey (猎物) as well as predator—and often had to make a speedy exit as a result.Which of the following is a typical symptom of the bends?
| A．A twisted body. | B．A gradual decrease in blood supply. |
| C．A sudden release of nitrogen in blood. | D．A drop in blood pressure. |
The purpose of Rothschild’s study is to see _______.
| A．how often ichthyosaurs caught the bends |
| B．how ichthyosaurs adapted to decompression |
| C．why ichthyosaurs bent their bodies |
| D．when ichthyosaurs broke their bones |
Rothschild’s finding stated in Paragraph 4 _______.
| A．confirmed his assumption | B．speeded up his research process |
| C．disagreed with his assumption | D．changed his research objectives |
Rothschild might have concluded that ichthyosaurs _______.
| A．failed to evolve an anti-decompression means |
| B．gradually developed measures against the bends |
| C．died out because of large sharks and crocodiles |
| D．evolved an anti-decompression means but soon lost it |