【单选题】One way of describing the solution that high net worth provides to the moral hazard problem is to say that it

In describing basic diesel engine operation，the term ‘event’ refers to ________.

A.the production of high pressure gases

B.the removal of expended combustion gases

C.the admission of air to the cylinder

D.all of the above

A recent global survey of 2 000 high-net-worth individuals found that 60% were not planning on a traditional retirement. Among US participants, 75% expected to continue working in some capacity even after stepping away from full-time jobs. "Many of these people made their wealth by doing something theyre passionate(有激情的)about," says Daniel Egan, head of behavioral finance for Barclays Wealth Americas. "Given the choice, they prefer to continue working." Barclays calls these people "nevertirees."

Unlike many Americans compelled into early retirement by company restrictions, the average nevertiree often has no one forcing his hand. If 106-year-old investor Irving Kahn, head of his own family firm, wants to keep coming to work every day, whos going to stop him? Seventy-eight-year-old Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgs job security is guaranteed in the Constitution.

It may seem that these elderly people are trying to cheat death. In fact, they are. And its working, Howard Friedman, a professor at UC Riverside, found in his research that those who work hardest and are successful in their careers often live the longest lives. "People are generally being given bad advice to slow down, take it easy, stop worrying, and retire to Florida," he says. He described one study participant, still working at the age of 100, who was recently disappointed to see his son retire. "

Were beginning to see a change in how people view retirement," says George Leeson, co-director of the Institute of Population Ageing at Oxford. Where once retirement was seen as a brief reward after a long struggle through some miserable job, it is now akin(近似)to being cast aside. What Leeson terms "the Warren Buffett effect" is becoming more broadly appealing as individuals come to "view retirement as not simply being linked to economic productivity hut also about contribution."

Observers are split on whether this is a wholly good thing. On the one hand, companies and financial firms can benefit from the wisdom of a resilient(坚韧的)chief. On the other, the new generation can find it more difficult to advance—an argument that typically holds little sway to a nevertiree.

What do we learn about the so-called "nevertirees"?

A．They are passionate about making a fortune,

B．They have no choice but to continue working.

C．They love what they do and choose not to retire.

D．They will not retire unless they are compelled to.

阅读材料，回答题。

High Blood Pressure

There is evidence that the usual variety of high blood pressure is，in part，a familial disease．Since families have similar genes as well as similar environment，familial diseases could be due to shared genetic influences，to shared environmental factors，or to both．For some years，the role of one environmental factor commonly shared by families，namely dietary salt，has been studied at Brook—haven National Laboratory．These studies suggest that chronic excess salt ingestion(摄取)can lead to high blood pressure in man and animals．Some individuals，however，and some rats consume large amounts of salt without developing high blood pressure．No matter how strictly all environmental factors were controlled in these experiments，some salt-fed animals never develop hypertension(高血压)whereas a few rapidly developed very severe hypertensions followed by early death．These marked variations were interpreted to result from differences in genetic constitution．

By mating in successive generations only those animals that failed to develop hypertension from salt ingestion，a resistant strain(the R strain)has been evolved in which consumPtion of large quantities of salt fails to influence the blood pressure significantly．In contrast，by mating only animals that quickly develop hypertension from salt，a sensitive strain(the S strain)has also been developed．

The availability of these two strains permits investigations not therefore possible．They provide a plausible laboratory model on which to investigate some clinical aspects of the human developing methods by which genetic susceptibility(敏感性)of human beings to high blood pressure can be defined without waiting for its appearance．

The main idea of this passage is__________． 查看材料

A.Genetic constitution，or hereditary factor is all important factor that may underlie hypertension

B.Excessive use of salt may cause high blood pressure

C.Shared environmental factors may lead to familial disease

D.There are two different kinds of strains in animals which cause their different reactions to excess salt ingestion

First it was metals, now it is the companies that mine them. In May prices for copper, nickel and other metals rose to record levels, although they have since fallen a bit. Now three mining firms are proposing the most expensive merger in the industry's history. The $ 40 billion deal, in which an American company, Phelps Dodge, plans to take over two Canadian ones, Inco and Faleonbridge, would create the world's biggest producer of nickel, the number two in copper, and the fifth-ranked mining firm overall. The records may not stop there:two other mining firms, Xstrata and Teck Cominco, had previously bid for Falconbridge and Inco respectively, and could make further offers.

Soaring commodities prices have left mining firms flush with cash and keen to expand. One Way would be to search for more metal in the ground, instead of on the stockmarket. But organic growth is expensive at the moment; as firms rush to increase their output to take advantage of high prices, every conceivable input, from engineers to mining trucks' huge tyres, is in desperately short supply. Developing new mines is also slow. Mining executives worry that projects that get the go ahead when prices are high will not look so attractive when the next slump comes.

That could be true of the proposed merger too, of course. Phelps Dodge offered a premium of 23% over the price of Inco's shares and 12% over Falconbridge's. Those shares, in turn, have been rising for several years along with the firms' wares--nickel, for the most part, at Inco, and nickel and copper at Falconbridge.

The bosses of the firms insist that the mark-up is justified, for several reasons. For one thing, they reckon they can squeeze savings of $ 900m a year out of the combined entity by 2009, by sharing equipment and personnel among adjacent mines, for example, and pooling their marketing staff. More importantly, they argue that the size and diversity of the new company will make it less vulnerable to mining's painful cycles, and so more attractive to investors.

The biggest and most diversified mining companies, such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, do boast higher share valuations. They produce everything from aluminium to zircon, and so are less susceptible to flutuations in the price of any particular metal. By the same logic, the more mines a firm is running or developing, and the more countries it operates in, the less risk each individual project poses to profits.

The merged trio will certainly have a broader geographical spread, with mines in five continents. But its main projects, in stable places like the United States, Canada and Chile, never seemed that risky in the first place. Furthermore, despite having sidelines in cobalt and molybdenum, the new firm's fortunes will depend chiefly on the price of copper and nickel--two of most volatile metals of late.

Some analysts mutter that Phelps Dodge embarked on the merger chiefly to save itself from being taken over. Investors seem to share their doubts: Phelps Dodge's shares fell by 8% after it announced the deal, despite a simultaneous pledge to spend $ 5 billion on a share buy-back scheme once the merger is concluded.

On the other hand, the price of nickel and copper jumped on the news. Traders seem to have assumed that the companies would have contemplated such an expensive deal only if they thought that metals would remain in short supply for some time. The more money that mining firms spend buying one another, rather than exploring for and developing new mines, the likelier that is.

It can be inferred that some mining firms are keen to merge because

A．they want to monopolize the mining market.

B．they have greatly profited from skyrocketing prices of metals.

C．they are afraid of losing money on the stock market.

D．they want to defeat all the other competitors of mining industry.

A、3000-5000 feet

B、5000-8000 feet

C、8000-13000 feet

【填空题】AV Clip 11: The Truth of VitaminsAV 3+5+6+7+8+9+10+11 The Truth about Vitamins Supplements.mp4 Watch the video clip three times and complete the following passage by filling in each blank with the word group from the video clip. Professor Melhus then went further. He did a series of (1) ________ to work out what level of vitamin A was linked to weaker bones. His results suggested that (2) ________ of even relatively small quantities of vitamin A were having a dramatic effect. What we saw was that (3) ________ above 1.5 milligrams per day, which is approximately twice the recommended daily intake, there was a reduction in (4) ________ about ten per cent, and the risk of hip fracture had doubled. If Professor Melhus was right then the implications were staggering. An intake of 1.5 milligrams per day is a level that can be reached from food alone. And it will be exceeded by taking just (5) ________ of some high strength vitamin A supplements. So, tablets that people take every day to improve their health might actually be slowly, silently, (6) ________. For Professor Melhus, the implication is clear. “Based on our research I think people should continue to eat a healthy, (7) ________. But since supplements containing high levels of vitamin A may have (8) ________, I cannot recommend people to take them routinely.”

The cost of medical care in the United States is very high. The time and money that doctors spend on their medical education are probably one reason for this problem.

A visit to a doctor’s office costs from fifteen to fifty dollars. It is impossible to pay for the medical care they need. Many people in the United States think that doctors are overpaid. Most doctors, however, disagree. They say that they were required to study medicine for a long time. Tuition(学费)for many years of medical education costs a lot of money. Doctors say that it is necessary for most medical students to borrow money from a bank to pay their tuition. Because this money must be repaid to the bank, young doctors need a lot of money for their work. So, they charge people high prices for medical care. Therefore it is possible that the high cost of medical care in America is unnecessary. Because high tuition is one cause of high costs, one way to lower costs would be to have medical schools that are free or have low tuition.

Some people do not have their medical care they need because ______.

A．they are not willing to pay high tuition for the doctors

B．they don't think it necessary to have medical care

C．they don't want to spend much money on it

D．they haven't got enough money to pay for it

【简答题】Read the following passage and complete what are required to Japanese Techniques Come to America In a total of six states in the middle of America, 15,000 assembly-line workers are putting Japanese cars together. These autoworkers are assembling Hondas in Ohio, Toyotas in Kentucky, Mazdas in Michigan, and Nissans in Tennessee. Mitsubishi and Chrysler are jointly making cars in Illinios, and Subaru and Isuzu have set up shops in Indiana. The Japanese have brought more than their technology to their U.S. auto plants——they have also brought their own way of doing things. Using Japanese management techniques, managers at these plants have motivated American workers to produce cars of the same high quality as those made in Japan. There is a definite Japanese philosophy of all-for-one and one-for- all running through the day-to-day operations of these plants. For example, there are no narrow job classifications: No one is a welder or a painter. Instead, a visitor finds” technicians” at Nissan, “associates” at Honda, and “team members” at Mazda and Toyota. Employees at these manufacturing plants work in small, highly-coordianted groups. Every worker on an assembly line is responsible for his or her particular job, for inspecting the overall quality of the product at hand, and for improving the production process. Management tries to make all workers feel equally important. Assembly-line workers actively participate in decisions on scheduling overtime and rotating jobs. The Japanese Managers spend a great amount of time and energy building morale of workers and trying to ensure company harmony. Toyata encourages its “personal touch program”, an effort to promote after-hours socializing between Japanese and American workers. All the cheerleading that goes on in these plants must work very well: Nissan has the best attendance record in the U.S. auto industry, and it does not use time clocks. Team participation and strong interpersonal skills are definite requirements for workers in Japanese companies. Workers are rewarded for the impact they have on their “job team”, and not for any personal performance. Many autoworkers love the Japanese system; others say it is too stressful. 1. Highlight the main ideas within each paragraph. 2. Write one complete sentence, in your own words, that presents the information shown in each paragraph. 3. Paraphrase the author’s thesis. Notes: All are adopted from Fang, F. (2011). Graded English Reading Skills. Hefei: University of Science and Technology of China.

About a century ago, the Swedish physical scientist Arrhenius proposed a low of classical chemistry that relates chemical reaction rate to temperature. According to his equation, chemical reactions are increasingly unlikely to occur as temperature approaches absolute zero, and at absolute zero, reactions stop. However, recent experiment evidence reveals that although the Arrhenius equation is generally accurate in describing the kind of chemical reaction that occurs at relatively high temperature, at temperatures closer to zero a quantum-mechanical effect known as tunneling comes into play; this effect accounts for chemical reactions that are forbidden by the principles of classical chemistry. Specifically, entire molecules can tunnel through the barriers of repulsive forces from other molecules and chemically react even though these molecules do not have sufficient energy, according to classical chemistry, to overcome the repulsive barrier.

The rate of any chemical reaction, regardless of the temperature at which it takes place, usually depends on a very important characteristic known as its activation energy. Any molecule can be imagined to reside at the bottom of a so-called potential well of energy. Some chemical reaction corresponds to the transition of a molecule from the bottom of one potential well to the bottom of another. In classical chemistry, such a transition can be accomplished only by going over the potential barrier between the well, the height of which remain constant and is called the activation energy of the reaction. In tunneling, the reacting molecules tunnel from the bottom of one to the bottom of another well without having to rise over the harrier between the two wells. Recently researchers have developed the concept of tunneling temperature: the temperature below which tunneling transitions greatly outnumber Arrhenius transitions, and classical mechanics gives way to its quantum counterpart.

This tunneling phenomenon at very low temperatures suggested my hypothesis about a cold prehistory of life: formation of rather complex organic molecules in the deep cold of outer space, where temperatures usually reach only a few degrees Kelvin. Cosmic rays might trigger the synthesis of simple molecules, such as interstellar formaldehyde, in dark clouds of interstellar dust. Afterward complex organic molecules would be formed, slowly hut surely, by means of tunneling. After I offered my hypothesis, Hoyle and Wickramashinghe argued that molecules of interstellar formaldehyde have indeed evolved into stable polysaccharides such as cellulose and starch. Their conclusions, although strongly disputed, have generated excitement among investigators such as myself who are proposing that the galactic clouds are the places where the prebiological evolution of compounds necessary to life occurred.

The author is mainly concerned with ______.

A．describing how the principles of classical chemistry were developed

B．initiating a debate about the kinds of chemical reaction required for the development of life

C．explaining how current research in chemistry may be related to broader biological concerns

D．clarifying inherent ambiguities in the laws of classical chemistry

Since the dawn of human ingenuity, people have devised ever more cunning tools to cope with work that is dangerous, boring, burdensome, or just plain nasty. That compulsion has resulted in robotics-the science of conferring various human capabilities on machines. And if scientists have yet to create the mechanical version of science fiction, they have begun to come close.

As a result, the modern world is increasingly populated by intelligent gizmos whose presence we barely notice but whose universal existence has removed much human labor. Our factories hum to the rhythm of' robot assembly arms. Our banking is done at automated teller terminals that thank us with mechanical politeness for the transaction. Our subway trains are controlled by tireless robot-drivers. And thanks to the continual miniaturization of electronics and micro-mechanics, there are already robot systems that can perform. some kinds of brain and bone surgery with submillimeter accuracy-far greater precision than highly skilled physicians can achieve with their hands alone.

But if robots are to reach the next stage of laborsaving utility, they will have to operate with less human supervision and be able to make at least a few decisions for themselves-goals that pose a real challenge. "While we know how to tell a robot to handle a specific error", says Dave Lavery, manager of a robotics program at NASA, "We can't yet give a robot enough common sense to reliably interact with a dynamic world".

Indeed the quest for tree artificial intelligence has produced very mixed results. Despite a spell of initial optimism in the 1960s and 1970s when it appeared that transistor circuits and microprocessors might be able to copy the action of the human brain by the year 2010, researchers lately have begun to extend that forecast by decades if not centuries.

What they found, in attempting to model thought, is that the human brain's roughly one hundred billion nerve cells are much more talented-and human perception far more complicated-than previously imagined. They have built robots that can recognize the error of a machine panel by a fraction of a millimeter in a controlled factory environment. But the human mind can glimpse a rapidly changing scene and immediately disregard the 98 percent that is irrelevant, instantaneously focusing on the monkey at the side of a winding forest road or the single suspicious face in a big crowd. The most advanced computer systems on Earth can't approach that kind of ability, and neuroscientists still don't know quite how we do it.

Human ingenuity was initially demonstrated in ______.

A．the use of machines to produce science fiction

B．the wide use of machines in manufacturing industry

C．the invention of tools for difficult and dangerous work

D．the elite's cunning tackling of dangerous and boring work