根据下列文章,回答36~40题。 It never rains but it pours. Just ..

第1题

It never rains but it pours. Just as bosses and boards have finally sorted out their worst accounting and compliance troubles, and improved their feeble corporation governance, a new problem threatens to earn them—especially in American—the sort of nasty headlines that inevitably lead to heads rolling in the executive suite: data insecurity. Left, until now, to odd, low-level IT staff to put right, and seen as a concern only of data-rich industries such as banking, telecoms and air travel, information protection is now high on the boss's agenda in businesses of every variety.

Several massive leakages of customer and employee data this year—from organizations as diverse as Time Warner, the American defense contractor Science Applications International Corp and even the University of California, Berkeley—have left managers hurriedly peering into their intricate IT systems and business processes in search of potential vulnerabilities.

"Data is becoming an asset which needs to be guarded as much as ally other asset", says Haim Mendelson of Stanford University's business school. "The ability to guard customer data is the key to market value, which the board is responsible for on behalf of shareholders". Indeed, just as there is the concept of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), perhaps it is time for GASP. Generally Accepted Security Practices, suggested Eli Norm of New York's Columbia Business School. "Setting the proper investment level for security, redundancy, and recovery is a management issue, not a technical one". He says.

The mystery is that this should come as a surprise to any boss. Surely it should be obvious to the dimmest executive that trust, that most valuable of economic assets, is easily destroyed and hugely expensive to restore—and that few things are more likely to destroy trust than a company letting sensitive personal data get into the wrong hands.

The current state of affairs may have been encouraged—though not justified—by the lack of legal penalty (in America, but not Europe) for data leakage. Until California recently passed a law, American firms did not have to tell anyone, even the victim, when data went astray. That may change fast: lots of proposed data-security legislation is now doing the rounds in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, the theft of information about some 40 million credit-card accounts in America, disclosed on June 17th, overshadowed a hugely important decision a day earlier by America's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that puts corporate America on notice that regulators will act if firms fall to provide adequate data security.

The statement "It never rains but it pours" is used to introduce ______.

A．the fierce business competition

B．the feeble boss-board relations

C．the threat from news reports

D．the severity of data leakage

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第2题

请选择正确的词语填空： Tu sais pourtant, toi, ______ le sous-directeur.

A、faire

B、dire

C、mettre

D、prendre

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第3题

What do we call the grey things in the sky that we see on a rainy day ?

A、puddles

B、sun

C、rain

D、clouds

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第4题

Every second in the United States alone, more than 250 animals are slaughtered for food, adding up to more than 8 billion animals each year. Reducing the amount of meat in one’s diet is nutritionally, environmentally, and ethically beneficial.

People who eat meat usually have weaker immune systems compared to those of vegetarians. Meat has been directly linked to diabetes, obesity, arthritis, and many other illnesses. Furthermore, meat-eaters are at a higher risk for diseases, including cancer, and they are more likely to die from these diseases. Critics say that a meatless diet does not provide enough nutrients, especially protein and iron. Actually, according to A Teen’s Guide to Going Vegetarian, by Judy Krizmanic, protein is found in almost every food, and iron appears in many vegetables. Getting enough nutrients in a meat-reduced diet should not be difficult. A 1988 study found that some of the highest pesticide residues appear in meat and eggs. Diets including more fruits and vegetables will only make people healthier.

Some skeptics believe that there will be a shortage of food if animals are not eaten. In fact, the opposite is true. More than 80% of the corn and 95% of the oats grown in the US are fed to livestock. The world’s cattle alone consume enough food to equal the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people, more than the entire human population. One half of the water used in the Unites States also goes to livestock; 2.50 gallons of water produces only 1 pound of beef. If people eat less meat and more plants, the amount of available food will increase.

Many people become vegetarians because they feel that eating animals is unethical. 90% of these animals are raised in confinement. Chickens and other birds have only about half. a square foot of space each, and since they are raised so close together, a hot blade is used to cut off their beaks to prevent them from pecking each other to death. Likewise, pigs that are repressed will bite each other’s tails, so both their teeth and tails are removed as soon as they are born.

Eating animals is hazardous in numerous ways. Even a slight reduction in meat intake is better than nothing at all. Consuming less meat is beneficial to the health of animals, the health of people, and to the health of the world.

Which of the following is true according to A Teen’s Guide to Going Vegetarian?

A．A diet without meat cannot supply enough protein.

B．Nearly all the food we eat contains protein.

C．It’s difficult to get enough nutrients in a meatless diet.

D．Some of the highest pesticide residues appear in meat.

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第5题

The dot-com collapse may have been a disaster for Wall Street, but here in Silicon Valley, it was a blessing. It was the welcome end to an abnormal condition that very nearly destroyed the area in an overabundance of success. You see, the secret to the Valley's astounding multiple-decade boom is failure. Failure is what fuels and renews this place. Failure is the foundation for innovation.

The valley's business ecology depends on failure the same way the tree-covered hills around us depend on fire—it wipes out the old growth and creates space for new life. The valley has always been in danger of drowning in the unwelcome waste products of success—too many people, too expensive houses, too much traffic, too little office space and too much money chasing too few startups. Failure is the safety valve, the destructive renewing force that frees up people, ideas and capital and recombines them, creating new revolutions.

Consider how the Internet revolution came to be. After half a decade of start-up struggles, for example, hundreds of millions of Hollywood dollars were going up in smoke. It all seemed like a terrible waste, but no one noticed that the collapse left one very important byproduct, a community of laid-off C-H programmers who were now expert in multimedia design, and out on the street looking for the next big thing.

These media geeks were the pioneer of the dot-com revolution. They were the Web's business pioneers, applying their newfound media sensibilities to create one little company after another. Most of these start-ups failed, but even in failure they advanced the new medium of cyberspace. A few geeks, like Silicon Graphics founder Jim Clark, succeeded and utterly changed our lives. In 1994 Clark was unemployed after leaving the company be founded, doggedly trying to develop a new interactive-TV concept. He approached Marc Andreessen, the co-developer of Mosaic, the first widely used Internet browser, in hope of persuading Andreessen to help him design his new system. Instead, Andreessen opened Clark's eyes to the Web's potential. Clark promptly tossed his TV plans in the trash, and the two co-founded Netscape, the cornerstone of the consumer Web revolution.

Like the interactive-TV refugees and generations of innovators before them, the dot comers are already hatching new companies. Many are revisiting good ideas executed badly in the '90s, while others are striking out into entirely new spaces. This happy chaos is certain to mature into a new order likely to upset an establishment, as it delivers life-changing wonders to the rest of us. But this is just the start, for revolutions give birth to revolutions. So let's hope for more of Silicon Valley's successful failures.

What is implied in the first sentence?

A．The Silicon Valley blamed its failure on the success of Wall Street.

B．The Silicon Valley is also noted for its complex ecological web.

C．The Silicon Valley takes a vain pride in its overabundant successes.

D．The Silicon Valley would benefit from the collapse in certain ways.

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第6题

What underlies the courts rulings seems to be that _____.A.the courts have been bribed hea

What underlies the courts rulings seems to be that _____.

A．the courts have been bribed heavily by the rich employers.

B．the courts think that the disabled should not go to work.

C．the courts underestimate discrimination against the disabled.

D．the courts are too busy with other lawsuits to care enough.

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第7题

Text 4 It is said that in England death is pressing, in Canada inevitable and in California optional Small wonder. Americans' life expectancy has nearly doubled over the past century. Failing hips can be replaced, clinical depression controlled, cataracts removed in a 30-minuts surgical procedure. Such advances offer the aging population a quality of life that was unimaginable when I entered medicine 50 years ago. But not even a great health-care system can cure death-and our failure to confront that reality now threatens this greatness of ours. Death is normal; we are genetically programmed to disintegrate and perish, even under ideal conditions. We all understand that at some level, yet as medical consumers we treat death as a problem to be solved. Shielded by third-party payers from the cost of our care, we demand everything that can possibly be done for us, even if it's useless. The most obvious example is late-stage cancer care. Physicians-frustrated by their inability to cure the disease and fearing loss of hope in the patient-too often offer aggressive treatment far beyond what is scientifically justified.

In1950, the U.S. spent .7 billion on health care. In 2002, the cost will be billion. Anyone can see this trend is unsustainable. Yet few seem willing to try to reverse it. Some scholars conclude that a government with finite resources should simply stop paying for medical care that sustains life beyond a certain age-----say 83 or so. Former Colorado governor Richard Lamm has been quoted as saying that the old and infirm“have a duty todie and get out of the way”,so that younger, healthier people can realize their potential.

I would not go that far. Energetic people now routinely work through their 60s and beyond, and remain dazzlingly productive. At 78,Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone jokingly claims to be 53.Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is in her 70s,and former surgeon general C.Everett Koop chairs an Internet start-up in his 80s.These leaders are living proof that prevention works and that we can manage the health problems that come naturally with age. As a mere 68-year-old,I wish to age as productively as they have.

Yet there are limits to what a society can spend in this pursuit. Ask a physician, I know the most costly and dramatic measures may be ineffective and painful. I also know that people in Japan and Sweden, countries that spend far less on medical care, have achieved longer, healthier lives than we have. As a nation, we may be overfunding the quest for unlikely cures while underfunding research on humbler therapies that could improve people's lives.

第56题：What is implied in the first sentence?

A. Americans are better prepared for death than other people.

B. Americans enjoy a higher life quality than ever before.

C. Americans are over-confident of their medical technology.

D. Americans take a vain pride in their long life expectancy.

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根据下列文章，回答36～40题。 It never rains but it pours. Just as bosses andboards have fi