The author suggests that if the observers of Japan were correct, which of the following would be the case？

A. The equipment used in Japanese automobile plants would be different from the equipment used in United States plants.
B. Japanese workers would be trained to do several different production jobs.
Culture would not have an influence on the productivity levels of workers.
D. The production levels of Japanese-run plants located in the United States would be equal to those of plants run by United States companies.

【C13】

A. permittance
B. allowance
C. endurance
D. tolerance

Its often hard to see your mistakes as youre making them. When it comes to living arrangements,a humdinger is being made in this country right now and few have noticed it yet. "Yikes! The kids are moving back in! "Thus goes the mantra of the baby boom generation,circa 2007. Analysts estimate that some 18 minion adults between the ages of 20 and 34 live with their parents. Thats roughly a third of that age group. But letting the kids move back in is not the societal error were talking about. Instead,the big mistake is the loudly voiced chagrin of the boomers. Most mistakenly decry the notion of the boomerang generation. In order to fully appreciate the depth of the error being made here,we all need to step back a bit and look at the bigger picture. This epidemic of kids moving back home is first, not "unprecedented," and second,its not a bad thing. The precedent for this trend can be found among the other 6.2 billion non-Americans on the planet, many of whom happily live with their adult children,often in three-generation households. Then theres the growing number of non-Anglo Americans,including many recent immigrants,who see no problem in having adult kids contribute to the household. Finally, the agrarian history of this country before World War II allowed kids to live and work around the farm well into adulthood. Adult kids moving back home is merely the most noticeable symptom of a larger,fundamental transformation of American society. We are nationally beginning to recognize the costs of the independence the so—called greatest generation foisted on us. We cant blame them. They did have to grow up fast. Kids in their generation went off to World War II and grew up on the bloody beaches of distant lands. After the war,the survivors had factories to build and the wealth to buy their white—picket—fence dream out West. They designed a social and fiscal system that has served their retirement years very well. But their historically unique retirement system mistakenly celebrated independence and ignored the natural state of human beings—that is,interdependence. Moreover,their system breaks down with the onslaught of their kids retirement. We can already see the pension systems,both private and public,beginning to disintegrate under the weight of the baby boomers. We are now just starting to understand the substantial fiscal and psychological costs of separating the generations into so-called single-family homes with the ideal of a mother,father and two kids. But times change and so do cultures. Regarding boomerang kids,most demographers focus on the immediate explanations for the changes, such as the growing immigrant population,housing shortages and high prices,and out-of-wedlock childbearing. Many psychologists have noted that baby-boomer parents enjoy closer relationships with their fewer children that allow extended cohabitation. A recent survey conducted for Del Webb(a division of Pulte Homes lnc.)reports that only about one-quarter of baby boomers are happier once the kids move out. However,all these explanations are simply symptoms of the larger,more fundamental reuniting of Americans into households that include extended families-adult kids, grandparents, grandchildren and other relatives-rather than just nuclear families. The rate at which our American culture is adapting will accelerate as baby boomers begin retiring in waves. Creative housing arrangements are necessitating and allowing three generations to live together a-gain-under one roof or in close proximity. Now some 6 million American grandparents are living under one roof with their grandchildren. Whether grandparents live in accessory apartments on the property or houses next door, these flexible housing options provide privacy and companionship at the same time. Grandparents can interact with their grandchildren while the parents work, and all benefit from the new togetherness. These 21st century housing arrangements are a creative way to handle the financial needs of the generation that is retiring and, yes, the adult children who are coming home. Such multigenerational households dont make sense for everyone. Personality conflicts or family characteristics preclude such arrangements for some. Legal constraints such as building and zoning codes are formidable obstacles in most communities across the country. Often more room is mandated for parking your car than parking your grandmother. Home builders have been more interested in selling houses that satisfy immediate needs rather than anticipating the needs of the growing numbers of aging Americans. The culture itself frequently gets in the way, reinforcing the perception of a stigma attaching to lack of independence-the adult child who just wont move out(and grow up)or the aging grandparent who eschews "being a burden." Despite these problems, once you begin talking with your friends about three-generation households, you will begin hearing stories about how such obstacles are being overcome. You also will begin hearing stories about the wonderful benefits of thinking about housing and family arrangements in creative ways. And youll hear stories about the fundamental satisfaction of living together again.<br>What is the main idea of the passage？

A. The trend of kids moving back home has negative effect to American culture.
B. The symptom of adult kids moving back home is extraordinary.
C. Back to the nest is by no means the precedent.
D. The family unit and individual independence are damaging in the society.

The biggest falsehood human beings make is that they think that social and political issues are so easy that its not necessary to take scientific ways to deal with the issues;they can be judged and solved by practical experience, but the fact is quite the opposite.

For several years,scientists have been testing a substance called interferon(干扰素),a potential wonder drug that is proving to be effective in treating a variety of ailments,including virus infections,bacteria infections,and tumors. To date,the new drug has provoked no negative reaction of sufficient significance to discourage its use. But in spite of its success,last year only one gram Was produced in the entire world. The reason for the scarcity lies in the structure of interferon. A species of specific protein,the interferon produced from one animal species cannot be used in treating another animal species. In other words, to treat human beings,only interferon produced by human beings may be used. The drug is produced by infecting white blood cells with a virus. Fortunately.it is so powerful that the amount given each patient per injection is very small. Unlike antibiotics, interferon does not attack germs directly. Instead.it makes unaffected cells resistant to infection,and prevents the multiplication of viruses within cells. As you might conclude,one of the most dramatic uses of interferon has been in the treatment of cancer. Dr. Hans Strander,research physician at Swedens famous Karolinska Institute,has treated more than one hundred cancer patients with the new drug. Among a group of selected patients who has undergone surgical procedures for advanced cancer, half were given interferon. The survival rate over a three-year period was 70 percent among those who were treated with interferon as compared with only 10 to 30 percent among those who have received the conventional treatments. In the United States,a large-scale project supported by the American Cancer Society is now underway. If the experiment is successful,interferon could become one of the greatest medical discoveries of our time.<br>In what does interferon differ from antibiotics？

A. Interferon has serious side effects,whereas antibiotics do not.
B. Interferon is available in large supply, whereas antibiotics are not.
C. Antibiotics are very effective,while interferon is not.
D. Antibiotics kill germs by attacking them directly, while interferon does not.

You should not eliminate jealousy only by success,because there is always someone more successful than you in history. Only by enjoying what you have,doing what you should do and not making comparison with the imagined—maybe completely wrong—luckier ones,Can you really eliminate envy.

Back in Seattle,around the corner from the Discovery Institute,Stephen Meyer offers some peer-reviewed evidence that there truly is a controversy that must be taught. "The Darwinists are bluffing, "he says over a plate of oysters at a downtown seafood restaurant. "They have the science of the steam engine era,and its not keeping up with the biology of the information age. " Meyer hands me a recent issue of Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews with an article by Carl Woese.an eminent microbiologist at the University of Illinois. In it. Woese decries the failure of reductionist biology—the tendency to Jook at systems as merely the sum of their parts—to keep up with the developments of molecular biology. Meyer says the conclusion of Woeses argument is that the Darwinian emperor has no clothes. Its a page out of the antievolution playbook: using evolutionary biologys own literature against it, selectively quoting from the likes of Stephen Jay Gould to illustrate natural selections downfalls. The institute marshals Journal articles discussing evolution to provide policymakers with evidence of the raging controversy surrounding the issue. Woese scoffs at Meyers claim when I call to ask him about the paper. "To say that my criticism of Darwinists says that evolutionists have no clothes,"Woese says, "is like saying that Einstein is criticizing Newton,therefore Newtonian physics is wrong". Debates about evolutions mechanisms,he continues. dont amount to challenges to the theory. And intelligent design "is not science. It makes no predictions and doesnt offer any explanation whatsoever, except forGod did it. " Of course Meyer happily acknowledges that Woese is an ardent evolutionist. The institute doesnt need to impress Woese or his peersjit can simply co-opt the vocabulary of science—"academic freedom. " "scientific objectivity,""teach the controversy"—and redirect it to a public trying to reconcile what ap-pear to be two contradictory scientific views. By appealing to a sense of fairness. ID finds a place at the political table,and by merely entering the debate it can claim victory. "We dont need to win every argu-ment to be a success,"Meyer says,"Were trying to validate a discussion thats been long suppressed. " This is precisely what happened in Ohio. "Im not a PhD in biology, "says board member Michael Cochran. "But when I have X number of PhD experts telling me this, and X number telling me the opposite, the answer is probably somewhere between the two." An exasperated Krauss claims that a truly representative debate would have had 10000 pro-evolution Scientists against two Discovery executives. "What these people want is for there to be a debate,"says Krauss. "People in the audience say,Hey,these people sound reasonable. They argue, people have different opinions, we should present those opinions in school.That is nonsense. Some people have opinions that the Holocaust never happened, but we dont teach that in history. " Eventually, the Ohio board approved a standard mandating that students learn to "describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory. "Proclaiming victory, Johnson barnstormed Ohio churches soon after notifying congregations of a new, ID-friendly standard. In response, anxious board members added a clause stating that the standard "does not mandate the teaching or testing of intelligent design."Both sides claimed victory. A press release from IDNet trumpeted the mere inclusion of the phrase intelligent design,saying that "the implication of the statement is that the teaching or testing of intelligent designis permitted. "Some pro-evolution scientists, meanwhile,say theres nothing wrong with teaching students how to scrutinize theory. "I dont have a problem with that," says Patricia Princehouse.a professor at Case Western Reserve and an outspoken opponent of ID."Critical analysis is exactly what scientists do."<br>Stephen Meyer seems to be criticizing Darwinists because_____.

A. the evidence for their theories is peer-reviewed
B. they were bom in the age of steam engine
C. their theories are already out of date
D. they can not catch up with the information technology

Of the great variety of opinions concerning"marriage for money",the following three are important with reference to the development of the importance of money. Marriages based exclusively upon economic motives have not only existed in all periods and at all stages of development,but are particularly common among primitive groups and conditions where they do not cause any offence at all. The disparagement of personal dignity that nowadays arises in every marriage that is not based on personal affection-so that a sense of decency requires the concealment of economic motives-does not exist in simpler cultures. The reason for this development is that increasing individualization makes it increasingly contradictory and discreditable to enter into purely individual relationships for other than purely individual reasons. For nowadays the choice of a partner in marriage is no longer determined by social motives(though regard for the offspring may be considered to be such a motive),in so far as society does not insist upon the couple,s equal social status-a condition,however,that provides a great deal of latitude and only rarely leads to conflicts between individual and social interests. In a quite undifferentiated society it may be relatively irrelevant who marries whom,irrelevant not only for the mutual relationship of the couple but also for the offspring. This is because where the constitutions,state of health,temperament,internal and external forms of life and orientations are largely the same within the group,the chance that the children will turn out well depends less upon whether the parents agree and complement each other than it does in highly differentiated society. It therefore seems quite natural and expedient that the choice of the partner should be determined by reasons other than purely individual affection. Yet personal attraction should be decisive in a highly individualized society where a harmonious relationship between two individuals becomes increasingly rare. The declining frequency of marriage which is to be found everywhere in highly civilized cultural cir-cum-stances is undoubtedly due,in part,to the fact that highly differentiated people in general have difficu-lty in finding a completely sympathetic complement to themselves. Yet we do not possess any other crite-rion and indication for the advisability of marriage except mutual instinctive attraction. But,happiness is a purely personal matter,decided upon entirely by the couple themselves,and there would be no com-pelling reason for the official insistence on at least pretending love may be misleading—particularly in the higher strata,whose complicated circumstances often retard the growth of the purest instincts—no matter how much other conditions may affect the final results.it remains true that,with reference to procreation,love is decidedly superior to money as a factor selection. In fact,in this respect.it is the only fight and proper thing. Marriage for money directly creates a situation of panmixia—the indiscriminate pairing regardless of individual qualities—a condition that biology has demonstrated to be the cause of the most direct and detrimental degeneration of the human species. In the case of marriage for money,the union of a couple is determined by a factor that has absolutely nothing to do with racial appropriateness—just as the regard for money often enough keeps apart a couple who really belong together—and it should be considered as a factor in degeneration to the same extent to which the undoubted differentiation of individuals makes selection by personal attraction more and more important. This case too illustrates once more that the increasing individualization within society renders money increasingly unsuitable as a mediator of purely individual relationships.<br>According to the text,what is said to influence matrimonial compatibility and stability in simpler cultures？

A. Personal dignity
B. Economic decline
C. Monetary considerations
D. Financial growth

In the 1350s poor countrymen began to have cottages and gardens which they could call their own. Were these fourteenth-century peasants,then,the originators of the cottage garden？ Not really:the making and planting of small mixed gardens had been pioneered by others,and the cottager had at least two good examples which he could follow. His garden plants might and to some extent did come from the surrounding countryside,but a great many came from the monastery gardens. As to the general plan of the small garden,in so far as it had one at all,that had its origin not in the country,but in the town. The first gardens to be developed and planted by the owners or tenants of small houses town cottages as it were,were almost certainly those of the suburbs of the free cities of Italy and Germany in the early Middle Ages. Thus the suburban garden,far from being a descendant of the country cottage garden, is its ancestor,and older,in all probability,by about two centuries. On the face of it a paradox,in fact this is really logical enough:it was in such towns that there first emerged a class of man who was free and who,without being rich,owned his own small houses craftsman or tradesman protected by his guild from the great barons,and from the petty ones too. Moreover.it was in the towns,rather than in the country, where the countryside provided herbs and even wild vegetables,that men needed to cultivate pot-herbs and salads. It was also in the towns that there existed a demand for market-garden produce. London lagged well behind the Italian,Flemish,German and French free cities in this bourgeois progress towards the freedom of having a garden;yet,as early as the thirteenth century,well before the Black Death,Fitz Steven,biographer of Thomas a Becket, was writing that,in London: "On all sides outside the house of the citizens who dwell in the suburbs there are adjoining gardens planted with trees, both spacious and pleasing to the sight". Then there is the monastery garden,quoted often as a "source" of the cottage garden in innumerable histories of gardening. The gardens of the great religious establishments of the eighth and ninth centuries had two origins:St. Augustine,copying the Greek academe did his teaching in a small garden presented to him for that purpose by a rich friend:thus the idea of a garden-school,which began among the Greek philosopher-teachers,was carried on by the Christian church. In the second place,since one of the charities undertaken by most religious orders was that of healing,monasteries and nunneries needed a garden of medicinal herbs. Such physic gardens were soon supplemented by vegetable,salad and fruit gardens in those monasteries which enjoined upon their members the duty of raising their own food,or at least a part of it. They tended next to develop,willy-nilly into flower gardens simply because many of the herbaceous plants grown for medicinal purposes,or for their fragrance as strewing herbs,had pretty flowers— for example,violets,marjoram,pinks,primroses,madonna lilies and roses. In due course these flowers came to be grown for their own sakes,especially since some of them. Lilies and roses notably,had a ritual or religious significance of their own. The madonna lily had been Aphrodites symbolic flower.it became Marys;yet its first association with horticulture was economic;a salve or ointment was made from the bulb. Much earlier than is commonly realized,certain monastic gardeners were making remarkable progress in scientific horticulture—for example,in forcing flowers and fruit out of season in cloister and courtyard gardens used as conservatories—which had lessons to teach cottagers as well as castle-dwellers.<br>Small city gardens were first established in certain Italian and German cities_____.

A. in the central areas,unlike the earlier English gardens
B. by citizens whose forebears had obtained permission from the monks
C. by citizens who had surplus land by their cottages
D. on lines that anticipated cottage gardens

This years poster animal,by all odds,is the northern spotted owl. In attaining star status,the bird offers a glimpse into the reasons human selects one species over another for survival. Facing possible extinction,the northern spotted owl gained partial protection when the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently listed it as No. 599 on the endangered species list of animals and plants. Experts say there are between five and 100 million animal and plant species on Earth,of which only two percent have been inventoried. One to three species disappear every day,according to the Nature Conservancy. At this rate,why all the hype about one spotted owl？ "People respond to larger animals that we see or are part of our experience,like owl," say Daniel Taylor,a National Audubon Society biologist. "People know owls. People may not know spotted owls,but owls occupy an important place in our cultural psyche. " In a media age,conservationists have grown savvy about choosing simple and endearing symbols. Known as flagship species,symbols like the spotted owl tend to be things that are large,things that are cute and cuddly,according to John Cart,research biologist at Conservation International at Washington D. C. "Large vertebrates are important to us as a society than small vertebrates," says Daniel Taylor. He says that this fact reflects our preoccupation with the animals we eat or that eat us,or used to. Size is also a factor,because a species has to be seen to be saved. Strategically,Cart says,size is key because the larger the species protected,the larger its range is,and thus,the larger the habitat to protect it. Making the cover of Time magazine and garnering plenty of media attention,the northern spotted owl has also saved a flock of equally endangered, but less endearing species that share its forest habitat. Media images of the handsome spotted owl spurred a national audience into sympathizing with the rare bird. Often the more human traits an animal appears to have,the stronger its candidacy for stardom. A recent tuna commercial likened a dolphin group to a wholesome American family. Dolphins are seen as loyal, playful geniuses. Owls are,of course,wise. Other factors carry weight in piquing a public response. "We seem to have a fascination with black and white,"says Bill Konstant,executive director of Wildlife Preservation Trust International,pointing to the popular panda and killer whale. Ultimately,the most important thing for many conservationists is creating a new kind of symbiosis,using spotted owls and their attractive ilk to save a broader range of living things. When we save the spotted owl,what we are really doing is to preserve biological diversity.<br>The main idea of this article is that____.

A. the government should make a strong effort to save endangered species of animals
B. the case of the northern spotted owl reveals how scientists select one species over another or survival
C. the conflict between environmentalists and industry will intensify as more and more animal species become endangered
D. large vertebrates in danger of extinction should be saved over less attractive species