A.Yes.
B.No.
C.Some will.
D.None of the above.
Despite a cooling of the economy, high-technology companies are still crying out for skilled workers. The Information Technology Association of America projects that more than 800, 000 technology jobs will go unfilled next year. The lack of qualified workers poses a huge threat to the U. S. economy.
The most commonly cited reason for this state of affairs is that the country's agrarian-age (农村时代) education system fails to prepare students in the primary and secondary grades for the 21st century work. Yet an inadequate and outmoded education system is only part of the problem. A less tangible (明确的) but equally powerful cause is an antique (过时的) classification system that divides the workforce into two camps; white-collar knowledge workers and blue-collar manual laborers.
Blue-collar workers emerged in the United States during the Industrial Age as work moved from farms to factories. White-collar office workers became a significant class in the twentieth century, outnumbering(多于) the blue-collar workers by mid-century. Corporations increasingly require a new layer of knowledge worker; a highly skilled multi-disciplined talent, who combines the mind of the white-collar worker with a solid grounding in mathematics and science (physics, chemistry, and biology). These "gold-collar" workers—so named for their contributions to their companies and to the economy as well as for their personal earning ability—apply their knowledge to technology.
The gold-collar worker already exists in a wide range of jobs. The maintenance technician who tests and repairs aircraft systems at American Airlines; the network administrator who manages systems and network operations at Procter & Gamble(宝洁公司) ; the engineering technologist who assists scientists at Sandia National Laboratories; and the advanced-manufacturing technician at Intel can all be regarded as gold-collar workers.
What does the word "projects" in the first paragraph mean?
A.Throws
B.Predicts
C.Concludes
D.Claims
A typical brain-teaser went like this. There are three light switches on the ground-floor wall of a three-storey house. Two of the switches do nothing, but one of them controls a bulb on the second floor. When you begin, the bulb is off. You can only make one visit to the second floor. How do you work out which switch is the one that controls the light?
This problem, or one equivalent to it, was presented on a computer screen to a volunteer when that volunteer pressed a button. The electrical activity of the volunteer’s brain (his brainwave pattern) was recorded by the EEG from the button’s press. Each volunteer was given 30 seconds to read the puzzle and another 60 to 90 seconds to solve it.
Some people worked it out; others did not. The significant point, though, was that the EEG predicted who would fall where. Those volunteers who went on to have an insight (in this case that on their one and only visit to the second floor they could use not just the light hut the heat produced by a bulb as evidence of an active switch) had had different brainwave activity from those who never got it. In the right frontal cortex, a part of the brain associated with shifting mental states, there was an increase in high-frequency gamma waves (those with 47-48 cycles a second). Moreover, the difference was noticeable up to eight seconds before the volunteer realised he had found the solution. Dr. Sheth thinks this may he capturing the “transformational thought” in action, before the brain’s “owner” is consciously aware of it.
This finding poses fascinating questions about how the brain really works. Conscious thought, it seems, does not solve problems. Instead, unconscious processing happens in the background and only delivers the answer to consciousness once it has been arrived at. Food for further thought, indeed.
Which kind of problems can he used in Dr. Bhattacharya and Dr. Sheth’s research?
A.Theoretical brain-teasing problems,
B.Simple but rarely known problems.
C.Puzzling hut realistic problems.
D.Simple but theoretical problems.
The orthodox view of human handedness is that it is connected to the bilateral specialisation of the brain that has concentrated language-processing functions on the left side of that organ. Because, long ago in the evolutionary past, an ancestor of humans underwent a contortion that twisted its head around 180' relative to its body, the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body, and vice versa. In humans, the left brain is usually dominant. And on average, left-handers are smaller and lighter than right-handers. That should 'put them at an evolutionary disadvantage. Sporting advantage notwithstanding, therefore, the existence of left-handedness poses a problem for biologists. But Charlotte Faurie thinks he knows the answer.
As any schoolboy could tell you, winning fights enhances your status. If, in prehistory, this translated into increased reproductive success, it might have been enough to maintain a certain proportion of left-handers in the population, by balancing the costs of being left-handed with the advantages gained in fighting. If that is true, then there will be a higher proportion of left-handers in societies with higher levels of violence, since the advantages of being left-handed will be enhanced in such societies. Dr. Faurie set out to test this hypothesis. Fighting in modern societies often involves the use of technology, notably firearms, that is unlikely to give any advantage to left-handers. So Dr. Faurie decided to confine his investigation to the proportion of left-handers and the level of violence in traditional societies.
By trawling the literature, checking with police departments, and even going out into the field and asking people, Dr. Faurie found that the proportion of left-handers in a traditional society is, in deed, correlated with its homicide rate. One of the highest proportions of left-handers, for example, was found among the Yanomamo of South America. Raiding and warfare are central to Yanomarno culture. The murder rate is 4.15 per 1,000 inhabitants per year. And, according to Dr. Faurie, 22.6% of Yanomamo are left-handed. In contrast, Dioula-speaking people of Burkina Faso in West Africa are virtual pacifists. There are only 0.013 murders per 1,000 inhabitants among them and only 3.4% of the population is left-handed.
While there is no suggestion that left-handed people axe more violent than the right-handed, it looks as though they are more successfully violent. Perhaps that helps to explain the double meaning of the word "sinister".
The example of "Apollo Creed" is mentioned to show that
A.right-handers are put at a psychological disadvantage.
B.right-handers do not excel at boxing.
C.left-handers enjoy advantage in some sports.
D.left-handers are often involved in fighting.
In The Open and Closed Mind, Milton Rokeach poses the problem of cultural understanding in its simplest form, but one that can readily demonstrate the complication of communication between cultures. It is called the "Denny Doodlebug Problem. "Readers are given all the rules that govern this culture: Denny is an animal that always faces North, and can move only by jumping; he can jump large distances or small distances, but can change direction only after jumping four times in any direction; he can jump North, South, East or West, but not diagonally. Upon concluding a jump his master places some food three feet directly West of him. Surveying the situation, Denny concludes he must jump four times to reach the food. No more or less. And he is right. All the reader has to do is to explain the circumstances that make his conclusion correct.
The large majority of people who attempt this problem fail to solve it, despite the fact that they are given all the rules that control behavior. in this culture. If there is difficulty in getting inside the simplistic world of Denny Doodlebug—where the cultural code has already been broken and handed to us—imagine the complexity of comprehending behavior. in societies whose codes have not yet been deciphered, and where even those who obey these codes are only vaguely aware and can rarely describe the underlying sources of their own actions.
We acquire the greater part of our cultural codes by ______.
A.creating a universe of discourse
B.imitating the behavior. of others, especially those of the previous generation
C.sharing the same experiences with other people
D.taking in the various information we're given with no discrimination
The orthodox view of human handedness is that it is connected to the bilateral specialisation of the brain that has concentrated language-processing functions on the left side of that organ. Because, long ago in the evolutionary past, an ancestor of humans underwent a contortion that twisted its head around 180°relative to its body, the left side of the brain controls the fight side of the body, and vice versa. In humans, the left brain is usually dominant. And on average, left-handers are smaller and lighter than right-handers. That should put them at an evolutionary disadvantage. Sporting advantage notwithstanding, therefore, the existence of left-handedness poses a problem for biologists. But Charlotte Faurie thinks he knows the answer.
As any schoolboy could tell you, winning fights enhances your status. If, in prehistory, this translated into increased reproductive success, it might have been enough to maintain a certain proportion of left-handers in the population, by balancing the costs of being left-handed with the advantages gained in fighting. If that is tree, then there will be a higher proportion of left-handers in societies with higher levels of violence, since the advantages of being left-handed will be enhanced in such societies. Dr. Faurie set out to test this hypothesis. Fighting in modem societies often involves the use of technology, notably firms, that is unlikely to give any advantage to left-handers. So Dr. Faurie decided to confine his investigation to the proportion of left-handers and the level of violence in traditional societies.
By trawling the literature, checking with police departments, and even going out into the field and asking people, Dr. Faurie found that the proportion of left-handers in a traditional society is, indeed, correlated with its homicide rate. One of the highest proportions of left-handers, for example, was found among the Yanomamo of South America. Raiding and warfare are central to Yanomamo culture. The murder rate is 4 per 1,000 inhabitants per year. And, according to Dr. Faufie, 22.6% of Yanomamo are left-handed. In contrast, Dioula-speaking people of Burkina Faso in West Africa are virtual pacifists. There are only 0.013 murders per 1,000 inhabitants among them and only 3.4% of the population is left-handed.
While there is no suggestion that left-handed people are more violent than the right-handed, it looks as though they are more successfully violent. Perhaps that helps to explain the double meaning of the word "sinister".
The example of "Apollo Creed" is mentioned to show that
A.right-handers are put at a psychological disadvantage.
B.right-handers do not excel at boxing.
C.left-handers enjoy advantage in some sports.
D.left-handers are often involved in fighting.
VOIP's leading proponent is Skype, a small firm whose software allows people to make free calls to other Skype users over the internet, and very cheap calls to traditional telephones—all of which spells trouble for incumbent telecoms operators. On September 12th, eBay, the leading online auction-house, announced that it was buying Skype for $2.6 billion, plus an additional $1.5 billion if Skype hits certain performance targets in coming years.
This seems a vast sum to pay for a company that has only $60m in revenues and has yet to turn a profit. Yet eBay was not the only company interested in buying Skype. Microsoft, Yahoo!, News Corporation and Google were all said to have also considered the idea. Perhaps eBay, rather like some over-excited bidder in one of its own auctions, has paid too much. The company says it plans to use Skype's technology to make it easier for buyers and sellers to communicate, and to offer new "click to call" advertisements, but many analysts are sceptical that eBay is the best owner of Skype. Whatever the merits of the deal, however, the fuss over Skype in recent weeks has highlighted the significance of VOIP, and the enormous threat it poses to incumbent telecoms operators.
For the rise of Skype and other VOIP services means nothing less than the death of the traditional telephone business, established over a century ago. Skype is merely the most visible manifestation of a dramatic shift in the telecoms industry, as voice calling becomes just another data service delivered via high-speed internet connections. Skype, which has over 54m users, has received the most attention, but other firms routing calls partially or entirely over the internet have also signed up millions of customers.
At the beginning of the text, the author ______.
A.states the popularity of the term
B.indicates a clever new technology
C.undermines an existing technology
D.corrects a misconception
Women are not supposed to be independent, so they are not supposed to have any "right to work". This means, in effect, that although they do work, they are denied the right to organize and fight for better wages and conditions. Thus the role of women in the labor force undermines the struggles of male workers as well. The boss can break a union drive by threatening to hire lower paid women or blacks. In many cases, where women are organized, the union contract reinforces their inferior position, making women the least loyal and militant union members. (Standard Oil workers in San Francisco recently paid the price of male supremacy. Women at Standard Oil have the least chance for advancement and decent pay, and the union has done little to fight this. Not surprisingly, women formed the core of the back to work move that eventually broke the strike.)
In general, because women are defined as docile, helpless, and inferior, they are forced into the most demeaning and mind rotting jobs--from scrubbing floors to filing cards--under the most oppressive conditions where they are treated like children or slaves. Their very position reinforces the idea, even among the women themselves, that they are fit for and should be satisfied with this kind of work.
Apart from the direct, material exploitation of women, male supremacy acts in more subtle ways to undermine class consciousness. The tendency of male workers to think of themselves primarily as men (i.e., powerful) rather than as workers (i. e., members of an oppressed group) promotes a false sense of privilege and power, and an identification with the world of men, including the boss. The petty dictatorship which most men exercise over their wives and families enables them to vent their anger and frustration in a way which poses no challenge to the system. The role of the man in the family reinforces aggressive individualism, authoritarianism, and a hierarchical view of social relations--values which are fundamental to the perpetuation (不朽) of capitalism. In this system we are taught to relieve our fears and frustrations by brutalizing those weaker than we are: a man in uniform. turns into a pig; the foreman intimidates the man on the line; the husband beats his wife, child, and dog.
Unfair working status of women also produces negative effects on men in that ______.
A.men face the threat of being replaced by low wage women
B.men have to deal with women's complaints all the time
C.women's low income often irritate their husbands
D.women's inferior working condition worries their husbands