The basic function of money is the enable buying to be separated from selling, thus permit
(1)
A.on
B.in
C.by
D.for
(1)
A.on
B.in
C.by
D.for
The world plan mentioned in the passage aims at ______.
A.help the illiterates learn the basic skills of reading and writing
B.emphasizing the function of UNESCO
C.teaching basic skills to responsible citizens
D.helping people gather information
[A] care
[B] concern
[C] attention
[D] intention
The author advises those dealing with computers to______.
A.use them for business purpose only
B.be reasonably skeptical about them
C.check all their answers
D.give up basic thinking
(1)假设某厂商的产量函数为q=9x1/2,在短期,固定成本为1000美元,x为可变投入,其成本为4000美元/单位。生产q单位产品的总成本为多少?[即求出总成本函数C(q)]
(2)写出供给曲线方程。
(3)如果价格为1000美元,厂商产量为多少?利润水平为多少?在成本曲线图上表示出你的结论。
a. Suppose that a firm's production function is q=9x1/2in the short nun, where there are fixed costs of $ 1000, and x is the variable input whose cost is S 4000 per unit. What is the total cost of producing a level o[ output q? In other words, identify the total cost function C(q)?
b. Write down the equation for the supply curve.
e. If price is $ 1000, how many units will the firm produce? What is the level of profit? Illustrate your answer on a cost - curve graph.
Despite its popularity, this view of human nature is wrong. While human beings may have a basic desire to strive towards something, there is nothing inevitable about material goods. There are numerous examples of societies in which things have played a highly restricted rule. In medieval Europe, the acquisition of goods was relatively unimportant. The common people, whose lives were surely poor by modern standards, showed strong preferences for leisure rather than money. In the nineteenth-and early twentieth-century United States, there is also considerable evidence that many working people also exhibited a restricted appetite for material goods.
Materialism is not a basic trait of human nature, but a specific product of capitalism. With the development of the market system, materialism "spilled over", for the first time, beyond the circles of the rich. The growth of the middle class created a large group of potential buyers and the possibility that mass culture could be oriented around material goods. This process can be seen not only in historical experiences but is now going on in some parts of the developing world, where the growth of a large middle class has contributed to extensive materialism and the breakdown of traditional values.
In the United States, the turning point was the 1920s—the point at which the "psychology of shortage" gave way to the "psychology of abundance". This was a crucial period for the development of modern materialism. Economy and discipline were out; waste and excess were in. Materialism flourished—both as a social ideology and in terms of high rates of real spending. In the midst of all this buying, we can detect the origins of modern consumer discontent.
This was the decade during which the American dream, or what was then called "the American standard of living", captured the nation's imagination. But it was always something of an illusion. Americans complained about items they could not afford—despite the fact that in the 1920s most families had telephones, virtually all had purchased life insurance, two-thirds owned their own homes and took vacations, and over half had motor cars.
The discontent expressed by many Americans was promoted—and to a certain extent even created—by manufacturers. The explosion of consumer credit made the task easier, as automobiles, radios, electric refrigerators, washing machines—even jewelry and foreign travel—could be paid for in installments. By the end of the 1920s, 60 percent of cars, radios, and furniture were being purchased this way. The ability to buy without actually having money helped encourage a climate of instant satisfaction, expanding expectations, and ultimately, materialism.
We can learn from the first 2 paragraphs that ______.
A.the quest for material goods is the basic character of human beings
B.there's little we can do about the quest for material goods
C.in many cases, the function of material goods is very limited in the society
D.the common people tend to prefer leisure to money
Although SF seems to take as its future social settings nothing more ambiguous than the current status quo or its totally evil variant, SF is actually a more important vehicle for speculative visions about macroscopic social change. At this level, it is hard to deal with any precision as to when general value changes or evolving social institutions might appear, but it is most important to think about the kinds of societies that could result from the rise of new forms of interaction, even if one cannot predict exactly when they might occur.
In performing this "what if…" function, SF can act as a social laboratory as authors ruminate upon the forms social relationships could take if key variables in their own societies were different, and upon what new belief systems or mythologies could arise in the future to provide the basic rationalizations for human activities. If it is true that most people find it difficult to conceive of the ways in which their society, or human nature itself, could undergo fundamental changes, then SF of this type may provoke one's imagination—to consider the diversity of paths potentially open to society.
Moreover, if SF is the laboratory of the imagination, its experiments are often of the kind that may significantly alter the subject matter even as they are being carried out. That is, SF has always had a certain cybernetic effect on society, as its visions emotionally engage the future—consciousness of the mass public regarding especially desirable and undesirable possibilities. The shape a society takes in the present is in part influenced by its image of the future; in this way particularly powerful SF images may become self-fulfilling or self-avoiding prophecies for society. For that matter, some individuals in recent years have even shaped their own life styles after appealing models provided by SF stories. The reincarnation and diffusion of SF futuristic images of alternative societies through the media of movies and television may have speeded up and augmented SF's social feedback effects. Thus SF is not only change speculator but change agent, send an echo from the future that is becoming into the present that is sculpting it. This fact alone makes imperative in any education system the study of the kinds of works discussed in this section.
In discussing the subject matter of SF, the author focuses on
A.its main functions.
B.its great diversity.
C.its bold assumptions.
D.its social impact.
Many linguists believe that evolution is【64】for our ability to produce and use language. They【65】that our highly evolve brain provides us【66】an innate language ability not found in lower【67】. Proponents of this innateness theory say that our【68】for language is inborn, but that language itself develops gradually,【69】a function of the growth of brain during childhood. Therefore there are critical【70】times for language development.
Current【71】of innateness theory are mixed, however, evidence supporting the existence of some innate abilities is undeniable.【72】, more and more schools are discovering that foreign languages are best taught in【73】grades. Young children often can learn several languages by being【74】to them, while adults have a much harder rime learning another language once the【75】of their first language have become firmly fixed.
【76】some aspects of language are undeniably innate, language does not develop automatically in a vacuum. Children who have been【77】from other human beings don't possess language. This demonstrates that【78】with other human beings is necessary for proper language development. Some linguists that this is even more basic to human language【79】than any innate capabilities. These theorists view language as imitative, learned behavior.【80】, children learn language from their parents by imitating them. Parents gradually shape their child's language skills by positively reinforcing precise imitations and negatively reinforcing imprecise ones.
(60)
A.generated
B.evolved
C.born
D.originated
Although SF seems to take as its future social settings nothing more ambiguous than the current status quo or its totally evil variant, SF is actually a more important vehicle for speculative visions about macroscopic social change. At this level, it is hard to deal with any precision as to when general value changes or evolving social institutions might appear, but it is most important to think about the kinds of societies that could result from the rise of new forms of interaction, even if one cannot predict exactly when they might occur.
In performing this "what if..." function, SF can act as a social laboratory as authors ruminate upon the forms social relationships could take if key variables in their own societies were different, and upon what new belief systems or mythologies could arise in the future to provide the basic rationalizations for human activities. If it is true that most people find it difficult to conceive of the ways in which their society, or human nature itself, could undergo fundamental changes, then SF of this type may provoke one's imagination—to consider the diversity of paths potentially open to society.
Moreover, if SF is the laboratory of the imagination, its experiments are often of the kind that may significantly alter the subject matter even as they are being carried out. That is, SF has always had a certain cybernetic effect on society, as its visions emotionally engage the future consciousness of the mass public regarding especially desirable and undesirable possibilities. The shape a society takes in the present is in part influenced by its image of the future; in this way particularly powerful SF images may become self-fulfilling or self-avoiding prophecies for society. For that matter, some individuals in recent years have even shaped their own life styles after appealing models provided by SF stories. The reincarnation and diffusion of SF futuristic images of alternative societies through the media of movies and television may have speeded up and augmented SF's social feedback effects. Thus SF is not only change speculator but change agent, send an echo from the future that is becoming into the present that is sculpting it. This fact alone makes imperative in any education system the study of the kinds of works discussed in this section.
In discussing the subject matter of SF, the author focuses on ______.
A.its main functions.
B.its great diversity.
C.its bold assumptions.
D.its social impact.
In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell argues that " social epidemics" are driven in large part by the actions of a tiny minority of special individuals, often called influential, who are unusually informed, persuasive, or well-connected. The idea is intuitively compelling, but it doesn't explain how ideas actually spread.
The supposed importance of influentials derives from a plausible-sounding but largely untested theory called the "two-step flow of communication" : Information flows from the media to the influentials and from them to everyone else. Marketers have embraced the two-step flow because it suggests that if they can just find and influence the influentials, those select people will do most of the work for them. The theory also seems to explain the sudden and unexpected popularity of certain looks, brands, or neighborhoods. In many such cases, a cursory search for causes finds that some small group of people was wearing, promoting, or developing whatever it is before anyone else paid attention. Anecdotal evidence of this kind fits nicely with the idea that only certain special people can drive trends.
In their recent work, however, some researchers have come up with the finding that influentials have far less impact on social epidemics than is generally supposed. In fact, they don't seem to be required at all.
The researchers' argument stems from a simple observation about social influence: With the exception of a few celebrities like Oprah Winfrey—whose outsize presence is primarily a function of media, not interpersonal, influence—even the most influential members of a population simply don' t interact with that many others. Yet it is precisely these non-celebrity influentials who, according to the two-step-flow theory, are supposed to drive social epidemics, by influencing their friends and colleagues directly. For a social epidemic to occur, however, each person so affected must then influence his or her own acquaintances, who must in turn influence theirs, and so on; and just how many others pay attention to each of these people has little to do with the initial influential. If people in the network just two degrees removed from the initial influential prove resistant, for example, the cascade of change won't propagate very far or affect many people.
Building on the basic truth about interpersonal influence, the researchers studied the dynamics of social influence by conducting thousands of computer simulations of populations, manipulating a number of variables relating to people's ability to influence others and their tendency to be influenced. They found that the principal requirement for what is called "global cascades"—the widespread propagation of influence through networks—is the presence not of a few influentials but, rather, of a critical mass of easily influenced people.
By citing the book The Tipping Point, the author intends to ().
A.analyze the consequences of social epidemics.
B.discuss influentials' function in spreading ideas.
C.exemplify people' s intuitive response to social epidemics.
D.describe the essential characteristics of influentials.