This problem demands to be looked into.

Lately, everybody from industrial designers to city planners claims to be looking after our aesthetic interests, and there is ample anecdotal evidence that, on the margin, people do put a higher premium on the look and feel of things than they once did. That is to be expected as society grows richer. But aesthetics is not the only value -- trade-offs must be made -- and aesthetic value is hard to measure. What is "it," after all? Aesthetics doesn't come in neat units like microprocessor speed, calories, or tons of steel. Style. is qualitative.

The value of qualitative improvements poses tricky problems for economists. It is a major challenge to tease out how much consumers value each individual attribute that comes bundled in a given good or service. If you pay $2.99 for a toothbrush, how much of that is for the cleaning ability? How much for the feel of the handle? How much for the durability? How much for the packaging? How much for the convenient distribution to your comer drugstore? How much for the color?

Economists use statistical techniques called "hedonic pricing" to try to separate the implicit prices of various characteristics. Essentially, they look at how prices go up or down as features are added or subtracted and try to figure out how consumers value the individual features. How much will consumers pay for an extra megahertz of computing speed, for instance?

Not every characteristic is as easily measured as megahertz. The trickier the measurement, the more difficult the problem. For aesthetics, economists generally don't even try. It's just too hard. How do you account for the restaurant d écor or subtle enhancements in the taste of the food? How do you measure the increased value of a typeset resume, memo or client newsletter -- the result of ubiquitous word processors -- over an old-fashioned typed document?

That sort of detail is simply lost in crude economic statistics. Many product characteristics -- from convenience to snob appeal to aesthetics -- are hard to quantify and so tend to be undercounted. The result is that the standard of living can change for the better without much notice.

That is especially likely if products improve without becoming more expensive. Consumers are happier, but if they aren't spending more money, no revenue increase shows up in the productivity statistics. This isn't unusual in competitive markets. Shopping malls redecorate, and newspapers adopt color printing just to keep up with the competition. They aren't able to charge more. They are just able to stay in business.

When thinking about new products, producers face two challenges. First, they need to offer something whose value to the consumer is greater than its cost to produce and distribute. Increasing the surplus of value minus cost is where both higher living standards and higher profits come from. It is the measure of real economic improvement. The second challenge is, of course, to price the offering to maximize profit.

As a general matter, aesthetics sells. But "as a general matter" obscures all the specifics that make or break a product: What exact design will you use? How will you manufacture it? What will you charge? And, given those decisions, how will customers respond?

The answers can't be found through a blackboard exercise. Price theory is a useful tool, but we can't know in advance how much people will value the characteristics of a product they haven't yet seen or compared with real alternatives. Even market research, while helpful, cannot duplicate real-life choices. Although we all have fun predicting and second-guessing business ideas, the only way to find out is through trial and error. Market competition is a discovery process that subjects business hypotheses to unsentimental testing.

Some managers are better than others at identifying promising new sources of

A．adding aesthetics to products

B．increasing surplus of value minus cost

C．quantifying product characteristics

D．putting business ideas to market testing

Education begins with teachers. Yet teaching seems to be losing its appeal for many of the best and brightest college students. In high school, many of the best students decide that they want to be teachers, but their relatives and friends soon convince them to change their minds. One student's mother kept reminding her of the relatively skimpy salaries teachers currently earn until the student changed to another major. Another student took computer science courses because his father thought that teachers were at the bottom of the social ladder. One said that none of her friends looked upon teaching as a worthwhile career, so she came to think of teaching as not noble enough and went into pharmacy instead. According to several recent reports on the shortcomings of American public schooling, teaching's lack of appeal for the brightest college students is one of the teaching profession's most worrisome problems.

Many articles on teaching, currently popular in newspapers, magazines, and professional education journals, concentrate on the negative aspects of teaching. The expression "teacher burnout" is commonly ascribed to thousands of thoughtful and dedicated teachers who are leaving the profession. Teacher burnout is caused by such problems as violence in the classroom, vandalism, inadequate salaries, involuntary transfers, interfering parents, oversized classes, and excessive paperwork. Even the best teachers cannot solve a child's problems, but many of them believe the public expects them to, and they give up teaching in despair.

Despite the more limited financial prospects, the deterioration of the American public's attitude toward teachers, and the problems caused by disruptive students, many of the best students conclude that they want to pursue careers in the classroom after all. The three students mentioned above discovered that they wanted personal fulfillment from their life's work more than they wanted material rewards. Each eventually chose to become a teacher. However, a growing body of evidence shows that such students are exceptions, rather than the rule, in America's more than 1,200 teacher-training programs. Many teacher-training schools are beginning to look at ways to recruit the kind of people who would be inclined toward the positive aspects of teaching. The teaching profession has to become more attractive to good students.

Prospective teachers will see increased emphasis by national teacher organizations, state certification agencies, and local districts on improving the status of the profession, as well as on improving teacher salaries. Continued efforts to eliminate jobs teachers do that are not teacher--such as policing the restrooms, hallways, and cafeterias--are important for upgrading the profession.

While teaching is not a wise career choice for all, teaching is a noble and rewarding profession for those who indeed seek personal fulfillment from their life's work. The first year of teaching is frequently the most frustrating year in a teacher's life. The experience of solving problems that deal with instruction, students, parents, administrators, and fellow teachers is of immeasurable value for future success.

The main idea of the first paragraph is that ______.

A．teachers are indispensable to education

B．teaching is not a worthwhile career

C．teaching is losing its appeal for the best college students

D．teaching profession is looked down on by most parents

A、Ancient Civilisation

B、Middle Ages

C、The Renaissance

D、The Eighteenth Century

All the holds to be loaded with grain must be swept ______ commencement of loading．

A.Cleanly/during

B.Clear/meanwhile

C.Clean/between

D.Clean/prior to

Debate over the Use of Renewable Energy

Ausubel of Rockefeller University in New York, US says the key renewable (可再生的) energy sources, including sun, wind and biofuels, would all require vast amounts of land if developed up to large scale production - unlike nuclear power. That land would be far better (51) alone, he says. Renewables look (52) when they are quite small. But if we start producing renewable energy on a large (53) , the fallout (结果) is going to be horrible.

Ausubel draws his conclusions by analysing the amount of energy that renewables, natural gas and nuclei (原子核) can (54) in terms of power per square metre of land used. Moreover, he claims that (55) renewable energy use increases, this measure of efficiency will decrease as the best land for wind, biofuels, and solar power gets used up.

Solar power is much more (56) than biofuel in terms of the area of land used, but it would still (57) 150 square kilometres of photovoltaic (光电的) cells to match the energy production of the 1000 MW nuclear plant. In another example, he says (58) the 2005 US electricity demand via wind power alone would need 780,000 square kilometres, an area the (59) of Texas.

However, several experts are highly critical of Ausubel's (60) . John Turner of the US government's National Renewable Energy Laboratory says that even if the US got all of its (61) from solar energy, it would still need less than half the amount of land that has been paved over (62) highways. Further, it need not (63) up additional land. The US could get a quarter of its energy just from covering rooftops of existing buildings, he says.

According to Turner, the same "dual use" also (64) to wind power. "The footprint for wind is only 5% of the land that it (65) . Farmers can still farm the land that the turbines are on." Turner says looking solely at land use is an oversimplification of the issue.

A．owned

B．left

C．held

D．bought

Debate over the Use of Renewable Energy

Ausubel of Rockefeller University in New York, US says the key renewable (可再生的) energy sources, including sun, wind and biofuels, would all require vast amounts of land if developed up to large scale production - unlike nuclear power. That land would be far better (51) alone, he says. Renewables look (52) when they are quite small. But if we start producing renewable energy on a large (53) , the fallout (结果) is going to be horrible.

Ausubel draws his conclusions by analysing the amount of energy that renewables, natural gas and nuclei (原子核) can (54) in terms of power per square metre of land used. Moreover, he claims that (55) renewable energy use increases, this measure of efficiency will decrease as the best land for wind, biofuels, and solar power gets used up.

Solar power is much more (56) than biofuel in terms of the area of land used, but it would still (57) 150 square kilometres of photovoltaic (光电的) cells to match the energy production of the 1000 MW nuclear plant. In another example, he says (58) the 2005 US electricity demand via wind power alone would need 780,000 square kilometres, an area the (59) of Texas.

However, several experts are highly critical of Ausubel's (60) . John Turner of the US government's National Renewable Energy Laboratory says that even if the US got all of its (61) from solar energy, it would still need less than half the amount of land that has been paved over (62) highways. Further, it need not (63) up additional land. The US could get a quarter of its energy just from covering rooftops of existing buildings, he says.

According to Turner, the same "dual use" also (64) to wind power. "The footprint for wind is only 5% of the land that it (65) . Farmers can still farm the land that the turbines are on." Turner says looking solely at land use is an oversimplification of the issue.

A．owned

B．left

C．held

D．bought

Where the cargo can be loaded in two different ways，one of which is more economical of space than the other，but each of which is a usual method of loading cargo of the relevant type，the Charterer ______ in whichever of these ways he pleases，unless he is expressly forbidden so to do by the charter-party．

A.Has to load

B.Can load

C.Loads

D.Is loaded by

A. Cursor cache

B. Stored outline

C. SQL Tuning Set

D. Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) snapshots

听力原文：W: We'd better be looking for sales on down jackets and underwear. It's going to be really cold this winter:

M: Well, you didn't expect it to be warm, did you.'?

W: of course not, but I just heard the National Weather Service’s prediction for the next 90 days. They said it's supposed to be much colder weather than usual.

M: Yeah, maybe. Personally, I think those long-range forecasts are useless (23) .

W: Not as useless as you think.

M: Oh, come on, when you're talking about what's going to happen three months later, you might as well just pick a forecast out of our hat.

W: Well, you are half-right. They aren't very good for the amount of rain. But they are a lot better for temperatures especially for this time of the year (24) .

M: Really, so I should take them seriously about the cold but not count too much on a lot of extra snow?

W: Un huh.

M: But what did you say about this time of the year? Do some seasons really give them more problems in making forecasts?

W: Autumn is the worst, apparently weather patterns change so much then, just think how variable our weather has been the last three months (25) .

M: Come to think of it. That's true. It probably would have been hard to predict all those changes back in the summer. You know, you're beginning to convince me there is more to forecast than I thought. How come you know so much about it?

W: I get my information from an expert. My sister's a meteorologist.

(20)

A．How much its accuracy has improved recently.

B．How reliable long-range forecasts are.

C．How difficult it takes to make a good forecast.

D．How the current forecast causes troubles.