One of the key factors in the success of Walmart is the buying power gained by dealing directly with manufacturers.

One of the results of the frugal culture in Wal-Mart is that ______.

A．store managers only have to work half-day

B．employees don't get health insurance

C．hourly workers work overtime with pay

D．the headquarters building is modernized

According to Paragraph 2, which one of the following is true?

A．Mr McMillon looks like a huge beast.

B．Some of Walmart"s stores are about to close.

C．At Sam"s Club, members buy in large quantities.

D．In Walmart, executives are also experts in merchandising.

One of the surest signs of middle age is that you actually listen when outsiders tell you that maybe it's time that you started to slow down. Consider, if you will, what's happened lately with Microsoft, Amazon. com and Wal-Mart, all of which were once treated by Wall Street as high-growth companies. The more money they spent upgrading facilities and expanding into new markets, the more Wall Street loved them. All three had revolutionized their industries, were growing like mad and were more about tomorrow's potential payoff than about today.

Well, today has arrives. The Street has issued a collective judgment on our three amigos—it's declared them to be middle-aged. It hasn't done this formally, of course. But if you look at how the Street has treated these three stocks lately, it's the only conclusion that you can draw.

Being considered less-than-youthful isn't a total shock to Microsoft, which showed signs of middle-age onset when it started paying serious cash dividends a few years ago. But it's surprising to see Amazon and Wal-Mart act middle-aged. They both had seemed to be expanding without end but they've now decided it's time to slow their growth, at least in part to help keep Wall Street happy. Middle age, you see, has nothing to do with how old a company is—it has to do with how it thinks.

Which of the following statements is NOT TRUE?

A．Wal-Martization has been successful in keeping costs at rock-bottom levels.

B．Upward mobility for low-skilled workers has become impossible in the U. S.

C．More business opportunities are given to low-cost agencies in China and India.

D．Although people know how to restore American mobility, it's difficult to change the present situation.

Which of the following statements is NOT TRUE?

A．Wal-Martization has been successful in keeping costs at rock-bottom levels.

B．Upward mobility for low-skilled workers has become impossible in the U. S.

C．More business opportunities are given to low-cost agencies in China and India.

D．Although people know how to restore American mobility, it's difficult to change the present situation.

Which of the following statements is NOT TRUE?

A．Wal-Martization has been successful in keeping costs at rock-bottom levels.

B．Upward mobility for low-skilled workers has become impossible in the U.S. .

C．More business opportunities are given to low-cost agencies in China and India.

D．Although people know how to restore American mobility, it's difficult to change the present situation.

听力原文：The discount chain store Wal-Mart began as a small shop in the US state of Arkansas some 40 years ago. Today, it's the largest private company in the world.

The business' phenomenal growth is just one of its hallmarks. The statistics are startling: Wal-Mart has about 5,000 stores worldwide, and more than 1.5 million employees. In the fiscal year ending in January 2005, the company's sales revenues amounted to $256 billion. Besides its thousands of locations in the United States, Wal-Mart has some 1,300 stores overseas with locations in Mexico, Canada, Britain, Germany, Japan and China.

Which of the following statements is true of Wal-Mart?

A．Wal-Mart was already the largest private company 40 years ago.

B．Wal-Mart has about 5,000 stores in America.

C．Wal-Mart's sales revenues amounted to $256 billion in the fiscal year ending in January 2005.

D．Wal-Mart has 1,300 stores overseas with locations in Canada, Britain, France, Japan and China.

New Hopes for Preventing AIDS

The success of anti-retroviral(抑止肿瘤病毒) drugs in treating HIV is getting researchers at the 16th International AIDS conference excited at the prospect that the potent(效力大的) medicines might be exploited to perform. double duty. Why not use the power of these ARVs to prevent an HIV transmission or infection from taking hold in the first place? Bill and Melinda Gates asked that provocative question on the opening day of the conference, and are committing their considerable financial resources toward finding an answer. In their remarks, they highlighted the need to develop microbicides(杀菌剂) and oral prevention drugs while we wait for a vaccine. And they will get their first hint at how smart their decision was this Thursday, when scientists from West Africa report the initial result% from the first trial studying an oral prevention drug.

So how realistic are the Gates in expecting even more from the ARVs? "I do think the range of prevention options we have within the next decade will greatly expand," says Dr. Helene Gayle, President of Care USA and co-chair of the conference. "The biologic plausibility for both microbicides and oral prevention drugs is so great." Dr. Mark Dybul, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, said that if a microbicide or prevention drug becomes available to protect people from infections, they would be funded under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief if countries chose to use them. "We would support all of that; it would be perfectly within our mandate to do all that," he told TIME.

Preventing HIV is the only way to keep the number 'of new infections that occur each year—4 million—from growing. And yet prevention strategies, always the ugly stepsister to treatment programs, have not really taken hold in the developing nations where the rate of infection is highest. An effective vaccine, of course, is the ultimate prevention weapon, but as the Gates' pointed out, an HIV shot is still a long way off. In the meantime, microbicides could be one way to co-opt ARVs into the prevention war; these are chemical compounds, usually in the form. of a gel or cream, that women can use vaginally prior to intercourse to stop the transmission of HIV—it's the same idea behind spermicides(杀精子剂), which are chemical barriers to sperm entering the vagina and causing pregnancy. It's an elegantly simple approach, made even simpler by the fact that researchers didn't really have to start from scratch to come up with new anti-HIV compounds; they already have them in the ARVs, which now interrupt the virus from infecting cells at various points in its life cycle.

The key difference is that in a microbicide, the drugs are being used in healthy people rather than in those infected with HIV. When ARVs are used for treatment, both doctors and patients are willing to tolerate a higher level of side effects—after all, if the choice is between dying from HIV-AIDS and side effects, most patients opt for the latter. If the drugs are to be used to prevent infection, however, everything changes; understandably, healthy people aren't as likely to accept the same level of side effects and toxicities as those already infected.

That's why clinical trials are so significant. So far, there are 30 to 40 different microbicide candidates being tested in animals, and five trials in Ghana, Nigeria and other developing nations at the most advanced stages of testing in women. Dr. Gita Ramjee, of the HIV Prevention Research Unit in Durban, South Africa, has worked with all five, and is hopeful that they will prove effective and make an impact on the disease. Because these latest microbicides are reformulated ARVs, however, the problem of the virus becoming resistant to them is a potential drawback. Dr. Peter Plot, of UNAIDS, suggests basing microbicides only on the drugs do not make it through the pharmaceutical pipeline many are rejected because they

A．Y

B．N

C．NG