Large, multinational corporations may be the companies whose ups and downs seize headlines. But to a far greater extent than most Americans realize, the economy’s vitality depends on the fortunes of tiny shops and restaurants, neighborhood services and factories. Small businesses, defined as those with fewer than 100 workers, now employ 60 percent of the workforce and expected to generate half of all new jobs between now and the year 2000. Some 1.2 million small firms have opened their doors over the past 6 years of economic growth, and 1989 will see an additional 200000 entrepreneurs striking off on their own.Too many of these pioneers, however, will blaze ahead unprepared. Idealists will overestimate the clamor(大声的要求) for their products or fail to factor in the competition. Nearly everyone will underestimate, often fatally, the capital that success requires. Midcareer executives, forced by a takeover or a restructuring to quit the corporation and find another way to support themselves, may savor(欣赏) the idea of being their own boss but may forget that entrepreneurs must also, at least for a while, be bookkeepers and receptionists, too. According to Small Business Administration data, 24 of every 100 businesses starting out today are likely to disappear in two years, and 27 more will have shut their doors four years from now. By 1995, more than 60 of those 100 start-ups will have folded. A new study of 3000 small businesses, sponsored by American Express and the National Federation of Independent Business, suggests slightly better odds: three years after start-up, 77 percent of the companies surveyed were still alive. Most credited their success in large part to having picked a business they already were comfortable in. Eighty percent had worked with the same product or service in their last jobs.Thinking through an enterprise before the launch is obviously critical. But many entrepreneurs forget that a firm’s health in its infancy may be little indication of how well it will age. You must tenderly monitor its pulse. In their zeal to expand, small business owners often ignore early warning signs of a stagnant(停滞的) market or of decaying profitability. They hopefully pour more and more into the enterprise, preferring not to acknowledge eroding profit margins that means the market for their ingenious service or product has evaporated, or that they must cut the payroll or vacate their lavish offices. Only when the financial well runs dry do they see the seriousness of the illness, and by then the patient is usually too far gone to save.Frequent checks of your firm’s vital signs will also guide you to a sensible rate of growth. To snatch opportunity, you must spot the signals that it is time to conquer the new markets, add products or perhaps franchise(给予特权) your hot ideas. In a recent research, among 3000 small businesses, there will be().
A. sufficient preparation for his new business
B. the ups and downs of the transnational corporations
C. about 2400 small enterprises alive
D. the number of workers
E. about 2310 small enterprises alive
F. the careful thought about the small enterprises
G. the fate of the small businesses such as small plants and restaurants
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Directions: You have just come back from Canada and found a music CD in your luggage that you forgot to return to Bob, your landlord there. Write him a letter to 1) make an apology, and 2) suggest a solution. You should write about 100 words on ANSWER SHEET 2. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.
It is a wise father that knows his own child, but today a man can boost his paternal (fatherly) wisdom—or at least confirm that he’s the kid’s dad. All he needs to do is to shell out $30 for paternity testing kit (PTK) at his local drugstore — and another $120 to get the results.More than 60000 people have purchased the PTKs since they first become available without prescriptions last year, according to Doug Fogg, chief operating officer of Identigene, which makes the over-the-counter(无需处方的) kits. More than two dozen companies sell DNA tests directly to the public, ranging in price from a few hundred dollars to more than $2500.Among the most popular: paternity and kinship(亲属关系) testing, which adopted children can use to find their biological relatives and families can use to track down kids put up for adoption. DNA testing is also the latest rage among passionate genealogists (系谱学者)— and supports businesses that offer to search for a family’s geographic roots.Most tests require collecting cells by swabbing saliva(唾液) in the mouth and sending it to the company for testing. All tests require a potential candidate with whom to compare DNA.But some observers are skeptical. "There’s a kind of false precision being hawked by people claiming they are doing ancestry testing," says Troy Duster, a New York University sociologist. He notes that each individual has many ancestors — numbering in the hundreds just a few centuries back. Yet most ancestry testing only considers a single lineage, either the Y chromosome(染色体) inherited through men in a father’s line or mitochondrial(线粒体的) DNA, which is passed down only from mothers. This DNA can reveal genetic information about only one or two ancestors, even though, for example, just three generations back people also have six other great-grandparents or, four generations back, 14 other great-great-grandparents.Critics also argue that commercial genetic testing is only as good as the reference collections to which a sample is compared. Databases used by some companies don’t rely on data collected systematically but rather lump together information from different research projects. This means that a DNA database may have a lot of data from some regions and not others, so a person’s test results may differ depending on the company that processes the results. In addition, the computer programs a company uses to estimate relationships may be patented and not subject to peer review or outside evaluation. PTK is used to().
A. locate one’s birth place
B. promote genetic research
C. identify parent-child kinship
D. choose children for adoption
Do you wake up every day feeling too tired, or even upset If so, then a new alarm clock could be just for you.The clock, called SleepSmart, measures your sleep cycle, and waits (1) you to be in your lightest phase of sleep (2) rousing you. Its makers say that should (3) you wake up feeling refreshed every morning.As you sleep you pass (4) a sequence of sleep states—light sleep, deep sleep and REM(rapid eye movement) sleep—that (5)f approximately every 90 minutes. The point in that cycle at which you wake can (6) how you feel later, and may (7) have a greater impact than how much or little you have slept. Being roused during a light phase (8) you are more likely to wake up energetic.SleepSmart (9) the distinct pattern of brain waves (10) during each phase of sleep, via a headband equipped (11) electrodes (电极)and a microprocessor. This measures the electrical activity of the wearer’s brain, in much the (12) way as some machines used for medical and research (13) , and communicates wirelessly with a clock unit near the bed. You (14) the clock with the latest time at (15) you want to be wakened, and it (16) duly(适时地)wakes you during the last light sleep phase before that.The (17) was invented by a group of students at Brown University in Rhode Island (18) a friend complained of waking up tired and performing poorly on a test. " (19) sleep-deprived people ourselves, we started thinking of (20) to do about it," says Eric Shashoua, a recent college graduate and now chief executive officer of Axon Sleep Research Laboratories, a company created by the students to develop their idea. 13().
A. findings
B. prospects
C. proposals
D. purposes
Do you wake up every day feeling too tired, or even upset If so, then a new alarm clock could be just for you.The clock, called SleepSmart, measures your sleep cycle, and waits (1) you to be in your lightest phase of sleep (2) rousing you. Its makers say that should (3) you wake up feeling refreshed every morning.As you sleep you pass (4) a sequence of sleep states—light sleep, deep sleep and REM(rapid eye movement) sleep—that (5)f approximately every 90 minutes. The point in that cycle at which you wake can (6) how you feel later, and may (7) have a greater impact than how much or little you have slept. Being roused during a light phase (8) you are more likely to wake up energetic.SleepSmart (9) the distinct pattern of brain waves (10) during each phase of sleep, via a headband equipped (11) electrodes (电极)and a microprocessor. This measures the electrical activity of the wearer’s brain, in much the (12) way as some machines used for medical and research (13) , and communicates wirelessly with a clock unit near the bed. You (14) the clock with the latest time at (15) you want to be wakened, and it (16) duly(适时地)wakes you during the last light sleep phase before that.The (17) was invented by a group of students at Brown University in Rhode Island (18) a friend complained of waking up tired and performing poorly on a test. " (19) sleep-deprived people ourselves, we started thinking of (20) to do about it," says Eric Shashoua, a recent college graduate and now chief executive officer of Axon Sleep Research Laboratories, a company created by the students to develop their idea. 19().
A. Besides
B. Despite
C. To
D. As