TEXT B One thing that distinguishes the online world from the real one is that it is very easy to find things. To find a copy of The Economist in print, one has to go to a news-stand, which may or may not carry it. Finding it online, though, is a different proposition. Just go to Google, type in "economist" and you will be instantly directed to economist.com. Though it is difficult to remember now, this was not always the case. Indeed, until Google, now the world’s most popular search engine, came on to the scene in September 1998, it was not the case at all. As in the physical world, searching online was a hit-or-miss affair. Google was vastly better than anything that had come before: so much better, in fact, that it changed the way many people use the web. Almost overnight, it made the web far more useful, particularly for non- specialist users, many of whom now regard Google as the internet’ s front door. The recent fuss over Google’s stock market flotation obscures its far wider social significance: few technologies, after all, are so influential that their names become used as verbs. Google began in 1998 as an academic research project by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, who were then graduate students at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. It was not the first search engine, of course. Existing search engines were able to scan or "crawl" a large portion of the web, build an index, and then find pages that matched particular words. But they were less good at presenting those pages, which might number in the hundreds of thousands, in a useful way. Mr Brin’s and Mr Page’s accomplishment was to devise a way to sort the results by determining which pages were likely to be most relevant. They did so using a mathematical recipe, or algorithm, called PageRank. This algorithm is at the heart of Google’s success, distinguishing it from all previous search engines and accounting for its apparently magical ability to find the most useful web pages. Untangllng the web PageRank works by analysing the structure of the web itself. Each of its billions of pages can link to other pages, and can also, in turn, be linked to. Mr Brin and Mr Page reasoned that if a page was linked to many other pages, it was likely to be important. Furthermore, if the pages that linked to a page were important, then that page was even more likely to be important. There is, of course, an inherent circularity to this formula--the importance of one page depends on the importance of pages that link to it, the importance of wb4ch depends in turn on the importance of pages that link to them. But using some mathematical tricks, this circularity can be resolved, and each page can be given a score that reflects its importance. The simplest way to calculate the score for each page is to perform a repeating or "iterative" calculation (see article). To start with, all pages are given the same score. Then each link from one page to another is counted as a "vote" for the destination page. Each page’s score is recalculated by adding up the contribution from each incoming link, which is simply the score of the linking page divided by the number of outgoing links on that page. (Each page’s score is thus shared out among the pages it links to.) Once all the scores have been recalculated, the process is repeated using the new scores, until the scores settle down and stop changing (in mathematical jargon, the calculation "converges"). The final scores can then be used to rank search results: pages that match a particular set of search terms are displayed in order of descending score, so that the page deemed most important appears at the top of the list. "Though it is difficult to remember now, this was not always the case." In the 1st paragragh, this sentence suggests that______.
A. today Google has become a commonplace way to find information online
B. Google made a great contribution to searching online
C. Google changed a lot
D. Google is different from other search engines
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TEXT A Historical developments of the past half century and the invention of modern telecommunication and transportation technologies have created a world economy. Effectively the American economy has died and been replaced by a world economy. In the future there is no such thing as being an American manager. Even someone who spends an entire management career in Kansas City is in international management. He or she will compete with foreign firms, buy from foreign firms, sell to foreign films, or acquire financing from foreign banks. The globalization of the world’s capital markets that has occurred in the past 10 years will be replicated right across the economy in the next decade. An international perspective has become central to management. Without it managers are operating in ignorance and cannot understand what is happening to them and their firms. Partly because of globalization and partly because of demography, the work forces of the next century are going to be very different from those of the last century. Most firms will be employing more foreign nationals. More likely than not, you and your boss will not be of the same nationality. Demography and changing social mores mean that white males will become a smaller fraction of the work force as women and minorities grow in importance. All of these factors will require changes in the traditional methods of managing the work force. In addition, the need to produce goods and services at quality levels previously thought impossible to obtain in mass production and the spreading use of participatory management techniques will require a work force with much higher levels of education and skills. Production workers must be able to do statistical quality control; production workers must be able to do just in-time inventories. Managers are increasingly shifting from a "don’t think, do what you are told" to a "think, I am not going to tell you what to do" style of management. This shift is occurring not because today’s managers are more enlightened than yesterday’s managers but because the evidence is rapidly mounting that the second style of management is more productive than the first style of management. But this means that problems of training and motivating the work force both become more central and require different modes of behavior. In the world of tomorrow managers cannot be technologically illiterate regardless of their functional tasks within the firm. They don’t have to be scientists or engineers inventing new technologies, but they have to be managers who understand when to bet and when not to bet on new technologies. If they don’ t understand what is going on and technology effectively becomes a black box, they will fail to make the changes that those who do understand what is going on inside the black box make. They will be losers, not winners. Today’s CEOs are those who solved the central problems facing their companies 20 years ago. Tomorrow’s CEOs will be those who solve central problems facing their companies today. Sloan hopes to produce a generation of managers who will be solving today’s and tomorrow’s problems and because they are successful in doing so they will become tomorrow’s captains of business. Speaking of the problems of training and motivating laborers, the author implies that ______.
A. laborers should keep up with the rapid development of modem technology
B. laborers pay more attention to wages
C. laborers want to advance themselves
D. there is a radical change in management style
Book fair — facts & figuresThe Frankfurt Book Fair, the largest, oldest and most important book fair in the world, brings (29) an estimated 80,000 executives from the international book and media industry, (30) nearly 10,000 journalists from about 70 countries report (31) the event.To begin (32) , the Frankfurt Book Fair was primarily an order fair (33) booksellers from Germany but, as its international importance grew, the (34) of rights and licenses became its central activity. (35) three-quarters of the publishing world’s rights and licenses (36) now transacted through the Frankfurt Book Fair.The Frankfurt Book Fair has responded to the development of the electronic media by, in 1993, setting (37) a separate exhibition area at the fair. (38) two years, the number of exhibitors Offering electronic publishing products increased eight-fold, (39) that now the Frankfurt Book Fair is the most important event in the medium of electronic publishing (40) well as books. 38()
A. Within
Between
C. After
TEXT E Rabies is an ordinarily infectious disease of the central nervous system, caused by a virus and, as a rule, spread chiefly by domestic dogs and wild flesh-eating animals. Man and all warm-blooded animals are susceptible to rabies. The people of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome ascribed rabies to evil spirits because ordinarily gently and friendly animals suddenly became vicious and violent without evident cause and, after a period of maniacal behaviour, became paralysed and died. Experiments carried out in Europe in the early nineteenth century of injecting saliva from a rabid dog into a normal dog proved that the disease was infectious. Preventive steps, such as the destruction of stray dogs, were taken and by 1826 the disease was permanently eliminated in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Though urban centres on the continent of Europe were cleared several times during the nineteenth century, they soon became reinfected since rabies was uncontrolled among wild animals. During the early stages of the disease, a rabid animal is most dangerous because it appears normal and friendly, but it will bite at the slightest provocation. The virus is present in the sailvary glands(腺) and passes into the saliva so that the bite of the infected animal introduces the virus into a fresh wound. If no action is taken, the virus may become established in the central nervous system and finally attack the brain. The incubation(潜伏期) period varies from ten days to eight months or more, and the disease develops more quickly the nearer to the brain the wound is. Most infected dogs become restless, nervous, and irritable and vicious, then depressed and paralysed. With this type of rabies, the dog’s death is inevitable and usually occurs within three to five days after the onset of the symptoms. Anti-rabies vaccine(疫苗) is widely used nowadays in two ways. Dogs may be given three-year protection against the disease by one powerful injection, while persons who have been bitten by rabid animals are given a course of daily injections over a week or ten days. The mortality rate from all types of bites from rabid animals has dropped from 9% to 0.5%. In rare cases, the vaccine will not prevent rabies in human beings because the virus produces the disease before the person’s body has time to build up enough resistance. Because of this, immediate vaccination is essential for anyone bitten by an animal observed acting strangely and the animal should be captured circumspectly, and examined professionally or destroyed. Rabies is______.
A. a disease which is infectious, caused by virus of dogs and wild flesh-eating animals
B. a disease caused by evil spirits
C. a disease spread by man and all warm-blooded animals
D. a disease causes animals to be vicious and violent
TEXT E Rabies is an ordinarily infectious disease of the central nervous system, caused by a virus and, as a rule, spread chiefly by domestic dogs and wild flesh-eating animals. Man and all warm-blooded animals are susceptible to rabies. The people of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome ascribed rabies to evil spirits because ordinarily gently and friendly animals suddenly became vicious and violent without evident cause and, after a period of maniacal behaviour, became paralysed and died. Experiments carried out in Europe in the early nineteenth century of injecting saliva from a rabid dog into a normal dog proved that the disease was infectious. Preventive steps, such as the destruction of stray dogs, were taken and by 1826 the disease was permanently eliminated in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Though urban centres on the continent of Europe were cleared several times during the nineteenth century, they soon became reinfected since rabies was uncontrolled among wild animals. During the early stages of the disease, a rabid animal is most dangerous because it appears normal and friendly, but it will bite at the slightest provocation. The virus is present in the sailvary glands(腺) and passes into the saliva so that the bite of the infected animal introduces the virus into a fresh wound. If no action is taken, the virus may become established in the central nervous system and finally attack the brain. The incubation(潜伏期) period varies from ten days to eight months or more, and the disease develops more quickly the nearer to the brain the wound is. Most infected dogs become restless, nervous, and irritable and vicious, then depressed and paralysed. With this type of rabies, the dog’s death is inevitable and usually occurs within three to five days after the onset of the symptoms. Anti-rabies vaccine(疫苗) is widely used nowadays in two ways. Dogs may be given three-year protection against the disease by one powerful injection, while persons who have been bitten by rabid animals are given a course of daily injections over a week or ten days. The mortality rate from all types of bites from rabid animals has dropped from 9% to 0.5%. In rare cases, the vaccine will not prevent rabies in human beings because the virus produces the disease before the person’s body has time to build up enough resistance. Because of this, immediate vaccination is essential for anyone bitten by an animal observed acting strangely and the animal should be captured circumspectly, and examined professionally or destroyed. Without treatment, the virus in an infected animal will______.
A. enter immediately to the brain
B. develop immediately to the wound
C. incubate for l0 days to 8 months
D. pass into a fresh wound