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In recent years, railroads have been combining with each other, merging into supersystems, causing heightened concerns about monopoly. As recently as 1995, the top four railroads accounted for under 70 percent of the total ton-miles moved by rails. Next year, after a series of mergers is completed, just four railroads will control well over 90 percent of all the freight moved by major rail carriers. Supporters of the new supersystems argue that these mergers will allow for substantial cost reductions and better coordinated service. Any threat of monopoly, they argue, is removed by fierce competition from trucks. But many shippers complain that for heavy bulk commodities traveling long distances, such as coal, chemicals, and grain, trucking is too costly and the railroads therefore have them by the throat. The vast consolidation within the rail industry means that most shippers are served by only one rail company. Railroads typically charge such" captive" shippers 20 to 30 percent more than they do when another railroad is competing for the business. Shippers who feel they are being overcharged have the right to appeal to the federal government’’ s Surface Transportation Board for rate relief, but the process is expensive, time consuming, and will work only in truly extreme cases. Railroads justify rate discrimination against captive shippers on the grounds that in the long run it reduces everyone’’s cost. If railroads charged all customers the same average rate, they argue, shippers who have the option of switching to trucks or other forms of transportation would do so, leaving remaining customers to shoulder the cost of keeping up the line. It’’ s a theory to which many economists subscribe, but in practice it often leaves railroads in the position of determining which companies will flourish and which will fail. "Do we really want railroads to be the arbiters of who wins and who loses in the marketplace" asks Martin Bercovici, a Washington lawyer who frequently represents shippers. Many captive shippers also worry they will soon be hit with a round of huge rate increases. The railroad industry as a whole, despite its brightening fortunes, still does not earn enough to cover the cost of the capital it must invest to keep up with its surging traffic. Yet railroads continue to borrow billions to acquire one another, with Wall Street cheering them on. Consider the $10.2 billion bid by Norfolk Southern and CSX to acquire Conrail this year. Conrail’’ s net railway operating income in 1996 was just $427 million, less than half of the carrying costs of the transaction. Who’’ s going to pay for the rest of the bill Many captive shippers fear that they will, as Norfolk Southern and CSX increase their grip on the market. What is many captive shippers’’ attitude towards the consolidation in the rail industry
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二、根据以下公文，回答下列问题： 关于我校周边道路停放汽车的函 市十中(函)字〔××07〕第078号8大队： 9月10目是我校100周年校庆日，届时将会有大批校友开车来校参加校庆活动。由于我校内不能停放大量汽车。因此，我们要求贵大队准许参加我校校庆活动的校友在学校周边道路临时停放一下汽车。 特此函告 致敬礼 十中 2007年9月7日 结尾存在的问题是( )。
It’’s hardly news anymore that Americans are just too fat. A quick look around the mall, the beach or the crowd at any baseball game will leave no room for doubt:our individual weight problems have become a national crisis. Even so, the actual numbers are shocking. Fully two-thirds of U. S. adults are officially overweight, and about half of those have graduated to full-blown obesity. It wouldn’’t be such a big deal if the problem were simple aesthetic. But excess poundage takes a terrible toll on the human body. significantly increasing the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, infertility, and many forms of cancer. The total medical bill for illnesses related to obesity is $117 billion a year-and climbing - and the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that poor diet and physical inactivity could soon overtake tobacco as the leading cause of preventable death in the U. S. Why is it happening The obvious, almost trivial answer is that we eat too much high-calorie food and don’’t burn it off with enough exercise. If only we could change those habits, the problem would go away. But clearly it isn’’t that easy. Americans pour scores of billions of dollars every year into weight-loss products and health-club memberships. Food and drug companies spend even more trying to find a magic food or drug that will melt the pounds away. Yet the nation’’s collective waistline just keeps growing. It’’s natural to try to find something to blame - fast-food joints or food manufacturers or even ourselves for having too little willpower. But the ultimate reason for obesity may be rooted deep within our genes. Obedient to the inevitable laws of evolution, the human race adapted over millions of years to living in a world of scarcity, where it paid to eat every good-tasting thing in sight when you could find it. Although our physiology has stayed pretty much the same for the past 50,000 years or so,we humans have utterly transformed our environment. Over the past century especially, technology has almost completely removed physical exercise from the day-to-day lives of most Americans. At the same time, it has filled supermarket shelves with cheap, mass-produced, good-tasting food that is packed with calories. And finally, technology has allowed advertisers to deliver constant, virtually irresistible messages that say "Eat this now" to everyone old enough to watch TV. This artificial environment is most pervasive in the U. S. and other industrialized countries, and that’’s exactly where the fat crisis is most acute. The author warns that overweight has
对可能导致甲类传染病传播的菌种、毒种的采集、保藏和使用，由哪一部门批准
A. climbB. doubtfulC. FebruaryD. thumb
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