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Could the bad old days of economic decline be about to return Since OPEC agreed to supply-cuts in March, the price of crude oil has jumped to almost $ 26 a barrel, up from less than $10 last December. This near-tripling of oil price calls up scary memories of the 1973 oil shocks resulted in double-digit inflation and global economic decline. So where are the headlines warning of gloom and doom this timeThe oil price was given another push up this week when Iraq suspended oil exports. Strengthening economic growth, at the same time as winter grips the northern hemisphere, could push the price higher still in the short term.Yet there are good reasons to expect the economic consequences now to be less severe than in the 1970s. In most countries the cost of crude oil now accounts for a smaller share of the price of petrol than it did in the 1970s. In Europe, taxes account for up to four-fifths of the retail price, so even quite big changes in the price of crude have a more muted effect on pump prices than in the past.Rich economies are also less dependent on oil than they were, and so less sensitive to swings in the oil price. Energy conservation, a shift to other fuels and a decline in the importance of heavy, energy-intensive industries have reduced oil consumption. Software, consultancy and mobile telephones use far less oil than steel or car production. For each dollar of GDP (in constant prices) rich economies now use nearly 50% less oil than in 1973. The OECD estimated in its latest Economic Outlook that, if oil prices averaged $ 22 a barrel for a full year, compared with $13 in 1998, this would increase the oil import bill in rich economies by only 0.25--0.5% of GDP. That is less than one-quarter of the income loss in 1974 or 1980. On the other hand, oil-importing emerging economies--to which heavy industry has shifted--have become more energy-intensive, and so could be more seriously squeezed.One more reason not to lose sleep over the rise in oil prices is that, unlike the rises in the 1970s, it has not occurred against the background of general commodity-price inflation and global excess demand. A sizable portion of the world is only just emerging from economic decline. The Economist’s commodity price index is broadly unchanging from a year ago. In 1973 commodity prices jumped by 70%, and in 1979 by almost 30%. It can be inferred from the text that the retail price of petrol will go up dramatically if ().
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Comparisons were drawn between the development of television in the 20th century and the diffusion of printing in the 15th and 16th centuries. Yet much had happened (21) . As was discussed before, it was not (22) the 19th century that the newspaper became the dominant pre-electronic (23) , following in the wake of the pamphlet and the book and in the (24) of the periodical. It was during the same time that the communications revolution (25) up, beginning with transport, the railway, and leading (26) through the telegraph, the telephone, radio, and motion pictures (27) the 20th-century world of the motor car and the air plane. Not everyone sees that process in (28) . It is important to do so.It is generally recognized, (29) , that the introduction of the computer in the early 20th century, (30) by the invention of the integrated circuit during the 1960s, radically changed the process, (31) its impact on the media was not immediately (32) . As time went by, computers became smaller and more powerful, and they became "personal" too, as well as (33) , with display becoming sharper and storage (34) increasing. They were thought of, like people, (35) generations, with the distance between generations much (36) .It was within the computer age that the term "information society" began to be widely used to describe the (37) within which we now live. The communications revolution has (38) both work and leisure and how we think and feel both about place and time, but there have been (39) view about its economic, political, social and cultural implications. "Benefits" have been weighed (40) "harmful" outcomes. And generalizations have proved difficult. 21().
阅读下面这篇短文，短文后有2项测试任务：(1)第23～26题要求从所给的6个选项中为第2～5段每段选择1个正确的小标题；(2)第27～30题要求从所给的6个选项中选择4个正确选项，分别完成每个句子。 Estee Lauder Died1 The child of Central European immigrants who created an international cosmetics (化妆品) empire and became one of the most influential women in US, has died on Saturday. Estee Lauder died at her home in Manhattan, New York City, a company spokeswoman said. She was 97.2 Born in Queens, New York in 1908, Lauder was the daughter of a Hungarian mother and a Czech father.3 Lauder began her business career by selling skincare products developed by her uncle John Schotz, a chemist; to beauty salons (美容院) and hotels. In 1930, she married Joseph Lauder who became her* partner. The company, which became known as Estee Lauder, took off after World War II.4 In 1953, the company introduced its first perfume (香水), Youth Dew, the first of a range of fragrances that has now grown to more than 70. They include: Aramis, a line of products for men, launched in 1964; and Clinique, a range of odourless (无嗅的) cosmetics, which followed in 1968.5 By the time she retired in 1995, Lauder was presiding over a multibillion-dollar enterprise, which now ranks number 349 in the Fortune 500 list of largest US companies. In 1998, she was the only woman to feature in Time magazine’s selection of the 20 most important business geniuses of the last century. There were two secrets to her success: her gift for selling things and her tireless energy and determination never to accept second best.6 Even after her retirement at the age of 89, Lauder remained closely involved. Beauty, Lauder believed, was the most important thing in life.7 She wrote in her 1985 autobiography, "Estee, a Success Story": "In a perfect world, we’d all be judged on the sweetness of our souls. But in our less than perfect world, the woman who-looks pretty has a distinct advantage and, usually, the last word." Before marriage, she sold products formulated______
Since the dawn of human ingenuity, people have devised ever more cunning tools to cope with work that is dangerous, boring, burdensome, or just plain nasty. That compulsion has resulted in robotics--the science of conferring various human capabilities on machines. And if scientists have yet to create the mechanical version of science fiction, they have begun to come close.As a result, the modern world is increasingly populated by intelligent gizmos whose presence we barely notice but whose universal existence has removed much human labor. Our factories hum to the rhythm of robot assembly arms. Our banking is done at automated teller terminals that thank us with mechanical politeness for the transaction. Our subway trains are controlled by tireless robo-drivers. And thanks to the continual miniaturization of electronics and micro-mechanics, there are already robot systems that can perform some kinds of brain and bone surgery with submillimeter accuracy--far greater precision that highly skilled physicians can achieve with their hands alone.But if robots are to reach the next stage of laborsaving utility, they will have to operate with less human supervision and be able to make at least a few decisions for themselves--goals that pose a real challenge. "While we know how to tell a robot to handle a specific error," says Dave Lavery, manager of a robotics program at NASA, "we can’t yet give a robot enough ’common sense’ to reliably interact with a dynamic world. "Indeed the quest for true artificial intelligence has produced very mixed results. Despite a spell of initial optimism in the 1960s and 1970s when it appeared that transistor circuits and microprocessors might be able to copy the action of the human brain by the year 2010, researchers lately have begun to extend that forecast by decades if not centuries.What they found, in attempting to model thought, is that the human brain’s roughly one hundred billion nerve cells are much more talented--and human perception far more complicated-than previously imagined. They have built robots that can recognize the error of a machine panel by a fraction of a millimeter in a controlled factory environment. But the human mind can glimpse a rapidly changing scene and immediately disregard the 98 percent that is irrelevant, instantaneously focusing on the monkey at the side of winding forest road or the single suspicious face in a big crowd. The most advanced computer system on Earth can’t approach that kind of ability, and neuroscientists still don’t know quite how we do it. Human ingenuity was initially demonstrated in ().
Since the dawn of human ingenuity, people have devised ever more cunning tools to cope with work that is dangerous, boring, burdensome, or just plain nasty. That compulsion has resulted in robotics--the science of conferring various human capabilities on machines. And if scientists have yet to create the mechanical version of science fiction, they have begun to come close.As a result, the modern world is increasingly populated by intelligent gizmos whose presence we barely notice but whose universal existence has removed much human labor. Our factories hum to the rhythm of robot assembly arms. Our banking is done at automated teller terminals that thank us with mechanical politeness for the transaction. Our subway trains are controlled by tireless robo-drivers. And thanks to the continual miniaturization of electronics and micro-mechanics, there are already robot systems that can perform some kinds of brain and bone surgery with submillimeter accuracy--far greater precision that highly skilled physicians can achieve with their hands alone.But if robots are to reach the next stage of laborsaving utility, they will have to operate with less human supervision and be able to make at least a few decisions for themselves--goals that pose a real challenge. "While we know how to tell a robot to handle a specific error," says Dave Lavery, manager of a robotics program at NASA, "we can’t yet give a robot enough ’common sense’ to reliably interact with a dynamic world. "Indeed the quest for true artificial intelligence has produced very mixed results. Despite a spell of initial optimism in the 1960s and 1970s when it appeared that transistor circuits and microprocessors might be able to copy the action of the human brain by the year 2010, researchers lately have begun to extend that forecast by decades if not centuries.What they found, in attempting to model thought, is that the human brain’s roughly one hundred billion nerve cells are much more talented--and human perception far more complicated-than previously imagined. They have built robots that can recognize the error of a machine panel by a fraction of a millimeter in a controlled factory environment. But the human mind can glimpse a rapidly changing scene and immediately disregard the 98 percent that is irrelevant, instantaneously focusing on the monkey at the side of winding forest road or the single suspicious face in a big crowd. The most advanced computer system on Earth can’t approach that kind of ability, and neuroscientists still don’t know quite how we do it. The word "gizmos" (line 1, paragraph 2) most probably means ().
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