题目内容
Plastic is the panacea of the ages. Nearly every man-made object (1)_____ (2)_____ of, or at least (3)_____ its very structure, to this wonder compound. Rain slickers, computer terminals, automobile engine parts, coffee cups (and the sugar stirrers too), breast implants, toy soldiers—they are all made up of plastic, or one of its many (4)_____ Since the (5)_____ of civilization, humankind bas been experimenting (6)_____ a multifunctional material—one that had to be equally strong and lightweight—to carry, contain and protect valuables. (7)_____ it could carry, contain and protect humans too, even better. Generations of tinkerers and scientists set off (8)_____ the challenge, striking gold some 170 years ago. By mixing natural rubber with sulphur they created the world"s most utilized material ever. In developing a (9)_____, malleable and durable substance, the most important inventions of the industrial age were to follow shortly thereafter. The automobile and airplane industries, to (10)_____ just two, owe their very existence to plastic. And, (11)_____ celluloid plastic strips, the Lumiere Brothers would never have brought moving pictures to the big screen. The development of plastic is a story of human (12)_____, ingenuity and luck. (13)_____ the legend now goes, in 1839, the American inventor Charles Goodyear (the famous tyre company would later use his name) was experimenting with the sulphur treatment of natural rubber when he dropped a piece of sulphur-treated rubber on a stove. The heat seemed to give rubber (14)_____ properties. It was stronger, more (15)_____ to abrasions more elastic, much less (16)_____ to temperature, (17)_____ to gases, and highly resistant to chemicals and electric (18)_____ Eyeing this as a cheaply and easily reproduced construction material, a whirlwind of work (19)_____ and the birth of (20)_____ plastic and plastic-derivatives were born from camphor to celluloid to rayon; cellophane, polyvinyl chloride (or PVC); styrofoam and nylon were soon to follow.
查看答案
搜索结果不匹配？点我反馈
更多问题
Plastic is the panacea of the ages. Nearly every man-made object (1)_____ (2)_____ of, or at least (3)_____ its very structure, to this wonder compound. Rain slickers, computer terminals, automobile engine parts, coffee cups (and the sugar stirrers too), breast implants, toy soldiers—they are all made up of plastic, or one of its many (4)_____ Since the (5)_____ of civilization, humankind bas been experimenting (6)_____ a multifunctional material—one that had to be equally strong and lightweight—to carry, contain and protect valuables. (7)_____ it could carry, contain and protect humans too, even better. Generations of tinkerers and scientists set off (8)_____ the challenge, striking gold some 170 years ago. By mixing natural rubber with sulphur they created the world"s most utilized material ever. In developing a (9)_____, malleable and durable substance, the most important inventions of the industrial age were to follow shortly thereafter. The automobile and airplane industries, to (10)_____ just two, owe their very existence to plastic. And, (11)_____ celluloid plastic strips, the Lumiere Brothers would never have brought moving pictures to the big screen. The development of plastic is a story of human (12)_____, ingenuity and luck. (13)_____ the legend now goes, in 1839, the American inventor Charles Goodyear (the famous tyre company would later use his name) was experimenting with the sulphur treatment of natural rubber when he dropped a piece of sulphur-treated rubber on a stove. The heat seemed to give rubber (14)_____ properties. It was stronger, more (15)_____ to abrasions more elastic, much less (16)_____ to temperature, (17)_____ to gases, and highly resistant to chemicals and electric (18)_____ Eyeing this as a cheaply and easily reproduced construction material, a whirlwind of work (19)_____ and the birth of (20)_____ plastic and plastic-derivatives were born from camphor to celluloid to rayon; cellophane, polyvinyl chloride (or PVC); styrofoam and nylon were soon to follow.
Britain"s bosses would have you believe that business in Britain is groaning under red tape and punitive tax levels, inhibiting enterprise and putting British firms at a disadvantage compared with overseas competitors. As usual, reality paints a far different picture from the tawdry image scrawled by the CBI and Tory frontbenchers. Not only do British businesses pay lower levels of corporation tax than their counterparts abroad but they benefit from the most savage legal hamstringing of trade unionism. But boardroom fat cats in Britain have one further advantage over their competitors, which is their total inability to feel any sense of shame. The relatively poor performance since the 1990s of pension investment funds, overseen by the top companies themselves, has brought about a wide-ranging cull of occupational pension schemes. Final salary schemes have been axed in favour of money purchase or have been barred to new employees and, in many companies, staff have been told that they will have to increase pensions fund payments to ensure previously guaranteed benefits. At a time when the government has been deliberately running down the value of the state retirement pension and driving pensioners towards means-tested benefits, the increasingly shaky nature of occupational schemes has brought about higher levels of insecurity among working people. However, it"s not all doom and gloom. There is a silver lining. Unfortunately, that silver lining, doesn"t shine too brightly outside the corridors of corporate power, where directors are doing what they are best at—looking after number one. Bosses are not only slurping up huge salaries, each-way bonuses and golden parachutes. They have also, as TUC general secretary Brendan Barber says, got "their snouts in a pensions trough." If having contributions worth one-thirtieth of their salary each year paid into a pension scheme is good enough for directors, why do most workers only receive one-sixtieth And if companies only donate 6 percent of an employee"s salary for money purchase schemes, why do they give 20430 percent for directors" schemes The answer, which will be no secret to many trade unionists, is that we live in a class- divided society in which big business and the rich call the shots. The Child Poverty Action Group revelation that Britain also has the worst regional social inequality in the industrialised world—second only to Mexico—illustrates how fatuous are claims that this country enjoys social justice and opportunities for all. The stark facts of inequality, based on class, gender, age and race, that are outlined in the CPAG Poverty book ought to dictate a new government approach to tackling poverty. Inequality and poverty cannot be tackled by allowing big business and the rich to dodge their responsibilities to society and to use their positions of power to seize the lion"s share. The author seems to imply that ______.
Plastic is the panacea of the ages. Nearly every man-made object (1)_____ (2)_____ of, or at least (3)_____ its very structure, to this wonder compound. Rain slickers, computer terminals, automobile engine parts, coffee cups (and the sugar stirrers too), breast implants, toy soldiers—they are all made up of plastic, or one of its many (4)_____ Since the (5)_____ of civilization, humankind bas been experimenting (6)_____ a multifunctional material—one that had to be equally strong and lightweight—to carry, contain and protect valuables. (7)_____ it could carry, contain and protect humans too, even better. Generations of tinkerers and scientists set off (8)_____ the challenge, striking gold some 170 years ago. By mixing natural rubber with sulphur they created the world"s most utilized material ever. In developing a (9)_____, malleable and durable substance, the most important inventions of the industrial age were to follow shortly thereafter. The automobile and airplane industries, to (10)_____ just two, owe their very existence to plastic. And, (11)_____ celluloid plastic strips, the Lumiere Brothers would never have brought moving pictures to the big screen. The development of plastic is a story of human (12)_____, ingenuity and luck. (13)_____ the legend now goes, in 1839, the American inventor Charles Goodyear (the famous tyre company would later use his name) was experimenting with the sulphur treatment of natural rubber when he dropped a piece of sulphur-treated rubber on a stove. The heat seemed to give rubber (14)_____ properties. It was stronger, more (15)_____ to abrasions more elastic, much less (16)_____ to temperature, (17)_____ to gases, and highly resistant to chemicals and electric (18)_____ Eyeing this as a cheaply and easily reproduced construction material, a whirlwind of work (19)_____ and the birth of (20)_____ plastic and plastic-derivatives were born from camphor to celluloid to rayon; cellophane, polyvinyl chloride (or PVC); styrofoam and nylon were soon to follow.
Success, it is often said, has many fathers—and one of the many fathers of computing, that most successful of industries, was Charles Babbage, a 19th-century British mathematician. Exasperated by errors in the mathematical tables that were widely used as calculation aids at the time, Babbage dreamed of building a mechanical engine that could produce flawless tables automatically. But his attempts to make such a machine in the 1920s failed, and the significance of his work was only rediscovered this century. Next year, at last, the first set of printed tables should emerge from a calculating "difference engine" built to Babbage"s design. Babbage will have been vindicated. But the realization of his dream will also underscore the extent to which he was a man born ahead of his time. The effort to prove that Babbage"s designs were logically and practically sound began in 1985, when a team of researchers at the Science Museum in London set out to build a difference engine in time for the 200th anniversary of Babbage"s birth in 1992. The team, led by the museum"s curator of computing, Doron Swade, constructed a monstrous device of bronze, iron and steel. It was 11 feet long, seven feet tall, weighed three tons, cost around $500 000 and took a year to piece together. And it worked perfectly, cranking out successive values of seventh-order polynomial equations to 31 significant figures. But it was incomplete. To save money, an entire section of the machine, the printer, was omitted. To Babbage, the printer was a vital part of design. Even if the engine produced the correct answers, there was still the risk that a transcription or typesetting error would result in the finished mathematical tables being inaccurate. The only way to guarantee error-free tables was to automate the printing process as well. So his plans included specifications for a printer almost as complicated as the calculating engine itself, with adjustable margins, two separate fonts, and the ability to print in two, three or four columns. In January, after years of searching for a sponsor for the printer, the Science Museum announced that a backer had been found. Nathan Myhrvold, the chief technology officer at Microsoft, agreed to pay for its construction (which is expected to cost $373,000 with one proviso: that the Science Museum team would build him an identical calculating engine and printer to decorate his new home on Lake Washington, near Seattle). Construction of the printer will begin—in full view of the public—at the Science Museum later this month. The full machine will be completed next year. It is a nice irony that Babbage"s plans should be realized only thanks to an infusion of cash from a man who got rich in the computer revolution that Babbage helped to foment. More striking still, even using 20th-century manufacturing technology the engine will have cost over $830 000 to build. Allowing for inflation, this is roughly a third of what it might have cost to build in Babbage"s day-in contrast to the cost of electronic-computer technology, which halves in price every 18 months. That suggests that, even had Babbage succeeded, a Victorian computer revolution based on mechanical technology would not necessarily have followed. What can be inferred from the passage
微信支付 
支付宝支付