[单项选择]In the past twenty years the replacement rate has been falling in every country.

[单项选择]In the past twenty years the replacement rate has been falling in every country.

[单项选择]In the past 10 years, the company has gradually ______ all of its smaller rivals.
A. engaged
B. occupied
C. monopolized
D. absorbed

[单项选择]The rising crime rate has become major concern of______ society.


A. the, the
B. a, /
C. /, the
D. a, a

[单项选择]In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the number of technical terms in the terminology of


A. farming.
B. sports
C. government
D. fishery

[单项选择]For many years, Mark has been suffering from the ______ that he is a great man.
A. elusion
B. illusion
C. allusion
D. delusion

[单项选择]For nearly 50 years, Spock has been a （）author writing 13 books including an autobiography and numerous magazine articles.
A. prevalent
B. precautious
C. prospective
D. prolific

[单项选择]A boy of nine who is" three years retarded" has a mental age of ______.


A. six
B. nine
C. twelve
D. three

[单项选择]For years Du Pont has helped firemen by ______.


A. putting out many fierce fires.
B. allowing them more time in putting out a fire
C. doing scientific research on fire wear.
D. revolting against fire authorities.

[单项选择]In only 20 years the country has been _________an advanced industrial power.


A. transported to
B. transmitted from
C. transformed into
D. transferred to

[单项选择]In recent years there has been a decline in European applications to immigration to Canada and an increase in those from Asia, the Caribbean and ______.
A. the U.S.
B. New Zealand
C. Australia
D. North America

[单项选择]In the past ten years skyscrapers have developed ______ in Chicago and New York City.


A. homogeneously
B. simultaneously
C. spontaneously
D. harmoniously

[单项选择]

Text 1
The past 40 years have witnessed an extraordinary evolution. From slow expensive machines controlled by punched cards, computers have become low-cost, powerful units taking up no more space than a briefcase. Simultaneously, our world has become interlaced with telephone wires, optic fibers, undersea cables, microwave links, television channels and satellite communications.
At the crossing of these two developments stands the Internet—a direct result of computer technology intersecting with communication technology. But for many in the world of today’s media, this is merely a first landmark in what promises to be a giant upheaval in the way people communicate, relax and work. This is the era of digital convergence.
According to a recent article in Scientific American, convergence is in principle "the union of audio, video and data communications into a single source, received on a single device, delivered by a single connectio
A. the Internet.
B. the digital technology.
C. the mobile phone.
D. Personal Computer.

[单项选择] During the past 15 years, the most important component of executive pay packages, and the one most responsible for the large increase in the level of such compensation, has been stock-option grants. The increased use of option grants was justified as a way to align executives’ interests with shareholders’. For various tax, accounting, and regulatory reasons, stock-option grants have largely comprised " at-the-money options", rights to purchase shares at an "exercise price" equal to the company’s stock price on the grant date. In such at-the-money options, the selection of the grant date for awarding options determines the options’ exercise price and thus can have a significant effect on their value. Earlier research by financial economists on backdating practices focused on the extent to which the company’s stock price went up abnormally after the grant date. My colleagues and I focused instead on how a grant-date’s price ranked in the distribution of stock prices during the month of the grant. Studying the universe of about 19,000 at-the-money, unscheduled grants awarded to public companies’ CEOs during the decade 1996-2005, we found a clear relation between the likelihood of a day’s being selected as a grant date for awarding options, and the rank of the day’s stock price within the price distribution of the month: a day was most likely to be chosen if the stock price was at the lowest level of the month, second most likely to be chosen if the price was at the second-lowest level, and so forth. There is an especially large incidence of "lucky grants" ( defined as grants awarded on days on which the stock price was at the lowest level of the month) : 12 percent of all CEO option grants were lucky grants, while only 4 percent were awarded at the highest price of the month. The passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in August 2002 required firms to report grants within two days of any award. Most firms complied with this requirement, but more than 20 percent of grants continued to be reported after a long delay. Thus, the legislation could be expected to reduce but not eliminate backdating. The patterns of CEO luck are consistent with this expectation: the percentage of grants that were lucky was a high 15 percent before enactment of the law, and declined to a lower, but still abnormally high, level of 8 percent afterwards. Altogether, we estimate that about 1,150 CEO stock-option grants owed their financially advantageous status to opportunistic timing rather than to mere luck. This practice was spread over a significant number of CEOs and firms: we estimate that about 850 CEOs (about 10 percent) and about 720 firms (about 12 percent) received or provided such lucky grants. In addition, we estimate that about 550 additional grants at the second-lowest or third-lowest price of the month owed their status to opportunistic timing. The cases that have come under scrutiny thus far have led to a widespread impression that opportunistic timing has been primarily concentrated in " new economy" firms. But while the frequency of lucky grants has been somewhat higher in such firms, more than 80 percent of the opportunistically timed grants have been awarded in other sectors. Indeed, there is a significantly higher-than-normal incidence of lucky grants in each of the economy’s 12 industries. According to the author, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act（）
A. effectively eliminated the practice of backdating
B. leads to a larger percentage of lucky grants
C. guarantees that grants are reported immediately
D. helps to reduce the incidence of lucky grants