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Read the following passages. Each passage is followed by several questions. Respond to the questions using information from the passage. Remember to write the answers on the answer sheet.

 

Section A
 

Social networks connect people at low cost; this can be beneficial for entrepreneurs and small businesses looking  to expand their contact base. These networks often act as a customer relationship management tool for companies selling products and services. (1) ________ Since businesses operate globally, social networks can make it easier to keep in touch with contacts around the world.

(2) ________ The advantage of using a dedicated medical social networking site is that all the members are screened against the state licensing board list of practitioners. The role of social networks is especially of interest to pharmaceutical companies who spend approximately “32 percent of their marketing dollars”attempting to influence the opinion leaders of social networks.

(3) ________ The popular site Facebook has been cloned for various countries and languages and some specializing in connecting students and faculty.

Several websites are beginning to tap into the power of the social networking model for social good. Such models may be highly successful for connecting otherwise fragmented industries and small organizations without the resources to reach a broader audience with interested and passionate users. (4)________  

Few social networks currently charge money for membership. In part, this may be because social networking isa relatively new service, and the value of using them has not been firmly established in customers’ minds. Companies such as MySpace and Facebook sell online advertising on their site. (5) ________ Some believe that the deeper information that the sites have on each user will allow much better targeted advertising than any other site can currently provide. Sites are also seeking other ways to make money, such as by creating an online marketplace or by selling professional information and social connections to businesses.

 

Complete the article with the following sentences. There are two extra statements that you do not need to use.

 

A. Companies can also use social networks for advertising in the form of banners and text ads.

B. Hence, they are seeking large memberships, and charging for membership would be counter productive.

C. Various social networking sites have sprung up catering to different languages and countries.

D. Social network services are increasingly being used in legal and criminal investigations.

E. Users benefit by interacting with a like-minded community and finding a channel for their energy and giving.

F. On large social networking services, there have been growing concerns about users giving out too much personal information.

G. Social networks are beginning to be adopted by healthcare professionals as a means to manage institutionalknowledge, disseminate peer to peer knowledge and to highlight individual physicians and institutions.

 

Section B

 

High in the Mojave Desert, 130 miles northeast of Los Angeles, lies a vast field of mirrors. Crisscrossing rows of glass and metal, glinting in the sunlight, cover a full square mile of dirt. It is a fully operational array of power plants churning out an average of 180 megawatts of electricity.

 

Most people think of solar power as a flat panel on every rooftop. But photovoltaic panels have limitations. They work fine when the sun is strong, but when the clouds roll in you’d better have batteries to run the TV and dishwasher. And even on the sunniest days the panels are not very well suited for cities, where roof space is limited. For decades, engineers have been working on ways to catch the sun over a broad area concentrating it and using it to produce electricity on the same scale as centralized coal, hydro or nuclear power plants—hundreds of megawatts at a time. Several pilot plants have been operating in California, some for decades, but so far they have not had enough volume to force costs down to competitive levels.

 

Some countries are expected to go with much larger plants capable of generating more than 100 megawatts each. If some of the projects are completed, costs could come down from the current 15 cents a kilowatt -hour for the Mojave plant to 8 cents per kwh in the next 8 to 10 years. That would goa long way toward closing the gap with gas and oil, which now cost as little as 4 cents per kwh.

The Mojave plant is one of the world’s first commercial solar power plants, with five solar Electric Generating Systems (SEGS) supplying electricity to southern California. The basic component of a SEGS plant is a row of mirrors that reflect sunlight onto a pipe filled with oil. The oil heats up and is used to produce steam, which turns an electrical turbine. Assemblea few dozen rows of these trough -mirrors, and you have got capacity to generate 30 megawatts of power, enough for half a small town. The problem with trough technology is that the oil loses its heat too quickly. When the sun goes down, so does the power.

A Solar Tres design uses molten salt instead of oil. Since salt holds more heat longer than oil, it can drive turbine through the night. Concentric rings of mirrors direct sunlight toa tank of molten salt. When the stuff is hot enough, some goes straight to a generator to produce steam, while the rest is stored for use at night. The 15-megawatt Solar Tres plant would be the first long-term commercial power production project. Since the electricity is expected to be costly close to 20 cents per kwh, the Spanish government plans to subsidize the plant.

The next big thing—dish systems—is already in the works. The building block of sucha plant is a parabolic mirror, shaped likea satellite dish, which reflects sunlight onto a small generator suspended in front. The heat drives a turbine. Theoretically a dish configuration would produce more energy per acre than other solar concentrating plants, that is, if engineers could figure out a good way of linking many dishes together.

 

Answer the following questions according to the passage.

 

6. What is the disadvantage of the Mojave plant compared with Solar Tres design?

 

7. What is the present cost of for the Mojave plant?

 

8. What kinds of types of solar power plants are mainly mentioned in the passage?

 

9. Why couldn’t we widely use solar power as flat-panel ones in cities?

 

10. Theoretically, what is the advantage of dish configuration compared with other solar concentrating plants?

 

Section C

 

Aimlessness has hardly been typical of the postwar Japan whose productivity and social harmony are the envy of the United States and Europe. But increasingly the Japanese are seeinga decline of the traditional work-moral values. Ten years ago young people were hardworking and saw their jobs as their primary reason for being, but now Japan has largely fulfilled its economic needs, and young people don’t know where they should go next.

The coming of age of the postwar baby boom and an entry of women into the male-dominated job market have limited the opportunities of teen-agers who are already questioning the heavy personal sacrifices involved in climbing Japan’s rigid social ladder to good schools and jobs. In a recent survey, it was found that only 24.5 percent of Japanese students were fully satisfied with school life, compared with 67.2 percent of students in the United States. In addition, far more Japanese workers expressed dissatisfaction with their jobs than did their counterparts in the 10 other countries surveyed.

While often praised by foreigners for its emphasis on the basics, Japanese education tends to stress test taking and mechanical learning over creativity and self-expression. “Those things that do not show up in the test scores— personality, ability, courage or humanity—are completely ignored,”says Toshiki Kaifu, chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s education committee. “Frustration against this kind of thing leads kids to drop out and run wild.” Last year Japan experienced 2,125 incidents of school violence, including 929 assaults on teachers. Amid the outcry, many conservative leaders are seeking a return to the prewar emphasis on moral education. Last year Mitsuo Setoyama, who was then education minister, raised eyebrows when he argued that liberal reforms introduced by the American occupation authorities after World War II had weakened the“Japanese morality of respect for parents.”

But that may have more to do with Japanese life-styles. “In Japan,”says educator Yoko Muro, “it’s nevera question of whether you enjoy your job and your life, but only how much you can endure.”With economic growth has come centralization; fully 76 percent of Japan’s 119 million citizens live in cities where community and the extended family have been abandoned in favor of isolated, two generation households. Urban Japanese have long endured lengthy commutes  (travels to and from work) and crowded living conditions, but as the old group and family values weaken, the discomfort is beginning to tell. In the past decade, the Japanese divorce rate, while still well below that of the United States, has increased by more than 50 percent, and suicides have increased by nearly one-quarter.

 

Complete the summary with words from the passage, changing the form where necessary, with only one word for each blank.

 

Nowadays, the traditional work-moral values of the Japanese are sharply (11)________ . Although Japan has fulfilled its economic needs, the young just don’t know where they should go next. The opportunities of the teenagers have also been  (12)________ because of the postwar baby boom and the entry of women. Very few Japanese students and workers were (13)________ with their life. The (14)________ of the education towards personality, ability, courage or humanity leads kids to drop out and run wild. Mitsuo Setoyama argued that the “Japanese morality of respect for parents”had been (15)________ because of the liberal reforms.