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Business Ideas
A. What makes a business idea good Have you ever thought you had a great idea for a business but didn"t do anything about it, only to find out that, a short while later, someone else did How do you know ff you"ll be able to make the business work
B. If you think you want to start your own business you have to first eliminate any doubts you may have about yourself and your abilities. That means that you have to first identify your own strengths and decide if you"re the type of person who can build a business and make it a success. Once you have determined that, then you need a good—no, make that a great—idea for a business.
Do you have what it takes
C. There are some basic skills that you, as a potential business owner, should have. If you don"t have them then you need to at least have a friend or family member who does or be willing to pay an outside service or consultant to do these things for you.
D. Financial management and accounting—If you don"t have the skills now, you either need to take the time to learn, or have someone else you can depend on to handle this side of the business for you.
E. Marketing—You have to be able to sell yourself or your business. If people don"t know about you then you won"t get any business, and if you don"t have any business then, technically, you aren"t really in business. So, marketing is a very important part of your skill set. Fortunately, it is also an easy skill to farm out to experts.
F. Management skills—You must have the management skills and organizational skills in order to run your business. If you have no management experience at least start reading management books of all types that would apply to your business.
G. Determination, enthusiasm, energy—No one ever said being your own boss was easy! In fact, you"ll probably work harder than ever—you"ll just get to reap more of the benefits. You have to have the energy to make your business succeed. If you have any doubts then maybe you should rethink the idea. If you read the success stories behind many businesses, you"ll see the recurring theme that the business owner had no doubts that he or she would succeed, or that the thought of failing never entered their minds.
Identifying your talents
H. For some, coming up with the business idea is the easy part. They simply turn a hobby, or something else that they love doing, into a business. In some cases, this works great. In other cases, it doesn"t work so great. Why the difference Because you can"t just try on the pants when you want to buy the whole suit. In other words, there are a lot of different things to consider when you"re trying to come up with an idea for a business that will fit you.
I. Those people that have made a go of it by converting their hobby into a business were lucky in that there was a market for their business in the first place. It doesn"t matter how skilled you are and how much you love building those miniature replicas (复制品) of Star Wars (tm) Millennium Falcons inside authentic 1940"s 6-ounce Coca-Cola(tm) bottles, if there aren"t people who want to buy them (i. e. a market) then you"re not going to be able to support yourself doing it. It will still be a "hobby".
J. It still makes sense, however, to start a business that is based on things you know and are good at. You just can"t stop there. It is also possible to start a business based on something you know nothing about. In this case, however, you probably should try and learn as much as you can before you get in too deeply. Or, consider buying a franchise (特许经营权) that offers training, or an existing business from someone you can pump for information. You can also try working in the industry for a few months to pick up information. You may be surprised at how much you can learn even in low level positions.
Finding business ideas that fit your talents
K. The Internet is full of web sites that list page after page of business ideas. We don"t list those ideas here, but have provided links to some sites that do on our Links page. What we want to do is to help you discover and evaluate the ideas that appeal to you and best fit you as an individual.
L. Any list of business ideas you find will basically boil down to three types of businesses. Those business types are manufactured products that you build and sell yourself, distributed products or services that you buy wholesale and then resell at a higher price, and services that you provide.
M. For those three business types, there are typically four possible strategies. The strategies you might use include inventing a completely new product for a completely new market, inventing a completely new product for an existing market, improving on an existing product and selling it to the existing market, and selling an existing product to a completely new market.
N. Coming up with an idea for any of these areas requires some observation skills and creative thought. Start with the things you know about and enjoy and look for ways to make improvements, or sell them to new people. Be observant everywhere you go. Look at how existing businesses operate and make note of the problems you see. Can you come up with a way to eliminate those problems Can you see a way to improve the service, product or marketability of it Do you see trends in the market such as larger retired populations Are there special products or services that that increasing market will need
O. Brainstorm with friends, write everything down, and study your list often. Make notes as you think of them. Ideas multiply into lots of new ideas. Evaluate these ideas based on what you like and what you know about. Once you"ve narrowed the list down to the finalists, read on to find out how to evaluate those ideas.
Other deciding factors
P. There are few more things to consider when thinking about starting your own business. They include the followings: Your own level of commitment—Consider the extent or length to which you would go to make your business work (i. e. travel, commuting, relocating, etc.) Your family"s support and approval of your idea—Having the support of your family is very important to the success of your business, as well as the stress levels you endure in working to making it happen. Make sure you have the support you"ll need both emotionally and from a workload standpoint. Zoning restrictions for the location you are looking at—Make sure you know the restrictions on the types of businesses that can occupy a space (particularly if you are operating your business out of your home). Your town planning office or City Hall can provide that information. Your willingness to seek outside help if you need it—Don"t hesitate to get professional help for your business. There are many resources that can provide you with great ideas and information that can help manage more efficiently and perhaps even find that " edge (优势)". The compatibility of the business with your lifestyle—If you"re a night person and hate mornings then you probably don"t want to open a doughnut shop. Make sure your business idea fits the schedule you work best in.
(选自The Washington Post)The person who wants to set up his business should first know what his advantages are.

答案： B。[解析] B段主要讲述了创立企业的人员应该首先摈弃对自己能力的疑虑，建立自信，并了解自己的优势所在和性格特点，最终获...

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Shopping and the Internet, Making It Click
A. Terry Lundgren and Kevin Ryan know and like each other. But when it comes to the future of retailing the boss of Macy"s, an American department-store giant, and the chief executive of Gilt Groupe, an online retailer, disagree wildly. Mr. Lundgren remains a firm believer in an empire of bricks and mortar (实体店). Mr. Ryan is betting big on online-only selling.
B. "It used to be mail-order catalogues killing physical stores, then it was TV shopping and now it is online retail," says Mr. Lundgren. Although he will not be pinned down on whether the Internet is a threat to shopkeepers or an opportunity for them, he is convinced that his chain is on the right path. Macy"s is embracing "omnichannel" integration, that is, selling stuff on television, through mail-order catalogues and online, as well as keeping its department stores. The company runs 810 shops across America under the mid-price, mid-market Macy"s brand and 38 more luxurious Bloomingdale"s outlets. Mr. Ryan argues that bricks-and-mortar shops are gravely threatened by Amazon and other online-only retailers, and says he can see "no evidence that there are big opportunities for traditional retailers in online retail."
C. Overall, retail sales in America are pretty flat, so the double-digit growth of online sellers is coming at the expense of physical shops. Amazon"s sales in the past year were $48 billion, compared with Macy"s $26 billion. Last year online sales in America reached $188 billion, about 8% of total retail sales. They are forecast to reach $270 billion by 2015. So far, Mr. Lundgren has good reason not to worry that the sky is falling. Most relevant for Mr. Lundgren"s debate with his friendly rival, online sales from the websites of Macy"s and Bloomingdale"s jumped by 40%. This reflects Macy"s efforts to expand its online business. It is building a new logistics (物流) center for online sales in West Virginia and expanding an existing one in Tennessee. And it is fixing a glaring flaw in its Internet-sales operation: until now online shoppers have only been able to buy goods in Macy"s warehouses; soon they will be able to order items from the stock of its stores.
Magic mirrors and Facebook friends
D. Mr. Lundgren is keen to continue experimenting with ways to use the Internet. In 2010 Macy"s introduced a virtual fitting room where customers tried on digital representations of clothes through their reflection in a "magic mirror" and shared them with their friends on Facebook. "It didn"t work," admits Mr. Lundgren. So Macy"s is now trying out virtual models. With its thriving Internet business, Macy"s is ahead of many other retailers.
E. Walmart, the world"s biggest, waited for a long time and hesitated over its online strategy until it finally decided to "make winning of e-commerce a key priority", as Mike Duke, its chief executive, puts it. Like an increasing number of store chains, Walmart is inviting online shoppers to pick up their purchases from its physical stores if that suits them. Since last June they have been able to do so on the day they place their order. Now, says Joel Anderson, who runs the company"s online business, more than half of Internet orders are collected from stores. The company claims this is saving shoppers millions of dollars in delivery charges. In spite of these recent improvements, Walmart is not yet reaping big profits from its online business. It does not break out its Internet sales from the total, but they are still tiny for its size.
F. There are some retailers, in particular those at the extremes of the market, that can safely ignore the threat from shoppers" migration to the Internet. At the luxury end, Yves Saint Laurent is unlikely to start selling its ball gowns over the net; at the cost-conscious end, dollar stores will continue "piling it high and selling it cheap". But the vast majority of retailers in between may have little choice but to counter the rise of online-only rivals by creating strong Internet operations of their own. The biggest threat to most of them is Amazon, the undisputed champion of online selling. Other online-only retailers have little chance of felling this giant. Their best bet is to be distinctive.
G. Mr. Ryan"s Gilt Groupe is modeled on France"s Vente Privée, an online shopping club for expensive branded stuff at reduced prices. The customers" average age for Mr. Ryan"s business is 34. Consumers aged 24 to 35 already do about a quarter of their shopping online, says John Deighton of Harvard Business School. In Mr. Deighton"s view the Internet-retail revolution is over, in that online buying is well established and will only keep growing. However, he says it is unclear how important a sales tool social networks like Facebook and Twitter, to which some online retailers are pinning their hopes, will turn out to be.
H. Some bricks-and-mortar retailers have already had disappointing experiences trying to sell through social media. Over the past year GAP, J. C. Penney and Nordstrom have opened and closed storefronts on Facebook. The social-networking site, which this month filed for an IPO (首次公开募股), is trying hard to be a top shopping destination for its 845m members. Yet so far people still tend to visit Facebook to socialize with their friends.
Shopping by smartphone
I. What does seem clear is that as personal computing goes mobile people are buying more via smart phones. Four years ago hardly anyone bought things on their mobile devices but today nearly one-quarter of Gilt Groupe"s revenue comes from smart phone shoppers; on some weekends the proportion reaches 40%. Nearly one third of people living in America own a smart phone, and 70% of these use it to do searches while they are inside a shop, usually to compare prices. "By 2014 mobile Internet will overtake desktop Internet usage for shopping," predicts Nigel Morris, chief executive of Aegis Media Americas.
Order online, pay cash in store
J. The most clued-up shopkeepers realize that they must make the most of such advantages over online rivals, and that to do so they must make their stores more enjoyable places to visit. In 2010 Macy"s company launched a training programme for its more than 130,000 sales people, "MAGIC Selling", which coached them to be more helpful and friendlier with customers. It is tailoring the merchandise stocked in its stores more closely to local tastes. Retailers with lavishly furnished stores and helpful assistants will increasingly have to put up with free-riders who come into the shop to check out the products and get some advice, before sneaking away to buy them for less online.
Have you got this in my size
K. However, there is no single recipe for retailing success in the Internet age. Retailers will need to balance their investment between staff, locations, inventory and online operations, says José Alvarez of Harvard Business School. For some expensive products it makes sense to have a low inventory, a big investment in showrooms, elaborate online operations and well qualified sales people. For more commoditized items it is more important to have a big inventory than a flashy display. Things that are increasingly being bought online must be swept off the shelves to make way for products that people still want to examine and compare before buying.
L. Whatever priorities retailers set, their physical stores are likely to shrink as the share of sales made online keeps rising. The retailers who want to survive the drift online are the ones "listening to the dynamic demands of customers," says Walmart"s Mr. Anderson.
(选自The Economist)John Deighton of Harvard Business School thinks that shopping online is well established.

答案： G。[解析] G段第四句主要介绍了约翰·戴顿认为在线购物模式已经很好地确立，并且将持续增长。题干中的John Deigh...

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How Customs Work
A. One of the little rituals all international travelers go through is customs. To most people, this is just another stop in an airport or a minor inconvenience at a country"s borders. But when you go through customs, you are actually taking part in a key component of the global economy.
B. A nation"s customs service has many responsibilities. At its most basic level, its purpose is to regulate what comes into and goes out of a country. The foremost element of this regulation is controlling international trade. The concept of trade is as old as civilization itself. If my tribe has a huge supply of bananas, and your tribe has a huge supply of fur, we will trade goods so that both our tribes can eat and both can keep warm. In the modern world, international trade is based on money, but it works in pretty much the same way.
C. Any nation wants its own businesses to do well, so most of the time they prefer their people buy domestic goods over competing foreign goods. But in many cases, goods are available cheaper in another country than in your country, and people naturally want to buy them at the lower price. To tilt the balance in favor of domestic businesses, governments impose tariffs, also called duty, on foreign goods coming into the country.
D. In addition to encouraging domestic trade, duty also gives the nation a "piece of the action" when somebody buys something produced overseas. Customs agencies are often major sources of revenue for the government. The US Customs Service, for example, brings in more money than any other government office except the Internal Revenue Service. To control specific sorts of trade, a government may impose a higher tariff on certain types of goods (alcohol, for example). Certain countries may join together to work out mutually beneficial trade agreements, enabling businesses in those nations to trade more freely with each other than they can with businesses in other nations. This gives an advantage to nations that a country has a good relationship with.
E. Customs agencies also monitor what is being exported from a country. For example, most governments strictly regulate what weapons can be exported to other nations. This is simply a common-sense safety measure: It"s not a good idea to arm enemy nations, so the government has to know who is buying any domestically-produced weaponry. As we"ll see later on, customs agencies also pay careful attention to how much money citizens are transporting out of the country.
F. Duty charges have a huge effect on big businesses, which may import millions of dollars worth of goods every year. To regulate trade on this level, a country"s customs agency must keep track of all shipments that come into the nation"s ports or cross its borders. They can"t check every bit of foreign cargo, of course, so agents pick certain boxes to inspect and certain shipments to scrutinize. In an effort to speed up the process, the US Customs Service is implementing new, computerized systems for processing shipments and charging in, porters.
G. While large businesses are the main importers in a country, trade restrictions also apply to the individual traveler. When you bring home souvenirs (纪念品) from another country, you are actually importing goods. In the United States and many other countries, the customs agency grants each traveler a nominal duty exemption (免除) to allow them to bring back a reasonable amount of goods without having to pay tariffs.
H. In most countries, it isn"t feasible for the customs agency to check all of the goods that every single traveler is importing, so governments have to depend largely on people"s honesty. When you enter a country, you are asked to truthfully report what goods you are importing and make a good faith estimate of their value. They don"t put their entire trust in people"s good character, of course; customs performs a thorough search of some percentage of all travelers.
I. Some customs agencies decide which travelers to search based on random chance. You are asked to press a button on a machine that activates a random number generator. Depending on the number that comes up, either a green light comes on and you can pass through or a red light comes on and the agent searches your bags. Other customs agencies decide who to search based solely on intuition. After many years on the job, a customs agent develops a keen eye for people who are up to no good. Unlike the police, customs agents are fully authorized to search your luggage, clothes and even your body without any warrant or reason for suspicion. Customs agents often work side-by-side with immigration officials, and in some ports of entry, one inspector may represent both agencies. But at its core, a customs agency is concerned with the things that are coming in and out of a country, rather than the travelers themselves.
J. In addition to monitoring legal imports, a nation"s customs agency also works to keep out illegal or contraband (违禁品) items. Customs agencies must fight the flow of illegal materials across borders. In addition to drugs, customs agencies may watch for weaponry, child pornography (色情资料), counterfeit merchandise and stolen goods. They also watch for people carrying illegally gained money across borders. These sorts of illegal materials make up only one category of contraband goods. Customs agents also stop the importation of legal goods that are a threat to the nation"s security. In most countries, the importation of fruits, meats, animals and plants is heavily regulated due to the fear of disease or ecological imbalance. While it may seem strange that a piece of fruit is considered a threat to national security, the risk of biological contamination is very real. In the late 1980s, one traveler with one piece of contaminated fruit caused an infestation (大量滋生) of Mediterranean fruit flies that destroyed millions of dollars worth of crops in California.
K. Some completely harmless items are deemed contraband simply because of the country they come from. If country A is considered to be a national enemy of country B, or has a record of violating international law, country B (and other countries) might institute an embargo (禁运) against that country (a ban on the importation of country A"s goods). This cuts off potential business for country A, and this may persuade its leaders to change their policies. In the United States, the best known example of this sort of sanction is the embargo against Cuban products. There is a high demand for Cuban cigars in the United States, but they are strictly regulated because of the strained relationship between the United States and Cuba. As with drugs, smugglers are eager to sneak in a supply to meet this demand, and are constantly trying to get around customs.
L. In many countries, the customs agency closely monitors the importing and exporting of cultural artifacts. While a traveler may have purchased the item in good faith, it might have been stolen at an earlier point. Customs agencies have helped to restore many priceless artifacts to their rightful owners.
M. A country"s government might also ban importation of items based on ethics and morality. For example, in many countries, you cannot import ivory or other products that come from endangered animals. In 2000, the United States enacted the Dog and Cat Protection Act , banning the importation of any products made from dog and cat fur that was acquired inhumanly. The US Customs Service confiscates all such goods so that US citizens do not inadvertently support this practice.
N. Without customs agencies, nations would have no control over what comes in and goes out of their country. In order to protect its citizens and businesses, a government has to be vigilant in protecting its borders, not only against armed attack, but also against unwanted imports. As any customs agent will tell you, this is crucial to maintaining order in modern society.
(选自Time)The customs agency can only check certain percentage if the goods imported or exported are huge in volume.

答案： F。[解析] F段主要介绍了海关对于大宗货物的检查，并指出他们不可能对每一件货物都进行检查，只选出某些集装箱或者货轮进行...

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Shopping and the Internet, Making It Click
A. Terry Lundgren and Kevin Ryan know and like each other. But when it comes to the future of retailing the boss of Macy"s, an American department-store giant, and the chief executive of Gilt Groupe, an online retailer, disagree wildly. Mr. Lundgren remains a firm believer in an empire of bricks and mortar (实体店). Mr. Ryan is betting big on online-only selling.
B. "It used to be mail-order catalogues killing physical stores, then it was TV shopping and now it is online retail," says Mr. Lundgren. Although he will not be pinned down on whether the Internet is a threat to shopkeepers or an opportunity for them, he is convinced that his chain is on the right path. Macy"s is embracing "omnichannel" integration, that is, selling stuff on television, through mail-order catalogues and online, as well as keeping its department stores. The company runs 810 shops across America under the mid-price, mid-market Macy"s brand and 38 more luxurious Bloomingdale"s outlets. Mr. Ryan argues that bricks-and-mortar shops are gravely threatened by Amazon and other online-only retailers, and says he can see "no evidence that there are big opportunities for traditional retailers in online retail."
C. Overall, retail sales in America are pretty flat, so the double-digit growth of online sellers is coming at the expense of physical shops. Amazon"s sales in the past year were $48 billion, compared with Macy"s $26 billion. Last year online sales in America reached $188 billion, about 8% of total retail sales. They are forecast to reach $270 billion by 2015. So far, Mr. Lundgren has good reason not to worry that the sky is falling. Most relevant for Mr. Lundgren"s debate with his friendly rival, online sales from the websites of Macy"s and Bloomingdale"s jumped by 40%. This reflects Macy"s efforts to expand its online business. It is building a new logistics (物流) center for online sales in West Virginia and expanding an existing one in Tennessee. And it is fixing a glaring flaw in its Internet-sales operation: until now online shoppers have only been able to buy goods in Macy"s warehouses; soon they will be able to order items from the stock of its stores.
Magic mirrors and Facebook friends
D. Mr. Lundgren is keen to continue experimenting with ways to use the Internet. In 2010 Macy"s introduced a virtual fitting room where customers tried on digital representations of clothes through their reflection in a "magic mirror" and shared them with their friends on Facebook. "It didn"t work," admits Mr. Lundgren. So Macy"s is now trying out virtual models. With its thriving Internet business, Macy"s is ahead of many other retailers.
E. Walmart, the world"s biggest, waited for a long time and hesitated over its online strategy until it finally decided to "make winning of e-commerce a key priority", as Mike Duke, its chief executive, puts it. Like an increasing number of store chains, Walmart is inviting online shoppers to pick up their purchases from its physical stores if that suits them. Since last June they have been able to do so on the day they place their order. Now, says Joel Anderson, who runs the company"s online business, more than half of Internet orders are collected from stores. The company claims this is saving shoppers millions of dollars in delivery charges. In spite of these recent improvements, Walmart is not yet reaping big profits from its online business. It does not break out its Internet sales from the total, but they are still tiny for its size.
F. There are some retailers, in particular those at the extremes of the market, that can safely ignore the threat from shoppers" migration to the Internet. At the luxury end, Yves Saint Laurent is unlikely to start selling its ball gowns over the net; at the cost-conscious end, dollar stores will continue "piling it high and selling it cheap". But the vast majority of retailers in between may have little choice but to counter the rise of online-only rivals by creating strong Internet operations of their own. The biggest threat to most of them is Amazon, the undisputed champion of online selling. Other online-only retailers have little chance of felling this giant. Their best bet is to be distinctive.
G. Mr. Ryan"s Gilt Groupe is modeled on France"s Vente Privée, an online shopping club for expensive branded stuff at reduced prices. The customers" average age for Mr. Ryan"s business is 34. Consumers aged 24 to 35 already do about a quarter of their shopping online, says John Deighton of Harvard Business School. In Mr. Deighton"s view the Internet-retail revolution is over, in that online buying is well established and will only keep growing. However, he says it is unclear how important a sales tool social networks like Facebook and Twitter, to which some online retailers are pinning their hopes, will turn out to be.
H. Some bricks-and-mortar retailers have already had disappointing experiences trying to sell through social media. Over the past year GAP, J. C. Penney and Nordstrom have opened and closed storefronts on Facebook. The social-networking site, which this month filed for an IPO (首次公开募股), is trying hard to be a top shopping destination for its 845m members. Yet so far people still tend to visit Facebook to socialize with their friends.
Shopping by smartphone
I. What does seem clear is that as personal computing goes mobile people are buying more via smart phones. Four years ago hardly anyone bought things on their mobile devices but today nearly one-quarter of Gilt Groupe"s revenue comes from smart phone shoppers; on some weekends the proportion reaches 40%. Nearly one third of people living in America own a smart phone, and 70% of these use it to do searches while they are inside a shop, usually to compare prices. "By 2014 mobile Internet will overtake desktop Internet usage for shopping," predicts Nigel Morris, chief executive of Aegis Media Americas.
Order online, pay cash in store
J. The most clued-up shopkeepers realize that they must make the most of such advantages over online rivals, and that to do so they must make their stores more enjoyable places to visit. In 2010 Macy"s company launched a training programme for its more than 130,000 sales people, "MAGIC Selling", which coached them to be more helpful and friendlier with customers. It is tailoring the merchandise stocked in its stores more closely to local tastes. Retailers with lavishly furnished stores and helpful assistants will increasingly have to put up with free-riders who come into the shop to check out the products and get some advice, before sneaking away to buy them for less online.
Have you got this in my size
K. However, there is no single recipe for retailing success in the Internet age. Retailers will need to balance their investment between staff, locations, inventory and online operations, says José Alvarez of Harvard Business School. For some expensive products it makes sense to have a low inventory, a big investment in showrooms, elaborate online operations and well qualified sales people. For more commoditized items it is more important to have a big inventory than a flashy display. Things that are increasingly being bought online must be swept off the shelves to make way for products that people still want to examine and compare before buying.
L. Whatever priorities retailers set, their physical stores are likely to shrink as the share of sales made online keeps rising. The retailers who want to survive the drift online are the ones "listening to the dynamic demands of customers," says Walmart"s Mr. Anderson.
(选自The Economist)Mr. Lundgren believes at present physical stores are threatened by online retail.

答案： B。[解析] B段第一句主要讲述目前的实体店受到了威胁，先是邮购目录，然后是电视购物，现在是在线零售。题干中的at pr...

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Save for College
A. In this article, we"ll look at the rules for 529 Qualified State Tuition Plans. We"ll explore the difference between this savings vehicle and some of the other traditional education savings methods and see why this plan is the best yet!
The cost of college
B. You may never have thought you could get excited about big sums of money you won"t be spending on yourself until you read about this new college savings plan. The 529 plan offers the most painless way to save money for higher education to date. And if the child decides not to go to college, you can roll it over to someone else that does want to go, including yourself! The 529 Plan is a savings plan for college education. You have a couple of options when you open an account.
* One option lets you prepay tuition at a qualified educational institution at today"s tuition rates.
* Another option lets you save money in a tax-deferred account (earnings only) to be used to pay for education at future tuition rates.
C. The idea, with either option, is that the investment earnings will grow to meet the higher costs of future education. The savings account option is typically considered the more attractive of the two and is what we will focus on in this article. The 529 plan is a state-sponsored investment program. That is, the state sets up the plan with an asset management company of its choice, and you open a 529 account with that asset management company according to the state"s predetermined plan features. You are the owner of the account, and the child for whom the account is set up is the beneficiary (收益人). You won"t deal directly with the state, but rather with the asset management/investment company.
State-to-state variations
D. Because each state can control some of the features of its own plan, there are variations from state to state. Most plans follow the same general scheme (and federal requirements), but make sure you compare plans among states other than your own. Most states don"t require residency in order to participate, so shop around different states for the best deal.
The benefits: tax treatment
E. All of the account"s earnings are exempt from federal tax when they are withdrawn if they are used for qualified education expenses. This means that, unlike the taxes you have to pay on earnings from regular stock investments, you won"t pay any tax on the 529 account earnings unless you end up using the money for something other than higher education. Earnings are currently tax-deferred in most states, as well.
F. A break on the earnings tax isn"t the only tax advantage, either. Although your contributions aren"t pre-tax (you pay state and federal tax on the money you put into the account), there are some states that let you deduct a portion of your contributions from your state taxes. More states will probably follow suit in the coming years.
The benefits: account control
G. Unlike Education Savings Accounts (ESA), the account owner always has control of the money. This helps lessen that parental anxiety that the junior will take the money and tour Europe or buy a Porsche instead of going to college. There are no restrictions on who can open an account for whom. You can open an account for your child, a friend"s child, a relative, the paper boy, or even yourself.
The benefits: income eligibility
H. Did you know that with an ESA, you aren"t eligible to contribute if you make more than $110,000 per year ($220,000 for married couples) Unlike ESAs, your income does not affect your eligibility to open a 529 account. Contributions to 529 plans also qualify for the $11,000 ($22,000 for married couples in 2002) annual gift tax exclusion. You can also contribute up to five years of gifts during the first year, meaning you can put in up to $55,000 ($110,000 for married couples). This is a great benefit in situations where inheritance money enters the picture. Your account can grow up to $268,000 in some states. You can contribute as little as $25 to $50 per month.
The benefits: how the money can be used
I. In most states, there is no age limit or time limit for when the money has to be used. Your child can put off college indefinitely, in which case you have the option of rolling the account over to another child as long as that child is in the same family of the first beneficiary. In case you"re wondering just who is considered "family", the plan defines family members as "the original beneficiary"s spouse, children, sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces, first cousins, and any spouses of those persons."
J. Your child can go to any accredited (官方认可的) degree-granting educational institution, whether it is public, private, two-year, or four-year. There are even some international schools that qualify. In most states, qualified education costs include tuition, books, room, board, transportation, and even computers. In the event that your child gets a scholarship, then the remainder of the 529 account can be rolled over to another sibling (or relative), or it can be cashed out with no penalty other than the tax paid (at your rate) on the earnings. The same rule applies in the event of the child"s death or disability.
The benefits: investment control
K. If the thought of turning over your hard earned money to the state makes you a little uneasy, rest assured that the state doesn"t control your money. In fact, most states are signing on with well-known, successful investment companies such as TIAA-CREF, Vanguard and Fidelity. The number and types of investment options vary by state, and once you select your option you can"t change it. You can, however, roll your money over into another state"s plan if you"re not happy with your chosen investment option. There is no penalty to roll the money over into another state"s plan, and you can do it once every 12 months. Most states have no residence requirement for their 529 plans.
L. Many plans are also offering investment choices that are age-based. This means that if you"re starting early, perhaps when your child is age one to three, the investments can begin aggressively in stocks then gradually shift to bonds and money market accounts as your child gets closer to college age. Some state plans offer several levels of options for aggressive, moderate and conservative investments.
M. If you can"t reach the risk level you want in one plan, you can always open a second 529 account in the same or another state. You can have as many accounts as you want and can also contribute to both a 529 plan and an ESA. That way, you can diversify your investments in the event that the plan doesn"t offer the investment mix you would like.
(选自The New York Times)If a child hasn"t used the 529 plan savings for college, the money can be transferred to another child in the family.

答案： I。[解析] I段主要介绍了529计划的款项如何使用，如果家中的一个孩子没有使用529计划的钱，这笔钱可以转给另外一个孩...

填空题

Shopping and the Internet, Making It Click
A. Terry Lundgren and Kevin Ryan know and like each other. But when it comes to the future of retailing the boss of Macy"s, an American department-store giant, and the chief executive of Gilt Groupe, an online retailer, disagree wildly. Mr. Lundgren remains a firm believer in an empire of bricks and mortar (实体店). Mr. Ryan is betting big on online-only selling.
B. "It used to be mail-order catalogues killing physical stores, then it was TV shopping and now it is online retail," says Mr. Lundgren. Although he will not be pinned down on whether the Internet is a threat to shopkeepers or an opportunity for them, he is convinced that his chain is on the right path. Macy"s is embracing "omnichannel" integration, that is, selling stuff on television, through mail-order catalogues and online, as well as keeping its department stores. The company runs 810 shops across America under the mid-price, mid-market Macy"s brand and 38 more luxurious Bloomingdale"s outlets. Mr. Ryan argues that bricks-and-mortar shops are gravely threatened by Amazon and other online-only retailers, and says he can see "no evidence that there are big opportunities for traditional retailers in online retail."
C. Overall, retail sales in America are pretty flat, so the double-digit growth of online sellers is coming at the expense of physical shops. Amazon"s sales in the past year were $48 billion, compared with Macy"s $26 billion. Last year online sales in America reached $188 billion, about 8% of total retail sales. They are forecast to reach $270 billion by 2015. So far, Mr. Lundgren has good reason not to worry that the sky is falling. Most relevant for Mr. Lundgren"s debate with his friendly rival, online sales from the websites of Macy"s and Bloomingdale"s jumped by 40%. This reflects Macy"s efforts to expand its online business. It is building a new logistics (物流) center for online sales in West Virginia and expanding an existing one in Tennessee. And it is fixing a glaring flaw in its Internet-sales operation: until now online shoppers have only been able to buy goods in Macy"s warehouses; soon they will be able to order items from the stock of its stores.
Magic mirrors and Facebook friends
D. Mr. Lundgren is keen to continue experimenting with ways to use the Internet. In 2010 Macy"s introduced a virtual fitting room where customers tried on digital representations of clothes through their reflection in a "magic mirror" and shared them with their friends on Facebook. "It didn"t work," admits Mr. Lundgren. So Macy"s is now trying out virtual models. With its thriving Internet business, Macy"s is ahead of many other retailers.
E. Walmart, the world"s biggest, waited for a long time and hesitated over its online strategy until it finally decided to "make winning of e-commerce a key priority", as Mike Duke, its chief executive, puts it. Like an increasing number of store chains, Walmart is inviting online shoppers to pick up their purchases from its physical stores if that suits them. Since last June they have been able to do so on the day they place their order. Now, says Joel Anderson, who runs the company"s online business, more than half of Internet orders are collected from stores. The company claims this is saving shoppers millions of dollars in delivery charges. In spite of these recent improvements, Walmart is not yet reaping big profits from its online business. It does not break out its Internet sales from the total, but they are still tiny for its size.
F. There are some retailers, in particular those at the extremes of the market, that can safely ignore the threat from shoppers" migration to the Internet. At the luxury end, Yves Saint Laurent is unlikely to start selling its ball gowns over the net; at the cost-conscious end, dollar stores will continue "piling it high and selling it cheap". But the vast majority of retailers in between may have little choice but to counter the rise of online-only rivals by creating strong Internet operations of their own. The biggest threat to most of them is Amazon, the undisputed champion of online selling. Other online-only retailers have little chance of felling this giant. Their best bet is to be distinctive.
G. Mr. Ryan"s Gilt Groupe is modeled on France"s Vente Privée, an online shopping club for expensive branded stuff at reduced prices. The customers" average age for Mr. Ryan"s business is 34. Consumers aged 24 to 35 already do about a quarter of their shopping online, says John Deighton of Harvard Business School. In Mr. Deighton"s view the Internet-retail revolution is over, in that online buying is well established and will only keep growing. However, he says it is unclear how important a sales tool social networks like Facebook and Twitter, to which some online retailers are pinning their hopes, will turn out to be.
H. Some bricks-and-mortar retailers have already had disappointing experiences trying to sell through social media. Over the past year GAP, J. C. Penney and Nordstrom have opened and closed storefronts on Facebook. The social-networking site, which this month filed for an IPO (首次公开募股), is trying hard to be a top shopping destination for its 845m members. Yet so far people still tend to visit Facebook to socialize with their friends.
Shopping by smartphone
I. What does seem clear is that as personal computing goes mobile people are buying more via smart phones. Four years ago hardly anyone bought things on their mobile devices but today nearly one-quarter of Gilt Groupe"s revenue comes from smart phone shoppers; on some weekends the proportion reaches 40%. Nearly one third of people living in America own a smart phone, and 70% of these use it to do searches while they are inside a shop, usually to compare prices. "By 2014 mobile Internet will overtake desktop Internet usage for shopping," predicts Nigel Morris, chief executive of Aegis Media Americas.
Order online, pay cash in store
J. The most clued-up shopkeepers realize that they must make the most of such advantages over online rivals, and that to do so they must make their stores more enjoyable places to visit. In 2010 Macy"s company launched a training programme for its more than 130,000 sales people, "MAGIC Selling", which coached them to be more helpful and friendlier with customers. It is tailoring the merchandise stocked in its stores more closely to local tastes. Retailers with lavishly furnished stores and helpful assistants will increasingly have to put up with free-riders who come into the shop to check out the products and get some advice, before sneaking away to buy them for less online.
Have you got this in my size
K. However, there is no single recipe for retailing success in the Internet age. Retailers will need to balance their investment between staff, locations, inventory and online operations, says José Alvarez of Harvard Business School. For some expensive products it makes sense to have a low inventory, a big investment in showrooms, elaborate online operations and well qualified sales people. For more commoditized items it is more important to have a big inventory than a flashy display. Things that are increasingly being bought online must be swept off the shelves to make way for products that people still want to examine and compare before buying.
L. Whatever priorities retailers set, their physical stores are likely to shrink as the share of sales made online keeps rising. The retailers who want to survive the drift online are the ones "listening to the dynamic demands of customers," says Walmart"s Mr. Anderson.
(选自The Economist)Mr. Anderson suggests the retailers who want to survive the drift online should change with the dynamic demands of customers.

答案： L。[解析] L段主要介绍了如果零售商想在网络购物的趋势中存活下来就要“倾听消费者不断变化的需求”。题干中的change...

填空题

How Customs Work
A. One of the little rituals all international travelers go through is customs. To most people, this is just another stop in an airport or a minor inconvenience at a country"s borders. But when you go through customs, you are actually taking part in a key component of the global economy.
B. A nation"s customs service has many responsibilities. At its most basic level, its purpose is to regulate what comes into and goes out of a country. The foremost element of this regulation is controlling international trade. The concept of trade is as old as civilization itself. If my tribe has a huge supply of bananas, and your tribe has a huge supply of fur, we will trade goods so that both our tribes can eat and both can keep warm. In the modern world, international trade is based on money, but it works in pretty much the same way.
C. Any nation wants its own businesses to do well, so most of the time they prefer their people buy domestic goods over competing foreign goods. But in many cases, goods are available cheaper in another country than in your country, and people naturally want to buy them at the lower price. To tilt the balance in favor of domestic businesses, governments impose tariffs, also called duty, on foreign goods coming into the country.
D. In addition to encouraging domestic trade, duty also gives the nation a "piece of the action" when somebody buys something produced overseas. Customs agencies are often major sources of revenue for the government. The US Customs Service, for example, brings in more money than any other government office except the Internal Revenue Service. To control specific sorts of trade, a government may impose a higher tariff on certain types of goods (alcohol, for example). Certain countries may join together to work out mutually beneficial trade agreements, enabling businesses in those nations to trade more freely with each other than they can with businesses in other nations. This gives an advantage to nations that a country has a good relationship with.
E. Customs agencies also monitor what is being exported from a country. For example, most governments strictly regulate what weapons can be exported to other nations. This is simply a common-sense safety measure: It"s not a good idea to arm enemy nations, so the government has to know who is buying any domestically-produced weaponry. As we"ll see later on, customs agencies also pay careful attention to how much money citizens are transporting out of the country.
F. Duty charges have a huge effect on big businesses, which may import millions of dollars worth of goods every year. To regulate trade on this level, a country"s customs agency must keep track of all shipments that come into the nation"s ports or cross its borders. They can"t check every bit of foreign cargo, of course, so agents pick certain boxes to inspect and certain shipments to scrutinize. In an effort to speed up the process, the US Customs Service is implementing new, computerized systems for processing shipments and charging in, porters.
G. While large businesses are the main importers in a country, trade restrictions also apply to the individual traveler. When you bring home souvenirs (纪念品) from another country, you are actually importing goods. In the United States and many other countries, the customs agency grants each traveler a nominal duty exemption (免除) to allow them to bring back a reasonable amount of goods without having to pay tariffs.
H. In most countries, it isn"t feasible for the customs agency to check all of the goods that every single traveler is importing, so governments have to depend largely on people"s honesty. When you enter a country, you are asked to truthfully report what goods you are importing and make a good faith estimate of their value. They don"t put their entire trust in people"s good character, of course; customs performs a thorough search of some percentage of all travelers.
I. Some customs agencies decide which travelers to search based on random chance. You are asked to press a button on a machine that activates a random number generator. Depending on the number that comes up, either a green light comes on and you can pass through or a red light comes on and the agent searches your bags. Other customs agencies decide who to search based solely on intuition. After many years on the job, a customs agent develops a keen eye for people who are up to no good. Unlike the police, customs agents are fully authorized to search your luggage, clothes and even your body without any warrant or reason for suspicion. Customs agents often work side-by-side with immigration officials, and in some ports of entry, one inspector may represent both agencies. But at its core, a customs agency is concerned with the things that are coming in and out of a country, rather than the travelers themselves.
J. In addition to monitoring legal imports, a nation"s customs agency also works to keep out illegal or contraband (违禁品) items. Customs agencies must fight the flow of illegal materials across borders. In addition to drugs, customs agencies may watch for weaponry, child pornography (色情资料), counterfeit merchandise and stolen goods. They also watch for people carrying illegally gained money across borders. These sorts of illegal materials make up only one category of contraband goods. Customs agents also stop the importation of legal goods that are a threat to the nation"s security. In most countries, the importation of fruits, meats, animals and plants is heavily regulated due to the fear of disease or ecological imbalance. While it may seem strange that a piece of fruit is considered a threat to national security, the risk of biological contamination is very real. In the late 1980s, one traveler with one piece of contaminated fruit caused an infestation (大量滋生) of Mediterranean fruit flies that destroyed millions of dollars worth of crops in California.
K. Some completely harmless items are deemed contraband simply because of the country they come from. If country A is considered to be a national enemy of country B, or has a record of violating international law, country B (and other countries) might institute an embargo (禁运) against that country (a ban on the importation of country A"s goods). This cuts off potential business for country A, and this may persuade its leaders to change their policies. In the United States, the best known example of this sort of sanction is the embargo against Cuban products. There is a high demand for Cuban cigars in the United States, but they are strictly regulated because of the strained relationship between the United States and Cuba. As with drugs, smugglers are eager to sneak in a supply to meet this demand, and are constantly trying to get around customs.
L. In many countries, the customs agency closely monitors the importing and exporting of cultural artifacts. While a traveler may have purchased the item in good faith, it might have been stolen at an earlier point. Customs agencies have helped to restore many priceless artifacts to their rightful owners.
M. A country"s government might also ban importation of items based on ethics and morality. For example, in many countries, you cannot import ivory or other products that come from endangered animals. In 2000, the United States enacted the Dog and Cat Protection Act , banning the importation of any products made from dog and cat fur that was acquired inhumanly. The US Customs Service confiscates all such goods so that US citizens do not inadvertently support this practice.
N. Without customs agencies, nations would have no control over what comes in and goes out of their country. In order to protect its citizens and businesses, a government has to be vigilant in protecting its borders, not only against armed attack, but also against unwanted imports. As any customs agent will tell you, this is crucial to maintaining order in modern society.
(选自Time)Imposing tariffs on foreign goods has been taken by nations to encourage their people to buy domestic goods.

答案： C。[解析] C段主要介绍为了支持国内企业，政府对进口货物征收关税，以便鼓励人们购买本国的商品。题干中的buy dome...

填空题

Technology, Costs, Lack of Appeal Slow E-textbook Adoption
A. Textbooks are often a luxury for college senior Vatell Martin. The accounting major at Virginia State University got by in several courses with study groups and professors" lectures. "It"s not that I didn"t want to buy," he says. "Sometimes, I just didn"t have the money for a $200 book." VSU knows Martin isn"t the only one. More than half of its students routinely skip buying textbooks. For a solution, the school is turning to e-textbooks.
B. VSU partnered with Flat World Knowledge, a start-up publisher that produces exclusively written e-books with "open" content that can be modified by professors. In a trial with 14 business courses, students would be required to pay $20 and receive a Flat World e-book and digital learning supplements. The university and a local grant have been covering the cost, so far. "That"s nothing. It"s what I put in my gas tank," says Martin, who participated in the trial. "If I was walking into a discussion on a topic, I can just download and take out the book and read it on my phone."
C. With their promise of ubiquity (无处不在), convenience and perhaps affordability, e-textbooks have arrived in fits and starts throughout college campuses. And publishers and book resellers are spending millions attracting students to their online stores and e-reader platforms as mobile technology improves the readability of the material on devices such as tablet computers. Silicon Valley start-ups, such as Inkling and Kno, are also aggressively reinventing textbooks with interactive graphics, videos and social-media features.
D. Despite emerging attempts at innovation, the industry has been slowed by clumsy technology, the lasting appeal of print books, skeptical students who search online for cheaper alternatives, and customer confusion stemming from too many me-too e-textbook platforms that have failed to stand out.
E. The late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, believed textbooks to be an $8 billion market ripe for "digital destruction," biographer Walter Issacson writes in Steve Jobs . Apple is expected to make an announcement Thursday about its new education products. The market is small but growing. Sales for e-textbooks in the US higher education market grew 44.3% to $267.3 million in 2011, according to Simba Information, a publishing industry research firm.
Print still rules
F. So far, students have been less than impressed and more likely to choose print books. About 11% of college students have bought e-textbooks, according to market research firm Student Monitor. Availability isn"t the chief problem. Most popular textbooks have a digital version, and they"re available online. But students have largely stayed away because the most readily available technology today—PDF (portable document format) or other document reader versions of the print book—is clumsy and eye-straining to read.
G. When Andrea Soto, a freshman biology major at the University of Maryland, bought Principles of Biology, the $192 price tag came with a free online version. She prefers the touchable presence of a thick book on her lap. "You can"t highlight or underline things in the e-book. I find it more of a trouble," she says. However, digital books aren"t necessarily cheaper, either. While priced lower than new print books, they"re often more expensive than buying or renting used books online, says Kathy Mickey, an analyst at Simba.
H. A federally funded pilot study at Daytona State College in Florida found that some students who rented an e-textbook paid only a dollar less than students who bought a print edition. And e-textbook users couldn"t sell the book back after the class ended. Despite e-textbooks" shortcomings, most agree that the print market is ripe for a technological overhaul (彻底改革). Prices of new books are rising sharply. Authors complain about used book sales that don"t generate royalties. Professors and students are annoyed at new editions that seemingly add little in content VS the previous one.
I. "This is an industry that"s failing everyone—parents, authors, professors, and students," says Brad Wheeler, chief information officer at Indiana University, which is running a program that distributes cheaper e-textbooks but requires all students in the class to buy. Publishers are eager for a quicker transition to the format because e-textbooks cost less to publish and would generate income from every student who buys one. Digital books can"t be resold, at least, not legally. "We"d prefer that all of it to go digital," says Vineet Madan, senior vice President of new ventures at McGraw-Hill Education. "There isn"t a secondary market for e-books."
Seeking market niche (商机)
J. If current e-textbooks are mostly unappealing, what"s next Like online music in its infancy, the textbook industry"s key players—publishers, resellers, bookstores, tech companies, even some universities—are all scrambling to offer their digital solutions, an effort that has only intensified with the arrival of tablet computers and app stores. "Everybody and their brothers are coming out with an e-book platform," says Iam Williams, director of strategic learning solutions at Wiley, a textbook publisher.
K. They all agree on one thing: The quality of e-textbooks must improve dramatically. More value-added, interactive features will keep students interested and spur sales, they say. Tablet computers are a key stimulus in this endeavor. At Kno, tablets have allowed the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company to embed interactive tools onto an existing e-textbook in a more intuitive way, for example, the ability to w-rite directly on the book with a finger stroke or tap on a keyword for notes. "Tablet was a needed development," says Kno"s founder Osman Rashid. Despite threats to their print book sales, university bookstores are also coming around to embracing e-books. Follett, which rims 930 university bookstores in North America, launched Follett CafeScribe last year, a cloud-based digital textbook platform.
Publishers not on sidelines
L. Textbook publishers are partnering with universities for exclusive trials, buying stakes in start-ups and developing their own technologies. Last year, publisher Cengage launched MindTap, an e-book/digital learning website that is now being tried by about 50 professors, says Bill Rieders, Cengage"s executive vice President of global new media. Instead of tables of content, MindTap provides "a learning path" that students can access for text, multimedia, self-assessment tools, quizzes and note sharing.
M. Pearson has introduced a competing product, OpenClass. The cloud-based website means students can access information wherever there"s an online connection—features social networking, and works with Google Apps for Education. Reed College in Portland, Ore., is one of several universities that will test OpenClass this fall.
N. The CourseLoad trial has been in place since 2009 on a limited basis, with students receiving free books. It has been expanded to 130 courses this spring semester. Students now pay a discounted price for access to CourseLoad books and learning kits, typically "60% to 70%" cheaper than new print books, Wheeler says. In exchange, students must pay a fee to enroll. Despite the lack of flexibility, school officials and students have embraced the low-cost approach, he says.
(选自USA Today)According to Osman Rashid, the tablet computers are necessary to improve the e-textbook"s quality.

答案： K。[解析] K段提到电子教科书的质量一定要得到显著提高。平板电脑在这次尝试中是关键的催化剂。Kno公司的创始人奥斯曼·...

填空题

Save for College
A. In this article, we"ll look at the rules for 529 Qualified State Tuition Plans. We"ll explore the difference between this savings vehicle and some of the other traditional education savings methods and see why this plan is the best yet!
The cost of college
B. You may never have thought you could get excited about big sums of money you won"t be spending on yourself until you read about this new college savings plan. The 529 plan offers the most painless way to save money for higher education to date. And if the child decides not to go to college, you can roll it over to someone else that does want to go, including yourself! The 529 Plan is a savings plan for college education. You have a couple of options when you open an account.
* One option lets you prepay tuition at a qualified educational institution at today"s tuition rates.
* Another option lets you save money in a tax-deferred account (earnings only) to be used to pay for education at future tuition rates.
C. The idea, with either option, is that the investment earnings will grow to meet the higher costs of future education. The savings account option is typically considered the more attractive of the two and is what we will focus on in this article. The 529 plan is a state-sponsored investment program. That is, the state sets up the plan with an asset management company of its choice, and you open a 529 account with that asset management company according to the state"s predetermined plan features. You are the owner of the account, and the child for whom the account is set up is the beneficiary (收益人). You won"t deal directly with the state, but rather with the asset management/investment company.
State-to-state variations
D. Because each state can control some of the features of its own plan, there are variations from state to state. Most plans follow the same general scheme (and federal requirements), but make sure you compare plans among states other than your own. Most states don"t require residency in order to participate, so shop around different states for the best deal.
The benefits: tax treatment
E. All of the account"s earnings are exempt from federal tax when they are withdrawn if they are used for qualified education expenses. This means that, unlike the taxes you have to pay on earnings from regular stock investments, you won"t pay any tax on the 529 account earnings unless you end up using the money for something other than higher education. Earnings are currently tax-deferred in most states, as well.
F. A break on the earnings tax isn"t the only tax advantage, either. Although your contributions aren"t pre-tax (you pay state and federal tax on the money you put into the account), there are some states that let you deduct a portion of your contributions from your state taxes. More states will probably follow suit in the coming years.
The benefits: account control
G. Unlike Education Savings Accounts (ESA), the account owner always has control of the money. This helps lessen that parental anxiety that the junior will take the money and tour Europe or buy a Porsche instead of going to college. There are no restrictions on who can open an account for whom. You can open an account for your child, a friend"s child, a relative, the paper boy, or even yourself.
The benefits: income eligibility
H. Did you know that with an ESA, you aren"t eligible to contribute if you make more than $110,000 per year ($220,000 for married couples) Unlike ESAs, your income does not affect your eligibility to open a 529 account. Contributions to 529 plans also qualify for the $11,000 ($22,000 for married couples in 2002) annual gift tax exclusion. You can also contribute up to five years of gifts during the first year, meaning you can put in up to $55,000 ($110,000 for married couples). This is a great benefit in situations where inheritance money enters the picture. Your account can grow up to $268,000 in some states. You can contribute as little as $25 to $50 per month.
The benefits: how the money can be used
I. In most states, there is no age limit or time limit for when the money has to be used. Your child can put off college indefinitely, in which case you have the option of rolling the account over to another child as long as that child is in the same family of the first beneficiary. In case you"re wondering just who is considered "family", the plan defines family members as "the original beneficiary"s spouse, children, sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces, first cousins, and any spouses of those persons."
J. Your child can go to any accredited (官方认可的) degree-granting educational institution, whether it is public, private, two-year, or four-year. There are even some international schools that qualify. In most states, qualified education costs include tuition, books, room, board, transportation, and even computers. In the event that your child gets a scholarship, then the remainder of the 529 account can be rolled over to another sibling (or relative), or it can be cashed out with no penalty other than the tax paid (at your rate) on the earnings. The same rule applies in the event of the child"s death or disability.
The benefits: investment control
K. If the thought of turning over your hard earned money to the state makes you a little uneasy, rest assured that the state doesn"t control your money. In fact, most states are signing on with well-known, successful investment companies such as TIAA-CREF, Vanguard and Fidelity. The number and types of investment options vary by state, and once you select your option you can"t change it. You can, however, roll your money over into another state"s plan if you"re not happy with your chosen investment option. There is no penalty to roll the money over into another state"s plan, and you can do it once every 12 months. Most states have no residence requirement for their 529 plans.
L. Many plans are also offering investment choices that are age-based. This means that if you"re starting early, perhaps when your child is age one to three, the investments can begin aggressively in stocks then gradually shift to bonds and money market accounts as your child gets closer to college age. Some state plans offer several levels of options for aggressive, moderate and conservative investments.
M. If you can"t reach the risk level you want in one plan, you can always open a second 529 account in the same or another state. You can have as many accounts as you want and can also contribute to both a 529 plan and an ESA. That way, you can diversify your investments in the event that the plan doesn"t offer the investment mix you would like.
(选自The New York Times)In order to select the most favorable 529 plan, you"d better compare plans in other states.

答案： D。[解析] D段主要介绍了各州的529计划各不相同，申请人应该货比三家，对比各州的529计划，选出最适合自己的。题干中...

填空题

Shopping and the Internet, Making It Click
A. Terry Lundgren and Kevin Ryan know and like each other. But when it comes to the future of retailing the boss of Macy"s, an American department-store giant, and the chief executive of Gilt Groupe, an online retailer, disagree wildly. Mr. Lundgren remains a firm believer in an empire of bricks and mortar (实体店). Mr. Ryan is betting big on online-only selling.
B. "It used to be mail-order catalogues killing physical stores, then it was TV shopping and now it is online retail," says Mr. Lundgren. Although he will not be pinned down on whether the Internet is a threat to shopkeepers or an opportunity for them, he is convinced that his chain is on the right path. Macy"s is embracing "omnichannel" integration, that is, selling stuff on television, through mail-order catalogues and online, as well as keeping its department stores. The company runs 810 shops across America under the mid-price, mid-market Macy"s brand and 38 more luxurious Bloomingdale"s outlets. Mr. Ryan argues that bricks-and-mortar shops are gravely threatened by Amazon and other online-only retailers, and says he can see "no evidence that there are big opportunities for traditional retailers in online retail."
C. Overall, retail sales in America are pretty flat, so the double-digit growth of online sellers is coming at the expense of physical shops. Amazon"s sales in the past year were $48 billion, compared with Macy"s $26 billion. Last year online sales in America reached $188 billion, about 8% of total retail sales. They are forecast to reach $270 billion by 2015. So far, Mr. Lundgren has good reason not to worry that the sky is falling. Most relevant for Mr. Lundgren"s debate with his friendly rival, online sales from the websites of Macy"s and Bloomingdale"s jumped by 40%. This reflects Macy"s efforts to expand its online business. It is building a new logistics (物流) center for online sales in West Virginia and expanding an existing one in Tennessee. And it is fixing a glaring flaw in its Internet-sales operation: until now online shoppers have only been able to buy goods in Macy"s warehouses; soon they will be able to order items from the stock of its stores.
Magic mirrors and Facebook friends
D. Mr. Lundgren is keen to continue experimenting with ways to use the Internet. In 2010 Macy"s introduced a virtual fitting room where customers tried on digital representations of clothes through their reflection in a "magic mirror" and shared them with their friends on Facebook. "It didn"t work," admits Mr. Lundgren. So Macy"s is now trying out virtual models. With its thriving Internet business, Macy"s is ahead of many other retailers.
E. Walmart, the world"s biggest, waited for a long time and hesitated over its online strategy until it finally decided to "make winning of e-commerce a key priority", as Mike Duke, its chief executive, puts it. Like an increasing number of store chains, Walmart is inviting online shoppers to pick up their purchases from its physical stores if that suits them. Since last June they have been able to do so on the day they place their order. Now, says Joel Anderson, who runs the company"s online business, more than half of Internet orders are collected from stores. The company claims this is saving shoppers millions of dollars in delivery charges. In spite of these recent improvements, Walmart is not yet reaping big profits from its online business. It does not break out its Internet sales from the total, but they are still tiny for its size.
F. There are some retailers, in particular those at the extremes of the market, that can safely ignore the threat from shoppers" migration to the Internet. At the luxury end, Yves Saint Laurent is unlikely to start selling its ball gowns over the net; at the cost-conscious end, dollar stores will continue "piling it high and selling it cheap". But the vast majority of retailers in between may have little choice but to counter the rise of online-only rivals by creating strong Internet operations of their own. The biggest threat to most of them is Amazon, the undisputed champion of online selling. Other online-only retailers have little chance of felling this giant. Their best bet is to be distinctive.
G. Mr. Ryan"s Gilt Groupe is modeled on France"s Vente Privée, an online shopping club for expensive branded stuff at reduced prices. The customers" average age for Mr. Ryan"s business is 34. Consumers aged 24 to 35 already do about a quarter of their shopping online, says John Deighton of Harvard Business School. In Mr. Deighton"s view the Internet-retail revolution is over, in that online buying is well established and will only keep growing. However, he says it is unclear how important a sales tool social networks like Facebook and Twitter, to which some online retailers are pinning their hopes, will turn out to be.
H. Some bricks-and-mortar retailers have already had disappointing experiences trying to sell through social media. Over the past year GAP, J. C. Penney and Nordstrom have opened and closed storefronts on Facebook. The social-networking site, which this month filed for an IPO (首次公开募股), is trying hard to be a top shopping destination for its 845m members. Yet so far people still tend to visit Facebook to socialize with their friends.
Shopping by smartphone
I. What does seem clear is that as personal computing goes mobile people are buying more via smart phones. Four years ago hardly anyone bought things on their mobile devices but today nearly one-quarter of Gilt Groupe"s revenue comes from smart phone shoppers; on some weekends the proportion reaches 40%. Nearly one third of people living in America own a smart phone, and 70% of these use it to do searches while they are inside a shop, usually to compare prices. "By 2014 mobile Internet will overtake desktop Internet usage for shopping," predicts Nigel Morris, chief executive of Aegis Media Americas.
Order online, pay cash in store
J. The most clued-up shopkeepers realize that they must make the most of such advantages over online rivals, and that to do so they must make their stores more enjoyable places to visit. In 2010 Macy"s company launched a training programme for its more than 130,000 sales people, "MAGIC Selling", which coached them to be more helpful and friendlier with customers. It is tailoring the merchandise stocked in its stores more closely to local tastes. Retailers with lavishly furnished stores and helpful assistants will increasingly have to put up with free-riders who come into the shop to check out the products and get some advice, before sneaking away to buy them for less online.
Have you got this in my size
K. However, there is no single recipe for retailing success in the Internet age. Retailers will need to balance their investment between staff, locations, inventory and online operations, says José Alvarez of Harvard Business School. For some expensive products it makes sense to have a low inventory, a big investment in showrooms, elaborate online operations and well qualified sales people. For more commoditized items it is more important to have a big inventory than a flashy display. Things that are increasingly being bought online must be swept off the shelves to make way for products that people still want to examine and compare before buying.
L. Whatever priorities retailers set, their physical stores are likely to shrink as the share of sales made online keeps rising. The retailers who want to survive the drift online are the ones "listening to the dynamic demands of customers," says Walmart"s Mr. Anderson.
(选自The Economist)In 2010, Macy"s not only starts "MAGIC Selling", but also adjusts its goods in the stores to local tastes.

答案： J。[解析] J段第二、三句提到，2010年梅西百货为其公司的13万余名销售人员启动了一项名为“神奇营销”的培训项目，使...

填空题

Technology, Costs, Lack of Appeal Slow E-textbook Adoption
A. Textbooks are often a luxury for college senior Vatell Martin. The accounting major at Virginia State University got by in several courses with study groups and professors" lectures. "It"s not that I didn"t want to buy," he says. "Sometimes, I just didn"t have the money for a $200 book." VSU knows Martin isn"t the only one. More than half of its students routinely skip buying textbooks. For a solution, the school is turning to e-textbooks.
B. VSU partnered with Flat World Knowledge, a start-up publisher that produces exclusively written e-books with "open" content that can be modified by professors. In a trial with 14 business courses, students would be required to pay $20 and receive a Flat World e-book and digital learning supplements. The university and a local grant have been covering the cost, so far. "That"s nothing. It"s what I put in my gas tank," says Martin, who participated in the trial. "If I was walking into a discussion on a topic, I can just download and take out the book and read it on my phone."
C. With their promise of ubiquity (无处不在), convenience and perhaps affordability, e-textbooks have arrived in fits and starts throughout college campuses. And publishers and book resellers are spending millions attracting students to their online stores and e-reader platforms as mobile technology improves the readability of the material on devices such as tablet computers. Silicon Valley start-ups, such as Inkling and Kno, are also aggressively reinventing textbooks with interactive graphics, videos and social-media features.
D. Despite emerging attempts at innovation, the industry has been slowed by clumsy technology, the lasting appeal of print books, skeptical students who search online for cheaper alternatives, and customer confusion stemming from too many me-too e-textbook platforms that have failed to stand out.
E. The late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, believed textbooks to be an $8 billion market ripe for "digital destruction," biographer Walter Issacson writes in Steve Jobs . Apple is expected to make an announcement Thursday about its new education products. The market is small but growing. Sales for e-textbooks in the US higher education market grew 44.3% to $267.3 million in 2011, according to Simba Information, a publishing industry research firm.
Print still rules
F. So far, students have been less than impressed and more likely to choose print books. About 11% of college students have bought e-textbooks, according to market research firm Student Monitor. Availability isn"t the chief problem. Most popular textbooks have a digital version, and they"re available online. But students have largely stayed away because the most readily available technology today—PDF (portable document format) or other document reader versions of the print book—is clumsy and eye-straining to read.
G. When Andrea Soto, a freshman biology major at the University of Maryland, bought Principles of Biology, the $192 price tag came with a free online version. She prefers the touchable presence of a thick book on her lap. "You can"t highlight or underline things in the e-book. I find it more of a trouble," she says. However, digital books aren"t necessarily cheaper, either. While priced lower than new print books, they"re often more expensive than buying or renting used books online, says Kathy Mickey, an analyst at Simba.
H. A federally funded pilot study at Daytona State College in Florida found that some students who rented an e-textbook paid only a dollar less than students who bought a print edition. And e-textbook users couldn"t sell the book back after the class ended. Despite e-textbooks" shortcomings, most agree that the print market is ripe for a technological overhaul (彻底改革). Prices of new books are rising sharply. Authors complain about used book sales that don"t generate royalties. Professors and students are annoyed at new editions that seemingly add little in content VS the previous one.
I. "This is an industry that"s failing everyone—parents, authors, professors, and students," says Brad Wheeler, chief information officer at Indiana University, which is running a program that distributes cheaper e-textbooks but requires all students in the class to buy. Publishers are eager for a quicker transition to the format because e-textbooks cost less to publish and would generate income from every student who buys one. Digital books can"t be resold, at least, not legally. "We"d prefer that all of it to go digital," says Vineet Madan, senior vice President of new ventures at McGraw-Hill Education. "There isn"t a secondary market for e-books."
Seeking market niche (商机)
J. If current e-textbooks are mostly unappealing, what"s next Like online music in its infancy, the textbook industry"s key players—publishers, resellers, bookstores, tech companies, even some universities—are all scrambling to offer their digital solutions, an effort that has only intensified with the arrival of tablet computers and app stores. "Everybody and their brothers are coming out with an e-book platform," says Iam Williams, director of strategic learning solutions at Wiley, a textbook publisher.
K. They all agree on one thing: The quality of e-textbooks must improve dramatically. More value-added, interactive features will keep students interested and spur sales, they say. Tablet computers are a key stimulus in this endeavor. At Kno, tablets have allowed the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company to embed interactive tools onto an existing e-textbook in a more intuitive way, for example, the ability to w-rite directly on the book with a finger stroke or tap on a keyword for notes. "Tablet was a needed development," says Kno"s founder Osman Rashid. Despite threats to their print book sales, university bookstores are also coming around to embracing e-books. Follett, which rims 930 university bookstores in North America, launched Follett CafeScribe last year, a cloud-based digital textbook platform.
Publishers not on sidelines
L. Textbook publishers are partnering with universities for exclusive trials, buying stakes in start-ups and developing their own technologies. Last year, publisher Cengage launched MindTap, an e-book/digital learning website that is now being tried by about 50 professors, says Bill Rieders, Cengage"s executive vice President of global new media. Instead of tables of content, MindTap provides "a learning path" that students can access for text, multimedia, self-assessment tools, quizzes and note sharing.
M. Pearson has introduced a competing product, OpenClass. The cloud-based website means students can access information wherever there"s an online connection—features social networking, and works with Google Apps for Education. Reed College in Portland, Ore., is one of several universities that will test OpenClass this fall.
N. The CourseLoad trial has been in place since 2009 on a limited basis, with students receiving free books. It has been expanded to 130 courses this spring semester. Students now pay a discounted price for access to CourseLoad books and learning kits, typically "60% to 70%" cheaper than new print books, Wheeler says. In exchange, students must pay a fee to enroll. Despite the lack of flexibility, school officials and students have embraced the low-cost approach, he says.
(选自USA Today)It is difficult to make notes on the digital version, so Andrea Soto chooses the print book.

答案： G。[解析] G段提到安德里亚·索托认为，因为无法在电子书上做笔记，所以使用电子书很麻烦。题干中的difficult对应...

填空题

How Customs Work
A. One of the little rituals all international travelers go through is customs. To most people, this is just another stop in an airport or a minor inconvenience at a country"s borders. But when you go through customs, you are actually taking part in a key component of the global economy.
B. A nation"s customs service has many responsibilities. At its most basic level, its purpose is to regulate what comes into and goes out of a country. The foremost element of this regulation is controlling international trade. The concept of trade is as old as civilization itself. If my tribe has a huge supply of bananas, and your tribe has a huge supply of fur, we will trade goods so that both our tribes can eat and both can keep warm. In the modern world, international trade is based on money, but it works in pretty much the same way.
C. Any nation wants its own businesses to do well, so most of the time they prefer their people buy domestic goods over competing foreign goods. But in many cases, goods are available cheaper in another country than in your country, and people naturally want to buy them at the lower price. To tilt the balance in favor of domestic businesses, governments impose tariffs, also called duty, on foreign goods coming into the country.
D. In addition to encouraging domestic trade, duty also gives the nation a "piece of the action" when somebody buys something produced overseas. Customs agencies are often major sources of revenue for the government. The US Customs Service, for example, brings in more money than any other government office except the Internal Revenue Service. To control specific sorts of trade, a government may impose a higher tariff on certain types of goods (alcohol, for example). Certain countries may join together to work out mutually beneficial trade agreements, enabling businesses in those nations to trade more freely with each other than they can with businesses in other nations. This gives an advantage to nations that a country has a good relationship with.
E. Customs agencies also monitor what is being exported from a country. For example, most governments strictly regulate what weapons can be exported to other nations. This is simply a common-sense safety measure: It"s not a good idea to arm enemy nations, so the government has to know who is buying any domestically-produced weaponry. As we"ll see later on, customs agencies also pay careful attention to how much money citizens are transporting out of the country.
F. Duty charges have a huge effect on big businesses, which may import millions of dollars worth of goods every year. To regulate trade on this level, a country"s customs agency must keep track of all shipments that come into the nation"s ports or cross its borders. They can"t check every bit of foreign cargo, of course, so agents pick certain boxes to inspect and certain shipments to scrutinize. In an effort to speed up the process, the US Customs Service is implementing new, computerized systems for processing shipments and charging in, porters.
G. While large businesses are the main importers in a country, trade restrictions also apply to the individual traveler. When you bring home souvenirs (纪念品) from another country, you are actually importing goods. In the United States and many other countries, the customs agency grants each traveler a nominal duty exemption (免除) to allow them to bring back a reasonable amount of goods without having to pay tariffs.
H. In most countries, it isn"t feasible for the customs agency to check all of the goods that every single traveler is importing, so governments have to depend largely on people"s honesty. When you enter a country, you are asked to truthfully report what goods you are importing and make a good faith estimate of their value. They don"t put their entire trust in people"s good character, of course; customs performs a thorough search of some percentage of all travelers.
I. Some customs agencies decide which travelers to search based on random chance. You are asked to press a button on a machine that activates a random number generator. Depending on the number that comes up, either a green light comes on and you can pass through or a red light comes on and the agent searches your bags. Other customs agencies decide who to search based solely on intuition. After many years on the job, a customs agent develops a keen eye for people who are up to no good. Unlike the police, customs agents are fully authorized to search your luggage, clothes and even your body without any warrant or reason for suspicion. Customs agents often work side-by-side with immigration officials, and in some ports of entry, one inspector may represent both agencies. But at its core, a customs agency is concerned with the things that are coming in and out of a country, rather than the travelers themselves.
J. In addition to monitoring legal imports, a nation"s customs agency also works to keep out illegal or contraband (违禁品) items. Customs agencies must fight the flow of illegal materials across borders. In addition to drugs, customs agencies may watch for weaponry, child pornography (色情资料), counterfeit merchandise and stolen goods. They also watch for people carrying illegally gained money across borders. These sorts of illegal materials make up only one category of contraband goods. Customs agents also stop the importation of legal goods that are a threat to the nation"s security. In most countries, the importation of fruits, meats, animals and plants is heavily regulated due to the fear of disease or ecological imbalance. While it may seem strange that a piece of fruit is considered a threat to national security, the risk of biological contamination is very real. In the late 1980s, one traveler with one piece of contaminated fruit caused an infestation (大量滋生) of Mediterranean fruit flies that destroyed millions of dollars worth of crops in California.
K. Some completely harmless items are deemed contraband simply because of the country they come from. If country A is considered to be a national enemy of country B, or has a record of violating international law, country B (and other countries) might institute an embargo (禁运) against that country (a ban on the importation of country A"s goods). This cuts off potential business for country A, and this may persuade its leaders to change their policies. In the United States, the best known example of this sort of sanction is the embargo against Cuban products. There is a high demand for Cuban cigars in the United States, but they are strictly regulated because of the strained relationship between the United States and Cuba. As with drugs, smugglers are eager to sneak in a supply to meet this demand, and are constantly trying to get around customs.
L. In many countries, the customs agency closely monitors the importing and exporting of cultural artifacts. While a traveler may have purchased the item in good faith, it might have been stolen at an earlier point. Customs agencies have helped to restore many priceless artifacts to their rightful owners.
M. A country"s government might also ban importation of items based on ethics and morality. For example, in many countries, you cannot import ivory or other products that come from endangered animals. In 2000, the United States enacted the Dog and Cat Protection Act , banning the importation of any products made from dog and cat fur that was acquired inhumanly. The US Customs Service confiscates all such goods so that US citizens do not inadvertently support this practice.
N. Without customs agencies, nations would have no control over what comes in and goes out of their country. In order to protect its citizens and businesses, a government has to be vigilant in protecting its borders, not only against armed attack, but also against unwanted imports. As any customs agent will tell you, this is crucial to maintaining order in modern society.
(选自Time)The customs agencies pay close attention to the cultural relics coming in or out of a country and help to return them.

答案： L。[解析] L段主要介绍了海关密切关注进出口的文物，对文物进行保护并履行归还的职责。题干中的cultural reli...

填空题

Save for College
A. In this article, we"ll look at the rules for 529 Qualified State Tuition Plans. We"ll explore the difference between this savings vehicle and some of the other traditional education savings methods and see why this plan is the best yet!
The cost of college
B. You may never have thought you could get excited about big sums of money you won"t be spending on yourself until you read about this new college savings plan. The 529 plan offers the most painless way to save money for higher education to date. And if the child decides not to go to college, you can roll it over to someone else that does want to go, including yourself! The 529 Plan is a savings plan for college education. You have a couple of options when you open an account.
* One option lets you prepay tuition at a qualified educational institution at today"s tuition rates.
* Another option lets you save money in a tax-deferred account (earnings only) to be used to pay for education at future tuition rates.
C. The idea, with either option, is that the investment earnings will grow to meet the higher costs of future education. The savings account option is typically considered the more attractive of the two and is what we will focus on in this article. The 529 plan is a state-sponsored investment program. That is, the state sets up the plan with an asset management company of its choice, and you open a 529 account with that asset management company according to the state"s predetermined plan features. You are the owner of the account, and the child for whom the account is set up is the beneficiary (收益人). You won"t deal directly with the state, but rather with the asset management/investment company.
State-to-state variations
D. Because each state can control some of the features of its own plan, there are variations from state to state. Most plans follow the same general scheme (and federal requirements), but make sure you compare plans among states other than your own. Most states don"t require residency in order to participate, so shop around different states for the best deal.
The benefits: tax treatment
E. All of the account"s earnings are exempt from federal tax when they are withdrawn if they are used for qualified education expenses. This means that, unlike the taxes you have to pay on earnings from regular stock investments, you won"t pay any tax on the 529 account earnings unless you end up using the money for something other than higher education. Earnings are currently tax-deferred in most states, as well.
F. A break on the earnings tax isn"t the only tax advantage, either. Although your contributions aren"t pre-tax (you pay state and federal tax on the money you put into the account), there are some states that let you deduct a portion of your contributions from your state taxes. More states will probably follow suit in the coming years.
The benefits: account control
G. Unlike Education Savings Accounts (ESA), the account owner always has control of the money. This helps lessen that parental anxiety that the junior will take the money and tour Europe or buy a Porsche instead of going to college. There are no restrictions on who can open an account for whom. You can open an account for your child, a friend"s child, a relative, the paper boy, or even yourself.
The benefits: income eligibility
H. Did you know that with an ESA, you aren"t eligible to contribute if you make more than $110,000 per year ($220,000 for married couples) Unlike ESAs, your income does not affect your eligibility to open a 529 account. Contributions to 529 plans also qualify for the $11,000 ($22,000 for married couples in 2002) annual gift tax exclusion. You can also contribute up to five years of gifts during the first year, meaning you can put in up to $55,000 ($110,000 for married couples). This is a great benefit in situations where inheritance money enters the picture. Your account can grow up to $268,000 in some states. You can contribute as little as $25 to $50 per month.
The benefits: how the money can be used
I. In most states, there is no age limit or time limit for when the money has to be used. Your child can put off college indefinitely, in which case you have the option of rolling the account over to another child as long as that child is in the same family of the first beneficiary. In case you"re wondering just who is considered "family", the plan defines family members as "the original beneficiary"s spouse, children, sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces, first cousins, and any spouses of those persons."
J. Your child can go to any accredited (官方认可的) degree-granting educational institution, whether it is public, private, two-year, or four-year. There are even some international schools that qualify. In most states, qualified education costs include tuition, books, room, board, transportation, and even computers. In the event that your child gets a scholarship, then the remainder of the 529 account can be rolled over to another sibling (or relative), or it can be cashed out with no penalty other than the tax paid (at your rate) on the earnings. The same rule applies in the event of the child"s death or disability.
The benefits: investment control
K. If the thought of turning over your hard earned money to the state makes you a little uneasy, rest assured that the state doesn"t control your money. In fact, most states are signing on with well-known, successful investment companies such as TIAA-CREF, Vanguard and Fidelity. The number and types of investment options vary by state, and once you select your option you can"t change it. You can, however, roll your money over into another state"s plan if you"re not happy with your chosen investment option. There is no penalty to roll the money over into another state"s plan, and you can do it once every 12 months. Most states have no residence requirement for their 529 plans.
L. Many plans are also offering investment choices that are age-based. This means that if you"re starting early, perhaps when your child is age one to three, the investments can begin aggressively in stocks then gradually shift to bonds and money market accounts as your child gets closer to college age. Some state plans offer several levels of options for aggressive, moderate and conservative investments.
M. If you can"t reach the risk level you want in one plan, you can always open a second 529 account in the same or another state. You can have as many accounts as you want and can also contribute to both a 529 plan and an ESA. That way, you can diversify your investments in the event that the plan doesn"t offer the investment mix you would like.
(选自The New York Times)Transferring the money into another state"s 529 plan is limited to once a year.

答案： K。[解析] K段主要介绍了转钱的时间限制和次数，可以将钱转入另一个州的529计划内，但只限每12个月转一次，即一年一次...

填空题

Shopping and the Internet, Making It Click
A. Terry Lundgren and Kevin Ryan know and like each other. But when it comes to the future of retailing the boss of Macy"s, an American department-store giant, and the chief executive of Gilt Groupe, an online retailer, disagree wildly. Mr. Lundgren remains a firm believer in an empire of bricks and mortar (实体店). Mr. Ryan is betting big on online-only selling.
B. "It used to be mail-order catalogues killing physical stores, then it was TV shopping and now it is online retail," says Mr. Lundgren. Although he will not be pinned down on whether the Internet is a threat to shopkeepers or an opportunity for them, he is convinced that his chain is on the right path. Macy"s is embracing "omnichannel" integration, that is, selling stuff on television, through mail-order catalogues and online, as well as keeping its department stores. The company runs 810 shops across America under the mid-price, mid-market Macy"s brand and 38 more luxurious Bloomingdale"s outlets. Mr. Ryan argues that bricks-and-mortar shops are gravely threatened by Amazon and other online-only retailers, and says he can see "no evidence that there are big opportunities for traditional retailers in online retail."
C. Overall, retail sales in America are pretty flat, so the double-digit growth of online sellers is coming at the expense of physical shops. Amazon"s sales in the past year were $48 billion, compared with Macy"s $26 billion. Last year online sales in America reached $188 billion, about 8% of total retail sales. They are forecast to reach $270 billion by 2015. So far, Mr. Lundgren has good reason not to worry that the sky is falling. Most relevant for Mr. Lundgren"s debate with his friendly rival, online sales from the websites of Macy"s and Bloomingdale"s jumped by 40%. This reflects Macy"s efforts to expand its online business. It is building a new logistics (物流) center for online sales in West Virginia and expanding an existing one in Tennessee. And it is fixing a glaring flaw in its Internet-sales operation: until now online shoppers have only been able to buy goods in Macy"s warehouses; soon they will be able to order items from the stock of its stores.
Magic mirrors and Facebook friends
D. Mr. Lundgren is keen to continue experimenting with ways to use the Internet. In 2010 Macy"s introduced a virtual fitting room where customers tried on digital representations of clothes through their reflection in a "magic mirror" and shared them with their friends on Facebook. "It didn"t work," admits Mr. Lundgren. So Macy"s is now trying out virtual models. With its thriving Internet business, Macy"s is ahead of many other retailers.
E. Walmart, the world"s biggest, waited for a long time and hesitated over its online strategy until it finally decided to "make winning of e-commerce a key priority", as Mike Duke, its chief executive, puts it. Like an increasing number of store chains, Walmart is inviting online shoppers to pick up their purchases from its physical stores if that suits them. Since last June they have been able to do so on the day they place their order. Now, says Joel Anderson, who runs the company"s online business, more than half of Internet orders are collected from stores. The company claims this is saving shoppers millions of dollars in delivery charges. In spite of these recent improvements, Walmart is not yet reaping big profits from its online business. It does not break out its Internet sales from the total, but they are still tiny for its size.
F. There are some retailers, in particular those at the extremes of the market, that can safely ignore the threat from shoppers" migration to the Internet. At the luxury end, Yves Saint Laurent is unlikely to start selling its ball gowns over the net; at the cost-conscious end, dollar stores will continue "piling it high and selling it cheap". But the vast majority of retailers in between may have little choice but to counter the rise of online-only rivals by creating strong Internet operations of their own. The biggest threat to most of them is Amazon, the undisputed champion of online selling. Other online-only retailers have little chance of felling this giant. Their best bet is to be distinctive.
G. Mr. Ryan"s Gilt Groupe is modeled on France"s Vente Privée, an online shopping club for expensive branded stuff at reduced prices. The customers" average age for Mr. Ryan"s business is 34. Consumers aged 24 to 35 already do about a quarter of their shopping online, says John Deighton of Harvard Business School. In Mr. Deighton"s view the Internet-retail revolution is over, in that online buying is well established and will only keep growing. However, he says it is unclear how important a sales tool social networks like Facebook and Twitter, to which some online retailers are pinning their hopes, will turn out to be.
H. Some bricks-and-mortar retailers have already had disappointing experiences trying to sell through social media. Over the past year GAP, J. C. Penney and Nordstrom have opened and closed storefronts on Facebook. The social-networking site, which this month filed for an IPO (首次公开募股), is trying hard to be a top shopping destination for its 845m members. Yet so far people still tend to visit Facebook to socialize with their friends.
Shopping by smartphone
I. What does seem clear is that as personal computing goes mobile people are buying more via smart phones. Four years ago hardly anyone bought things on their mobile devices but today nearly one-quarter of Gilt Groupe"s revenue comes from smart phone shoppers; on some weekends the proportion reaches 40%. Nearly one third of people living in America own a smart phone, and 70% of these use it to do searches while they are inside a shop, usually to compare prices. "By 2014 mobile Internet will overtake desktop Internet usage for shopping," predicts Nigel Morris, chief executive of Aegis Media Americas.
Order online, pay cash in store
J. The most clued-up shopkeepers realize that they must make the most of such advantages over online rivals, and that to do so they must make their stores more enjoyable places to visit. In 2010 Macy"s company launched a training programme for its more than 130,000 sales people, "MAGIC Selling", which coached them to be more helpful and friendlier with customers. It is tailoring the merchandise stocked in its stores more closely to local tastes. Retailers with lavishly furnished stores and helpful assistants will increasingly have to put up with free-riders who come into the shop to check out the products and get some advice, before sneaking away to buy them for less online.
Have you got this in my size
K. However, there is no single recipe for retailing success in the Internet age. Retailers will need to balance their investment between staff, locations, inventory and online operations, says José Alvarez of Harvard Business School. For some expensive products it makes sense to have a low inventory, a big investment in showrooms, elaborate online operations and well qualified sales people. For more commoditized items it is more important to have a big inventory than a flashy display. Things that are increasingly being bought online must be swept off the shelves to make way for products that people still want to examine and compare before buying.
L. Whatever priorities retailers set, their physical stores are likely to shrink as the share of sales made online keeps rising. The retailers who want to survive the drift online are the ones "listening to the dynamic demands of customers," says Walmart"s Mr. Anderson.
(选自The Economist)The retailers selling moderate-price goods are influenced most when customers begin to buy goods online.

答案： F。[解析] F段主要介绍了处于两者(高端和低端产品)之间的大部分零售商别无选择，只能创造属于自己的强大网络业务来对抗新...

填空题

Technology, Costs, Lack of Appeal Slow E-textbook Adoption
A. Textbooks are often a luxury for college senior Vatell Martin. The accounting major at Virginia State University got by in several courses with study groups and professors" lectures. "It"s not that I didn"t want to buy," he says. "Sometimes, I just didn"t have the money for a $200 book." VSU knows Martin isn"t the only one. More than half of its students routinely skip buying textbooks. For a solution, the school is turning to e-textbooks.
B. VSU partnered with Flat World Knowledge, a start-up publisher that produces exclusively written e-books with "open" content that can be modified by professors. In a trial with 14 business courses, students would be required to pay $20 and receive a Flat World e-book and digital learning supplements. The university and a local grant have been covering the cost, so far. "That"s nothing. It"s what I put in my gas tank," says Martin, who participated in the trial. "If I was walking into a discussion on a topic, I can just download and take out the book and read it on my phone."
C. With their promise of ubiquity (无处不在), convenience and perhaps affordability, e-textbooks have arrived in fits and starts throughout college campuses. And publishers and book resellers are spending millions attracting students to their online stores and e-reader platforms as mobile technology improves the readability of the material on devices such as tablet computers. Silicon Valley start-ups, such as Inkling and Kno, are also aggressively reinventing textbooks with interactive graphics, videos and social-media features.
D. Despite emerging attempts at innovation, the industry has been slowed by clumsy technology, the lasting appeal of print books, skeptical students who search online for cheaper alternatives, and customer confusion stemming from too many me-too e-textbook platforms that have failed to stand out.
E. The late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, believed textbooks to be an $8 billion market ripe for "digital destruction," biographer Walter Issacson writes in Steve Jobs . Apple is expected to make an announcement Thursday about its new education products. The market is small but growing. Sales for e-textbooks in the US higher education market grew 44.3% to $267.3 million in 2011, according to Simba Information, a publishing industry research firm.
Print still rules
F. So far, students have been less than impressed and more likely to choose print books. About 11% of college students have bought e-textbooks, according to market research firm Student Monitor. Availability isn"t the chief problem. Most popular textbooks have a digital version, and they"re available online. But students have largely stayed away because the most readily available technology today—PDF (portable document format) or other document reader versions of the print book—is clumsy and eye-straining to read.
G. When Andrea Soto, a freshman biology major at the University of Maryland, bought Principles of Biology, the $192 price tag came with a free online version. She prefers the touchable presence of a thick book on her lap. "You can"t highlight or underline things in the e-book. I find it more of a trouble," she says. However, digital books aren"t necessarily cheaper, either. While priced lower than new print books, they"re often more expensive than buying or renting used books online, says Kathy Mickey, an analyst at Simba.
H. A federally funded pilot study at Daytona State College in Florida found that some students who rented an e-textbook paid only a dollar less than students who bought a print edition. And e-textbook users couldn"t sell the book back after the class ended. Despite e-textbooks" shortcomings, most agree that the print market is ripe for a technological overhaul (彻底改革). Prices of new books are rising sharply. Authors complain about used book sales that don"t generate royalties. Professors and students are annoyed at new editions that seemingly add little in content VS the previous one.
I. "This is an industry that"s failing everyone—parents, authors, professors, and students," says Brad Wheeler, chief information officer at Indiana University, which is running a program that distributes cheaper e-textbooks but requires all students in the class to buy. Publishers are eager for a quicker transition to the format because e-textbooks cost less to publish and would generate income from every student who buys one. Digital books can"t be resold, at least, not legally. "We"d prefer that all of it to go digital," says Vineet Madan, senior vice President of new ventures at McGraw-Hill Education. "There isn"t a secondary market for e-books."
Seeking market niche (商机)
J. If current e-textbooks are mostly unappealing, what"s next Like online music in its infancy, the textbook industry"s key players—publishers, resellers, bookstores, tech companies, even some universities—are all scrambling to offer their digital solutions, an effort that has only intensified with the arrival of tablet computers and app stores. "Everybody and their brothers are coming out with an e-book platform," says Iam Williams, director of strategic learning solutions at Wiley, a textbook publisher.
K. They all agree on one thing: The quality of e-textbooks must improve dramatically. More value-added, interactive features will keep students interested and spur sales, they say. Tablet computers are a key stimulus in this endeavor. At Kno, tablets have allowed the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company to embed interactive tools onto an existing e-textbook in a more intuitive way, for example, the ability to w-rite directly on the book with a finger stroke or tap on a keyword for notes. "Tablet was a needed development," says Kno"s founder Osman Rashid. Despite threats to their print book sales, university bookstores are also coming around to embracing e-books. Follett, which rims 930 university bookstores in North America, launched Follett CafeScribe last year, a cloud-based digital textbook platform.
Publishers not on sidelines
L. Textbook publishers are partnering with universities for exclusive trials, buying stakes in start-ups and developing their own technologies. Last year, publisher Cengage launched MindTap, an e-book/digital learning website that is now being tried by about 50 professors, says Bill Rieders, Cengage"s executive vice President of global new media. Instead of tables of content, MindTap provides "a learning path" that students can access for text, multimedia, self-assessment tools, quizzes and note sharing.
M. Pearson has introduced a competing product, OpenClass. The cloud-based website means students can access information wherever there"s an online connection—features social networking, and works with Google Apps for Education. Reed College in Portland, Ore., is one of several universities that will test OpenClass this fall.
N. The CourseLoad trial has been in place since 2009 on a limited basis, with students receiving free books. It has been expanded to 130 courses this spring semester. Students now pay a discounted price for access to CourseLoad books and learning kits, typically "60% to 70%" cheaper than new print books, Wheeler says. In exchange, students must pay a fee to enroll. Despite the lack of flexibility, school officials and students have embraced the low-cost approach, he says.
(选自USA Today)Due to the mobile technology, readability on electronic equipment becomes better.

答案： C。[解析] C段主要介绍了移动技术改善了文字材料在平板电脑这种设备上的可读性。题干中的becomes better对应...

填空题

How Customs Work
A. One of the little rituals all international travelers go through is customs. To most people, this is just another stop in an airport or a minor inconvenience at a country"s borders. But when you go through customs, you are actually taking part in a key component of the global economy.
B. A nation"s customs service has many responsibilities. At its most basic level, its purpose is to regulate what comes into and goes out of a country. The foremost element of this regulation is controlling international trade. The concept of trade is as old as civilization itself. If my tribe has a huge supply of bananas, and your tribe has a huge supply of fur, we will trade goods so that both our tribes can eat and both can keep warm. In the modern world, international trade is based on money, but it works in pretty much the same way.
C. Any nation wants its own businesses to do well, so most of the time they prefer their people buy domestic goods over competing foreign goods. But in many cases, goods are available cheaper in another country than in your country, and people naturally want to buy them at the lower price. To tilt the balance in favor of domestic businesses, governments impose tariffs, also called duty, on foreign goods coming into the country.
D. In addition to encouraging domestic trade, duty also gives the nation a "piece of the action" when somebody buys something produced overseas. Customs agencies are often major sources of revenue for the government. The US Customs Service, for example, brings in more money than any other government office except the Internal Revenue Service. To control specific sorts of trade, a government may impose a higher tariff on certain types of goods (alcohol, for example). Certain countries may join together to work out mutually beneficial trade agreements, enabling businesses in those nations to trade more freely with each other than they can with businesses in other nations. This gives an advantage to nations that a country has a good relationship with.
E. Customs agencies also monitor what is being exported from a country. For example, most governments strictly regulate what weapons can be exported to other nations. This is simply a common-sense safety measure: It"s not a good idea to arm enemy nations, so the government has to know who is buying any domestically-produced weaponry. As we"ll see later on, customs agencies also pay careful attention to how much money citizens are transporting out of the country.
F. Duty charges have a huge effect on big businesses, which may import millions of dollars worth of goods every year. To regulate trade on this level, a country"s customs agency must keep track of all shipments that come into the nation"s ports or cross its borders. They can"t check every bit of foreign cargo, of course, so agents pick certain boxes to inspect and certain shipments to scrutinize. In an effort to speed up the process, the US Customs Service is implementing new, computerized systems for processing shipments and charging in, porters.
G. While large businesses are the main importers in a country, trade restrictions also apply to the individual traveler. When you bring home souvenirs (纪念品) from another country, you are actually importing goods. In the United States and many other countries, the customs agency grants each traveler a nominal duty exemption (免除) to allow them to bring back a reasonable amount of goods without having to pay tariffs.
H. In most countries, it isn"t feasible for the customs agency to check all of the goods that every single traveler is importing, so governments have to depend largely on people"s honesty. When you enter a country, you are asked to truthfully report what goods you are importing and make a good faith estimate of their value. They don"t put their entire trust in people"s good character, of course; customs performs a thorough search of some percentage of all travelers.
I. Some customs agencies decide which travelers to search based on random chance. You are asked to press a button on a machine that activates a random number generator. Depending on the number that comes up, either a green light comes on and you can pass through or a red light comes on and the agent searches your bags. Other customs agencies decide who to search based solely on intuition. After many years on the job, a customs agent develops a keen eye for people who are up to no good. Unlike the police, customs agents are fully authorized to search your luggage, clothes and even your body without any warrant or reason for suspicion. Customs agents often work side-by-side with immigration officials, and in some ports of entry, one inspector may represent both agencies. But at its core, a customs agency is concerned with the things that are coming in and out of a country, rather than the travelers themselves.
J. In addition to monitoring legal imports, a nation"s customs agency also works to keep out illegal or contraband (违禁品) items. Customs agencies must fight the flow of illegal materials across borders. In addition to drugs, customs agencies may watch for weaponry, child pornography (色情资料), counterfeit merchandise and stolen goods. They also watch for people carrying illegally gained money across borders. These sorts of illegal materials make up only one category of contraband goods. Customs agents also stop the importation of legal goods that are a threat to the nation"s security. In most countries, the importation of fruits, meats, animals and plants is heavily regulated due to the fear of disease or ecological imbalance. While it may seem strange that a piece of fruit is considered a threat to national security, the risk of biological contamination is very real. In the late 1980s, one traveler with one piece of contaminated fruit caused an infestation (大量滋生) of Mediterranean fruit flies that destroyed millions of dollars worth of crops in California.
K. Some completely harmless items are deemed contraband simply because of the country they come from. If country A is considered to be a national enemy of country B, or has a record of violating international law, country B (and other countries) might institute an embargo (禁运) against that country (a ban on the importation of country A"s goods). This cuts off potential business for country A, and this may persuade its leaders to change their policies. In the United States, the best known example of this sort of sanction is the embargo against Cuban products. There is a high demand for Cuban cigars in the United States, but they are strictly regulated because of the strained relationship between the United States and Cuba. As with drugs, smugglers are eager to sneak in a supply to meet this demand, and are constantly trying to get around customs.
L. In many countries, the customs agency closely monitors the importing and exporting of cultural artifacts. While a traveler may have purchased the item in good faith, it might have been stolen at an earlier point. Customs agencies have helped to restore many priceless artifacts to their rightful owners.
M. A country"s government might also ban importation of items based on ethics and morality. For example, in many countries, you cannot import ivory or other products that come from endangered animals. In 2000, the United States enacted the Dog and Cat Protection Act , banning the importation of any products made from dog and cat fur that was acquired inhumanly. The US Customs Service confiscates all such goods so that US citizens do not inadvertently support this practice.
N. Without customs agencies, nations would have no control over what comes in and goes out of their country. In order to protect its citizens and businesses, a government has to be vigilant in protecting its borders, not only against armed attack, but also against unwanted imports. As any customs agent will tell you, this is crucial to maintaining order in modern society.
(选自Time)With many years of experience, some customs agencies base their selection and inspection of travelers only on intuition.

答案： I。[解析] I段提到一些海关机构随机决定检查哪些出行者，多年的工作经验使海关工作人员仅凭直觉就能确定搜查对象。题干中的...

填空题

Save for College
A. In this article, we"ll look at the rules for 529 Qualified State Tuition Plans. We"ll explore the difference between this savings vehicle and some of the other traditional education savings methods and see why this plan is the best yet!
The cost of college
B. You may never have thought you could get excited about big sums of money you won"t be spending on yourself until you read about this new college savings plan. The 529 plan offers the most painless way to save money for higher education to date. And if the child decides not to go to college, you can roll it over to someone else that does want to go, including yourself! The 529 Plan is a savings plan for college education. You have a couple of options when you open an account.
* One option lets you prepay tuition at a qualified educational institution at today"s tuition rates.
* Another option lets you save money in a tax-deferred account (earnings only) to be used to pay for education at future tuition rates.
C. The idea, with either option, is that the investment earnings will grow to meet the higher costs of future education. The savings account option is typically considered the more attractive of the two and is what we will focus on in this article. The 529 plan is a state-sponsored investment program. That is, the state sets up the plan with an asset management company of its choice, and you open a 529 account with that asset management company according to the state"s predetermined plan features. You are the owner of the account, and the child for whom the account is set up is the beneficiary (收益人). You won"t deal directly with the state, but rather with the asset management/investment company.
State-to-state variations
D. Because each state can control some of the features of its own plan, there are variations from state to state. Most plans follow the same general scheme (and federal requirements), but make sure you compare plans among states other than your own. Most states don"t require residency in order to participate, so shop around different states for the best deal.
The benefits: tax treatment
E. All of the account"s earnings are exempt from federal tax when they are withdrawn if they are used for qualified education expenses. This means that, unlike the taxes you have to pay on earnings from regular stock investments, you won"t pay any tax on the 529 account earnings unless you end up using the money for something other than higher education. Earnings are currently tax-deferred in most states, as well.
F. A break on the earnings tax isn"t the only tax advantage, either. Although your contributions aren"t pre-tax (you pay state and federal tax on the money you put into the account), there are some states that let you deduct a portion of your contributions from your state taxes. More states will probably follow suit in the coming years.
The benefits: account control
G. Unlike Education Savings Accounts (ESA), the account owner always has control of the money. This helps lessen that parental anxiety that the junior will take the money and tour Europe or buy a Porsche instead of going to college. There are no restrictions on who can open an account for whom. You can open an account for your child, a friend"s child, a relative, the paper boy, or even yourself.
The benefits: income eligibility
H. Did you know that with an ESA, you aren"t eligible to contribute if you make more than $110,000 per year ($220,000 for married couples) Unlike ESAs, your income does not affect your eligibility to open a 529 account. Contributions to 529 plans also qualify for the $11,000 ($22,000 for married couples in 2002) annual gift tax exclusion. You can also contribute up to five years of gifts during the first year, meaning you can put in up to $55,000 ($110,000 for married couples). This is a great benefit in situations where inheritance money enters the picture. Your account can grow up to $268,000 in some states. You can contribute as little as $25 to $50 per month.
The benefits: how the money can be used
I. In most states, there is no age limit or time limit for when the money has to be used. Your child can put off college indefinitely, in which case you have the option of rolling the account over to another child as long as that child is in the same family of the first beneficiary. In case you"re wondering just who is considered "family", the plan defines family members as "the original beneficiary"s spouse, children, sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces, first cousins, and any spouses of those persons."
J. Your child can go to any accredited (官方认可的) degree-granting educational institution, whether it is public, private, two-year, or four-year. There are even some international schools that qualify. In most states, qualified education costs include tuition, books, room, board, transportation, and even computers. In the event that your child gets a scholarship, then the remainder of the 529 account can be rolled over to another sibling (or relative), or it can be cashed out with no penalty other than the tax paid (at your rate) on the earnings. The same rule applies in the event of the child"s death or disability.
The benefits: investment control
K. If the thought of turning over your hard earned money to the state makes you a little uneasy, rest assured that the state doesn"t control your money. In fact, most states are signing on with well-known, successful investment companies such as TIAA-CREF, Vanguard and Fidelity. The number and types of investment options vary by state, and once you select your option you can"t change it. You can, however, roll your money over into another state"s plan if you"re not happy with your chosen investment option. There is no penalty to roll the money over into another state"s plan, and you can do it once every 12 months. Most states have no residence requirement for their 529 plans.
L. Many plans are also offering investment choices that are age-based. This means that if you"re starting early, perhaps when your child is age one to three, the investments can begin aggressively in stocks then gradually shift to bonds and money market accounts as your child gets closer to college age. Some state plans offer several levels of options for aggressive, moderate and conservative investments.
M. If you can"t reach the risk level you want in one plan, you can always open a second 529 account in the same or another state. You can have as many accounts as you want and can also contribute to both a 529 plan and an ESA. That way, you can diversify your investments in the event that the plan doesn"t offer the investment mix you would like.
(选自The New York Times)The state makes out the plan and assigns an asset management company in the 529 plan.

答案： C。[解析] C段主要介绍了529计划是资助投资项目，各州成立资产管理公司，存款人与资产管理公司打交道，而不是与各州打交...

填空题

Shopping and the Internet, Making It Click
A. Terry Lundgren and Kevin Ryan know and like each other. But when it comes to the future of retailing the boss of Macy"s, an American department-store giant, and the chief executive of Gilt Groupe, an online retailer, disagree wildly. Mr. Lundgren remains a firm believer in an empire of bricks and mortar (实体店). Mr. Ryan is betting big on online-only selling.
B. "It used to be mail-order catalogues killing physical stores, then it was TV shopping and now it is online retail," says Mr. Lundgren. Although he will not be pinned down on whether the Internet is a threat to shopkeepers or an opportunity for them, he is convinced that his chain is on the right path. Macy"s is embracing "omnichannel" integration, that is, selling stuff on television, through mail-order catalogues and online, as well as keeping its department stores. The company runs 810 shops across America under the mid-price, mid-market Macy"s brand and 38 more luxurious Bloomingdale"s outlets. Mr. Ryan argues that bricks-and-mortar shops are gravely threatened by Amazon and other online-only retailers, and says he can see "no evidence that there are big opportunities for traditional retailers in online retail."
C. Overall, retail sales in America are pretty flat, so the double-digit growth of online sellers is coming at the expense of physical shops. Amazon"s sales in the past year were $48 billion, compared with Macy"s $26 billion. Last year online sales in America reached $188 billion, about 8% of total retail sales. They are forecast to reach $270 billion by 2015. So far, Mr. Lundgren has good reason not to worry that the sky is falling. Most relevant for Mr. Lundgren"s debate with his friendly rival, online sales from the websites of Macy"s and Bloomingdale"s jumped by 40%. This reflects Macy"s efforts to expand its online business. It is building a new logistics (物流) center for online sales in West Virginia and expanding an existing one in Tennessee. And it is fixing a glaring flaw in its Internet-sales operation: until now online shoppers have only been able to buy goods in Macy"s warehouses; soon they will be able to order items from the stock of its stores.
Magic mirrors and Facebook friends
D. Mr. Lundgren is keen to continue experimenting with ways to use the Internet. In 2010 Macy"s introduced a virtual fitting room where customers tried on digital representations of clothes through their reflection in a "magic mirror" and shared them with their friends on Facebook. "It didn"t work," admits Mr. Lundgren. So Macy"s is now trying out virtual models. With its thriving Internet business, Macy"s is ahead of many other retailers.
E. Walmart, the world"s biggest, waited for a long time and hesitated over its online strategy until it finally decided to "make winning of e-commerce a key priority", as Mike Duke, its chief executive, puts it. Like an increasing number of store chains, Walmart is inviting online shoppers to pick up their purchases from its physical stores if that suits them. Since last June they have been able to do so on the day they place their order. Now, says Joel Anderson, who runs the company"s online business, more than half of Internet orders are collected from stores. The company claims this is saving shoppers millions of dollars in delivery charges. In spite of these recent improvements, Walmart is not yet reaping big profits from its online business. It does not break out its Internet sales from the total, but they are still tiny for its size.
F. There are some retailers, in particular those at the extremes of the market, that can safely ignore the threat from shoppers" migration to the Internet. At the luxury end, Yves Saint Laurent is unlikely to start selling its ball gowns over the net; at the cost-conscious end, dollar stores will continue "piling it high and selling it cheap". But the vast majority of retailers in between may have little choice but to counter the rise of online-only rivals by creating strong Internet operations of their own. The biggest threat to most of them is Amazon, the undisputed champion of online selling. Other online-only retailers have little chance of felling this giant. Their best bet is to be distinctive.
G. Mr. Ryan"s Gilt Groupe is modeled on France"s Vente Privée, an online shopping club for expensive branded stuff at reduced prices. The customers" average age for Mr. Ryan"s business is 34. Consumers aged 24 to 35 already do about a quarter of their shopping online, says John Deighton of Harvard Business School. In Mr. Deighton"s view the Internet-retail revolution is over, in that online buying is well established and will only keep growing. However, he says it is unclear how important a sales tool social networks like Facebook and Twitter, to which some online retailers are pinning their hopes, will turn out to be.
H. Some bricks-and-mortar retailers have already had disappointing experiences trying to sell through social media. Over the past year GAP, J. C. Penney and Nordstrom have opened and closed storefronts on Facebook. The social-networking site, which this month filed for an IPO (首次公开募股), is trying hard to be a top shopping destination for its 845m members. Yet so far people still tend to visit Facebook to socialize with their friends.
Shopping by smartphone
I. What does seem clear is that as personal computing goes mobile people are buying more via smart phones. Four years ago hardly anyone bought things on their mobile devices but today nearly one-quarter of Gilt Groupe"s revenue comes from smart phone shoppers; on some weekends the proportion reaches 40%. Nearly one third of people living in America own a smart phone, and 70% of these use it to do searches while they are inside a shop, usually to compare prices. "By 2014 mobile Internet will overtake desktop Internet usage for shopping," predicts Nigel Morris, chief executive of Aegis Media Americas.
Order online, pay cash in store
J. The most clued-up shopkeepers realize that they must make the most of such advantages over online rivals, and that to do so they must make their stores more enjoyable places to visit. In 2010 Macy"s company launched a training programme for its more than 130,000 sales people, "MAGIC Selling", which coached them to be more helpful and friendlier with customers. It is tailoring the merchandise stocked in its stores more closely to local tastes. Retailers with lavishly furnished stores and helpful assistants will increasingly have to put up with free-riders who come into the shop to check out the products and get some advice, before sneaking away to buy them for less online.
Have you got this in my size
K. However, there is no single recipe for retailing success in the Internet age. Retailers will need to balance their investment between staff, locations, inventory and online operations, says José Alvarez of Harvard Business School. For some expensive products it makes sense to have a low inventory, a big investment in showrooms, elaborate online operations and well qualified sales people. For more commoditized items it is more important to have a big inventory than a flashy display. Things that are increasingly being bought online must be swept off the shelves to make way for products that people still want to examine and compare before buying.
L. Whatever priorities retailers set, their physical stores are likely to shrink as the share of sales made online keeps rising. The retailers who want to survive the drift online are the ones "listening to the dynamic demands of customers," says Walmart"s Mr. Anderson.
(选自The Economist)The virtual fitting room introduced by Macy"s in 2010 turned out to be useless.

答案： D。[解析] D段主要介绍了朗格先生用不同的方法来尝试如何使用互联网。题干中的virtual fitting room ...

填空题

Technology, Costs, Lack of Appeal Slow E-textbook Adoption
A. Textbooks are often a luxury for college senior Vatell Martin. The accounting major at Virginia State University got by in several courses with study groups and professors" lectures. "It"s not that I didn"t want to buy," he says. "Sometimes, I just didn"t have the money for a $200 book." VSU knows Martin isn"t the only one. More than half of its students routinely skip buying textbooks. For a solution, the school is turning to e-textbooks.
B. VSU partnered with Flat World Knowledge, a start-up publisher that produces exclusively written e-books with "open" content that can be modified by professors. In a trial with 14 business courses, students would be required to pay $20 and receive a Flat World e-book and digital learning supplements. The university and a local grant have been covering the cost, so far. "That"s nothing. It"s what I put in my gas tank," says Martin, who participated in the trial. "If I was walking into a discussion on a topic, I can just download and take out the book and read it on my phone."
C. With their promise of ubiquity (无处不在), convenience and perhaps affordability, e-textbooks have arrived in fits and starts throughout college campuses. And publishers and book resellers are spending millions attracting students to their online stores and e-reader platforms as mobile technology improves the readability of the material on devices such as tablet computers. Silicon Valley start-ups, such as Inkling and Kno, are also aggressively reinventing textbooks with interactive graphics, videos and social-media features.
D. Despite emerging attempts at innovation, the industry has been slowed by clumsy technology, the lasting appeal of print books, skeptical students who search online for cheaper alternatives, and customer confusion stemming from too many me-too e-textbook platforms that have failed to stand out.
E. The late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, believed textbooks to be an $8 billion market ripe for "digital destruction," biographer Walter Issacson writes in Steve Jobs . Apple is expected to make an announcement Thursday about its new education products. The market is small but growing. Sales for e-textbooks in the US higher education market grew 44.3% to $267.3 million in 2011, according to Simba Information, a publishing industry research firm.
Print still rules
F. So far, students have been less than impressed and more likely to choose print books. About 11% of college students have bought e-textbooks, according to market research firm Student Monitor. Availability isn"t the chief problem. Most popular textbooks have a digital version, and they"re available online. But students have largely stayed away because the most readily available technology today—PDF (portable document format) or other document reader versions of the print book—is clumsy and eye-straining to read.
G. When Andrea Soto, a freshman biology major at the University of Maryland, bought Principles of Biology, the $192 price tag came with a free online version. She prefers the touchable presence of a thick book on her lap. "You can"t highlight or underline things in the e-book. I find it more of a trouble," she says. However, digital books aren"t necessarily cheaper, either. While priced lower than new print books, they"re often more expensive than buying or renting used books online, says Kathy Mickey, an analyst at Simba.
H. A federally funded pilot study at Daytona State College in Florida found that some students who rented an e-textbook paid only a dollar less than students who bought a print edition. And e-textbook users couldn"t sell the book back after the class ended. Despite e-textbooks" shortcomings, most agree that the print market is ripe for a technological overhaul (彻底改革). Prices of new books are rising sharply. Authors complain about used book sales that don"t generate royalties. Professors and students are annoyed at new editions that seemingly add little in content VS the previous one.
I. "This is an industry that"s failing everyone—parents, authors, professors, and students," says Brad Wheeler, chief information officer at Indiana University, which is running a program that distributes cheaper e-textbooks but requires all students in the class to buy. Publishers are eager for a quicker transition to the format because e-textbooks cost less to publish and would generate income from every student who buys one. Digital books can"t be resold, at least, not legally. "We"d prefer that all of it to go digital," says Vineet Madan, senior vice President of new ventures at McGraw-Hill Education. "There isn"t a secondary market for e-books."
Seeking market niche (商机)
J. If current e-textbooks are mostly unappealing, what"s next Like online music in its infancy, the textbook industry"s key players—publishers, resellers, bookstores, tech companies, even some universities—are all scrambling to offer their digital solutions, an effort that has only intensified with the arrival of tablet computers and app stores. "Everybody and their brothers are coming out with an e-book platform," says Iam Williams, director of strategic learning solutions at Wiley, a textbook publisher.
K. They all agree on one thing: The quality of e-textbooks must improve dramatically. More value-added, interactive features will keep students interested and spur sales, they say. Tablet computers are a key stimulus in this endeavor. At Kno, tablets have allowed the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company to embed interactive tools onto an existing e-textbook in a more intuitive way, for example, the ability to w-rite directly on the book with a finger stroke or tap on a keyword for notes. "Tablet was a needed development," says Kno"s founder Osman Rashid. Despite threats to their print book sales, university bookstores are also coming around to embracing e-books. Follett, which rims 930 university bookstores in North America, launched Follett CafeScribe last year, a cloud-based digital textbook platform.
Publishers not on sidelines
L. Textbook publishers are partnering with universities for exclusive trials, buying stakes in start-ups and developing their own technologies. Last year, publisher Cengage launched MindTap, an e-book/digital learning website that is now being tried by about 50 professors, says Bill Rieders, Cengage"s executive vice President of global new media. Instead of tables of content, MindTap provides "a learning path" that students can access for text, multimedia, self-assessment tools, quizzes and note sharing.
M. Pearson has introduced a competing product, OpenClass. The cloud-based website means students can access information wherever there"s an online connection—features social networking, and works with Google Apps for Education. Reed College in Portland, Ore., is one of several universities that will test OpenClass this fall.
N. The CourseLoad trial has been in place since 2009 on a limited basis, with students receiving free books. It has been expanded to 130 courses this spring semester. Students now pay a discounted price for access to CourseLoad books and learning kits, typically "60% to 70%" cheaper than new print books, Wheeler says. In exchange, students must pay a fee to enroll. Despite the lack of flexibility, school officials and students have embraced the low-cost approach, he says.
(选自USA Today)In MindTap, each function can be accessible through "a learning path" rather than the tables of content.

答案： L。[解析] L段主要介绍了MindTap提供了“一条学习路径”而不是目录表，学生们可以通过该路径获取文本、多媒体、自评...

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How Customs Work
A. One of the little rituals all international travelers go through is customs. To most people, this is just another stop in an airport or a minor inconvenience at a country"s borders. But when you go through customs, you are actually taking part in a key component of the global economy.
B. A nation"s customs service has many responsibilities. At its most basic level, its purpose is to regulate what comes into and goes out of a country. The foremost element of this regulation is controlling international trade. The concept of trade is as old as civilization itself. If my tribe has a huge supply of bananas, and your tribe has a huge supply of fur, we will trade goods so that both our tribes can eat and both can keep warm. In the modern world, international trade is based on money, but it works in pretty much the same way.
C. Any nation wants its own businesses to do well, so most of the time they prefer their people buy domestic goods over competing foreign goods. But in many cases, goods are available cheaper in another country than in your country, and people naturally want to buy them at the lower price. To tilt the balance in favor of domestic businesses, governments impose tariffs, also called duty, on foreign goods coming into the country.
D. In addition to encouraging domestic trade, duty also gives the nation a "piece of the action" when somebody buys something produced overseas. Customs agencies are often major sources of revenue for the government. The US Customs Service, for example, brings in more money than any other government office except the Internal Revenue Service. To control specific sorts of trade, a government may impose a higher tariff on certain types of goods (alcohol, for example). Certain countries may join together to work out mutually beneficial trade agreements, enabling businesses in those nations to trade more freely with each other than they can with businesses in other nations. This gives an advantage to nations that a country has a good relationship with.
E. Customs agencies also monitor what is being exported from a country. For example, most governments strictly regulate what weapons can be exported to other nations. This is simply a common-sense safety measure: It"s not a good idea to arm enemy nations, so the government has to know who is buying any domestically-produced weaponry. As we"ll see later on, customs agencies also pay careful attention to how much money citizens are transporting out of the country.
F. Duty charges have a huge effect on big businesses, which may import millions of dollars worth of goods every year. To regulate trade on this level, a country"s customs agency must keep track of all shipments that come into the nation"s ports or cross its borders. They can"t check every bit of foreign cargo, of course, so agents pick certain boxes to inspect and certain shipments to scrutinize. In an effort to speed up the process, the US Customs Service is implementing new, computerized systems for processing shipments and charging in, porters.
G. While large businesses are the main importers in a country, trade restrictions also apply to the individual traveler. When you bring home souvenirs (纪念品) from another country, you are actually importing goods. In the United States and many other countries, the customs agency grants each traveler a nominal duty exemption (免除) to allow them to bring back a reasonable amount of goods without having to pay tariffs.
H. In most countries, it isn"t feasible for the customs agency to check all of the goods that every single traveler is importing, so governments have to depend largely on people"s honesty. When you enter a country, you are asked to truthfully report what goods you are importing and make a good faith estimate of their value. They don"t put their entire trust in people"s good character, of course; customs performs a thorough search of some percentage of all travelers.
I. Some customs agencies decide which travelers to search based on random chance. You are asked to press a button on a machine that activates a random number generator. Depending on the number that comes up, either a green light comes on and you can pass through or a red light comes on and the agent searches your bags. Other customs agencies decide who to search based solely on intuition. After many years on the job, a customs agent develops a keen eye for people who are up to no good. Unlike the police, customs agents are fully authorized to search your luggage, clothes and even your body without any warrant or reason for suspicion. Customs agents often work side-by-side with immigration officials, and in some ports of entry, one inspector may represent both agencies. But at its core, a customs agency is concerned with the things that are coming in and out of a country, rather than the travelers themselves.
J. In addition to monitoring legal imports, a nation"s customs agency also works to keep out illegal or contraband (违禁品) items. Customs agencies must fight the flow of illegal materials across borders. In addition to drugs, customs agencies may watch for weaponry, child pornography (色情资料), counterfeit merchandise and stolen goods. They also watch for people carrying illegally gained money across borders. These sorts of illegal materials make up only one category of contraband goods. Customs agents also stop the importation of legal goods that are a threat to the nation"s security. In most countries, the importation of fruits, meats, animals and plants is heavily regulated due to the fear of disease or ecological imbalance. While it may seem strange that a piece of fruit is considered a threat to national security, the risk of biological contamination is very real. In the late 1980s, one traveler with one piece of contaminated fruit caused an infestation (大量滋生) of Mediterranean fruit flies that destroyed millions of dollars worth of crops in California.
K. Some completely harmless items are deemed contraband simply because of the country they come from. If country A is considered to be a national enemy of country B, or has a record of violating international law, country B (and other countries) might institute an embargo (禁运) against that country (a ban on the importation of country A"s goods). This cuts off potential business for country A, and this may persuade its leaders to change their policies. In the United States, the best known example of this sort of sanction is the embargo against Cuban products. There is a high demand for Cuban cigars in the United States, but they are strictly regulated because of the strained relationship between the United States and Cuba. As with drugs, smugglers are eager to sneak in a supply to meet this demand, and are constantly trying to get around customs.
L. In many countries, the customs agency closely monitors the importing and exporting of cultural artifacts. While a traveler may have purchased the item in good faith, it might have been stolen at an earlier point. Customs agencies have helped to restore many priceless artifacts to their rightful owners.
M. A country"s government might also ban importation of items based on ethics and morality. For example, in many countries, you cannot import ivory or other products that come from endangered animals. In 2000, the United States enacted the Dog and Cat Protection Act , banning the importation of any products made from dog and cat fur that was acquired inhumanly. The US Customs Service confiscates all such goods so that US citizens do not inadvertently support this practice.
N. Without customs agencies, nations would have no control over what comes in and goes out of their country. In order to protect its citizens and businesses, a government has to be vigilant in protecting its borders, not only against armed attack, but also against unwanted imports. As any customs agent will tell you, this is crucial to maintaining order in modern society.
(选自Time)To control imports and exports is the most fundamental task of a nation"s customs.

答案： B。[解析] B段主要介绍了海关服务的多种职责，其中最基本的是控制国家的进出口贸易。题干中的the most funda...

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Save for College
A. In this article, we"ll look at the rules for 529 Qualified State Tuition Plans. We"ll explore the difference between this savings vehicle and some of the other traditional education savings methods and see why this plan is the best yet!
The cost of college
B. You may never have thought you could get excited about big sums of money you won"t be spending on yourself until you read about this new college savings plan. The 529 plan offers the most painless way to save money for higher education to date. And if the child decides not to go to college, you can roll it over to someone else that does want to go, including yourself! The 529 Plan is a savings plan for college education. You have a couple of options when you open an account.
* One option lets you prepay tuition at a qualified educational institution at today"s tuition rates.
* Another option lets you save money in a tax-deferred account (earnings only) to be used to pay for education at future tuition rates.
C. The idea, with either option, is that the investment earnings will grow to meet the higher costs of future education. The savings account option is typically considered the more attractive of the two and is what we will focus on in this article. The 529 plan is a state-sponsored investment program. That is, the state sets up the plan with an asset management company of its choice, and you open a 529 account with that asset management company according to the state"s predetermined plan features. You are the owner of the account, and the child for whom the account is set up is the beneficiary (收益人). You won"t deal directly with the state, but rather with the asset management/investment company.
State-to-state variations
D. Because each state can control some of the features of its own plan, there are variations from state to state. Most plans follow the same general scheme (and federal requirements), but make sure you compare plans among states other than your own. Most states don"t require residency in order to participate, so shop around different states for the best deal.
The benefits: tax treatment
E. All of the account"s earnings are exempt from federal tax when they are withdrawn if they are used for qualified education expenses. This means that, unlike the taxes you have to pay on earnings from regular stock investments, you won"t pay any tax on the 529 account earnings unless you end up using the money for something other than higher education. Earnings are currently tax-deferred in most states, as well.
F. A break on the earnings tax isn"t the only tax advantage, either. Although your contributions aren"t pre-tax (you pay state and federal tax on the money you put into the account), there are some states that let you deduct a portion of your contributions from your state taxes. More states will probably follow suit in the coming years.
The benefits: account control
G. Unlike Education Savings Accounts (ESA), the account owner always has control of the money. This helps lessen that parental anxiety that the junior will take the money and tour Europe or buy a Porsche instead of going to college. There are no restrictions on who can open an account for whom. You can open an account for your child, a friend"s child, a relative, the paper boy, or even yourself.
The benefits: income eligibility
H. Did you know that with an ESA, you aren"t eligible to contribute if you make more than $110,000 per year ($220,000 for married couples) Unlike ESAs, your income does not affect your eligibility to open a 529 account. Contributions to 529 plans also qualify for the $11,000 ($22,000 for married couples in 2002) annual gift tax exclusion. You can also contribute up to five years of gifts during the first year, meaning you can put in up to $55,000 ($110,000 for married couples). This is a great benefit in situations where inheritance money enters the picture. Your account can grow up to $268,000 in some states. You can contribute as little as $25 to $50 per month.
The benefits: how the money can be used
I. In most states, there is no age limit or time limit for when the money has to be used. Your child can put off college indefinitely, in which case you have the option of rolling the account over to another child as long as that child is in the same family of the first beneficiary. In case you"re wondering just who is considered "family", the plan defines family members as "the original beneficiary"s spouse, children, sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces, first cousins, and any spouses of those persons."
J. Your child can go to any accredited (官方认可的) degree-granting educational institution, whether it is public, private, two-year, or four-year. There are even some international schools that qualify. In most states, qualified education costs include tuition, books, room, board, transportation, and even computers. In the event that your child gets a scholarship, then the remainder of the 529 account can be rolled over to another sibling (or relative), or it can be cashed out with no penalty other than the tax paid (at your rate) on the earnings. The same rule applies in the event of the child"s death or disability.
The benefits: investment control
K. If the thought of turning over your hard earned money to the state makes you a little uneasy, rest assured that the state doesn"t control your money. In fact, most states are signing on with well-known, successful investment companies such as TIAA-CREF, Vanguard and Fidelity. The number and types of investment options vary by state, and once you select your option you can"t change it. You can, however, roll your money over into another state"s plan if you"re not happy with your chosen investment option. There is no penalty to roll the money over into another state"s plan, and you can do it once every 12 months. Most states have no residence requirement for their 529 plans.
L. Many plans are also offering investment choices that are age-based. This means that if you"re starting early, perhaps when your child is age one to three, the investments can begin aggressively in stocks then gradually shift to bonds and money market accounts as your child gets closer to college age. Some state plans offer several levels of options for aggressive, moderate and conservative investments.
M. If you can"t reach the risk level you want in one plan, you can always open a second 529 account in the same or another state. You can have as many accounts as you want and can also contribute to both a 529 plan and an ESA. That way, you can diversify your investments in the event that the plan doesn"t offer the investment mix you would like.
(选自The New York Times)The 529 account owner always controls the money to avoid spending on other things.

答案： G。[解析] G段主要介绍了账户持有人对钱有控制权，这有助于减轻父母的担忧，防止孩子拿钱去欧洲旅行或买保时捷，而不是去念...

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Shopping and the Internet, Making It Click
A. Terry Lundgren and Kevin Ryan know and like each other. But when it comes to the future of retailing the boss of Macy"s, an American department-store giant, and the chief executive of Gilt Groupe, an online retailer, disagree wildly. Mr. Lundgren remains a firm believer in an empire of bricks and mortar (实体店). Mr. Ryan is betting big on online-only selling.
B. "It used to be mail-order catalogues killing physical stores, then it was TV shopping and now it is online retail," says Mr. Lundgren. Although he will not be pinned down on whether the Internet is a threat to shopkeepers or an opportunity for them, he is convinced that his chain is on the right path. Macy"s is embracing "omnichannel" integration, that is, selling stuff on television, through mail-order catalogues and online, as well as keeping its department stores. The company runs 810 shops across America under the mid-price, mid-market Macy"s brand and 38 more luxurious Bloomingdale"s outlets. Mr. Ryan argues that bricks-and-mortar shops are gravely threatened by Amazon and other online-only retailers, and says he can see "no evidence that there are big opportunities for traditional retailers in online retail."
C. Overall, retail sales in America are pretty flat, so the double-digit growth of online sellers is coming at the expense of physical shops. Amazon"s sales in the past year were $48 billion, compared with Macy"s $26 billion. Last year online sales in America reached $188 billion, about 8% of total retail sales. They are forecast to reach $270 billion by 2015. So far, Mr. Lundgren has good reason not to worry that the sky is falling. Most relevant for Mr. Lundgren"s debate with his friendly rival, online sales from the websites of Macy"s and Bloomingdale"s jumped by 40%. This reflects Macy"s efforts to expand its online business. It is building a new logistics (物流) center for online sales in West Virginia and expanding an existing one in Tennessee. And it is fixing a glaring flaw in its Internet-sales operation: until now online shoppers have only been able to buy goods in Macy"s warehouses; soon they will be able to order items from the stock of its stores.
Magic mirrors and Facebook friends
D. Mr. Lundgren is keen to continue experimenting with ways to use the Internet. In 2010 Macy"s introduced a virtual fitting room where customers tried on digital representations of clothes through their reflection in a "magic mirror" and shared them with their friends on Facebook. "It didn"t work," admits Mr. Lundgren. So Macy"s is now trying out virtual models. With its thriving Internet business, Macy"s is ahead of many other retailers.
E. Walmart, the world"s biggest, waited for a long time and hesitated over its online strategy until it finally decided to "make winning of e-commerce a key priority", as Mike Duke, its chief executive, puts it. Like an increasing number of store chains, Walmart is inviting online shoppers to pick up their purchases from its physical stores if that suits them. Since last June they have been able to do so on the day they place their order. Now, says Joel Anderson, who runs the company"s online business, more than half of Internet orders are collected from stores. The company claims this is saving shoppers millions of dollars in delivery charges. In spite of these recent improvements, Walmart is not yet reaping big profits from its online business. It does not break out its Internet sales from the total, but they are still tiny for its size.
F. There are some retailers, in particular those at the extremes of the market, that can safely ignore the threat from shoppers" migration to the Internet. At the luxury end, Yves Saint Laurent is unlikely to start selling its ball gowns over the net; at the cost-conscious end, dollar stores will continue "piling it high and selling it cheap". But the vast majority of retailers in between may have little choice but to counter the rise of online-only rivals by creating strong Internet operations of their own. The biggest threat to most of them is Amazon, the undisputed champion of online selling. Other online-only retailers have little chance of felling this giant. Their best bet is to be distinctive.
G. Mr. Ryan"s Gilt Groupe is modeled on France"s Vente Privée, an online shopping club for expensive branded stuff at reduced prices. The customers" average age for Mr. Ryan"s business is 34. Consumers aged 24 to 35 already do about a quarter of their shopping online, says John Deighton of Harvard Business School. In Mr. Deighton"s view the Internet-retail revolution is over, in that online buying is well established and will only keep growing. However, he says it is unclear how important a sales tool social networks like Facebook and Twitter, to which some online retailers are pinning their hopes, will turn out to be.
H. Some bricks-and-mortar retailers have already had disappointing experiences trying to sell through social media. Over the past year GAP, J. C. Penney and Nordstrom have opened and closed storefronts on Facebook. The social-networking site, which this month filed for an IPO (首次公开募股), is trying hard to be a top shopping destination for its 845m members. Yet so far people still tend to visit Facebook to socialize with their friends.
Shopping by smartphone
I. What does seem clear is that as personal computing goes mobile people are buying more via smart phones. Four years ago hardly anyone bought things on their mobile devices but today nearly one-quarter of Gilt Groupe"s revenue comes from smart phone shoppers; on some weekends the proportion reaches 40%. Nearly one third of people living in America own a smart phone, and 70% of these use it to do searches while they are inside a shop, usually to compare prices. "By 2014 mobile Internet will overtake desktop Internet usage for shopping," predicts Nigel Morris, chief executive of Aegis Media Americas.
Order online, pay cash in store
J. The most clued-up shopkeepers realize that they must make the most of such advantages over online rivals, and that to do so they must make their stores more enjoyable places to visit. In 2010 Macy"s company launched a training programme for its more than 130,000 sales people, "MAGIC Selling", which coached them to be more helpful and friendlier with customers. It is tailoring the merchandise stocked in its stores more closely to local tastes. Retailers with lavishly furnished stores and helpful assistants will increasingly have to put up with free-riders who come into the shop to check out the products and get some advice, before sneaking away to buy them for less online.
Have you got this in my size
K. However, there is no single recipe for retailing success in the Internet age. Retailers will need to balance their investment between staff, locations, inventory and online operations, says José Alvarez of Harvard Business School. For some expensive products it makes sense to have a low inventory, a big investment in showrooms, elaborate online operations and well qualified sales people. For more commoditized items it is more important to have a big inventory than a flashy display. Things that are increasingly being bought online must be swept off the shelves to make way for products that people still want to examine and compare before buying.
L. Whatever priorities retailers set, their physical stores are likely to shrink as the share of sales made online keeps rising. The retailers who want to survive the drift online are the ones "listening to the dynamic demands of customers," says Walmart"s Mr. Anderson.
(选自The Economist)According to José Alvarez, when retailers sell high-price products, they should hire excellent sales people.

答案： K。[解析] K段主要介绍了零售业需要平衡销售人员、地点、库存和在线操作。题干中的high-price products...

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Technology, Costs, Lack of Appeal Slow E-textbook Adoption
A. Textbooks are often a luxury for college senior Vatell Martin. The accounting major at Virginia State University got by in several courses with study groups and professors" lectures. "It"s not that I didn"t want to buy," he says. "Sometimes, I just didn"t have the money for a $200 book." VSU knows Martin isn"t the only one. More than half of its students routinely skip buying textbooks. For a solution, the school is turning to e-textbooks.
B. VSU partnered with Flat World Knowledge, a start-up publisher that produces exclusively written e-books with "open" content that can be modified by professors. In a trial with 14 business courses, students would be required to pay $20 and receive a Flat World e-book and digital learning supplements. The university and a local grant have been covering the cost, so far. "That"s nothing. It"s what I put in my gas tank," says Martin, who participated in the trial. "If I was walking into a discussion on a topic, I can just download and take out the book and read it on my phone."
C. With their promise of ubiquity (无处不在), convenience and perhaps affordability, e-textbooks have arrived in fits and starts throughout college campuses. And publishers and book resellers are spending millions attracting students to their online stores and e-reader platforms as mobile technology improves the readability of the material on devices such as tablet computers. Silicon Valley start-ups, such as Inkling and Kno, are also aggressively reinventing textbooks with interactive graphics, videos and social-media features.
D. Despite emerging attempts at innovation, the industry has been slowed by clumsy technology, the lasting appeal of print books, skeptical students who search online for cheaper alternatives, and customer confusion stemming from too many me-too e-textbook platforms that have failed to stand out.
E. The late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, believed textbooks to be an $8 billion market ripe for "digital destruction," biographer Walter Issacson writes in Steve Jobs . Apple is expected to make an announcement Thursday about its new education products. The market is small but growing. Sales for e-textbooks in the US higher education market grew 44.3% to $267.3 million in 2011, according to Simba Information, a publishing industry research firm.
Print still rules
F. So far, students have been less than impressed and more likely to choose print books. About 11% of college students have bought e-textbooks, according to market research firm Student Monitor. Availability isn"t the chief problem. Most popular textbooks have a digital version, and they"re available online. But students have largely stayed away because the most readily available technology today—PDF (portable document format) or other document reader versions of the print book—is clumsy and eye-straining to read.
G. When Andrea Soto, a freshman biology major at the University of Maryland, bought Principles of Biology, the $192 price tag came with a free online version. She prefers the touchable presence of a thick book on her lap. "You can"t highlight or underline things in the e-book. I find it more of a trouble," she says. However, digital books aren"t necessarily cheaper, either. While priced lower than new print books, they"re often more expensive than buying or renting used books online, says Kathy Mickey, an analyst at Simba.
H. A federally funded pilot study at Daytona State College in Florida found that some students who rented an e-textbook paid only a dollar less than students who bought a print edition. And e-textbook users couldn"t sell the book back after the class ended. Despite e-textbooks" shortcomings, most agree that the print market is ripe for a technological overhaul (彻底改革). Prices of new books are rising sharply. Authors complain about used book sales that don"t generate royalties. Professors and students are annoyed at new editions that seemingly add little in content VS the previous one.
I. "This is an industry that"s failing everyone—parents, authors, professors, and students," says Brad Wheeler, chief information officer at Indiana University, which is running a program that distributes cheaper e-textbooks but requires all students in the class to buy. Publishers are eager for a quicker transition to the format because e-textbooks cost less to publish and would generate income from every student who buys one. Digital books can"t be resold, at least, not legally. "We"d prefer that all of it to go digital," says Vineet Madan, senior vice President of new ventures at McGraw-Hill Education. "There isn"t a secondary market for e-books."
Seeking market niche (商机)
J. If current e-textbooks are mostly unappealing, what"s next Like online music in its infancy, the textbook industry"s key players—publishers, resellers, bookstores, tech companies, even some universities—are all scrambling to offer their digital solutions, an effort that has only intensified with the arrival of tablet computers and app stores. "Everybody and their brothers are coming out with an e-book platform," says Iam Williams, director of strategic learning solutions at Wiley, a textbook publisher.
K. They all agree on one thing: The quality of e-textbooks must improve dramatically. More value-added, interactive features will keep students interested and spur sales, they say. Tablet computers are a key stimulus in this endeavor. At Kno, tablets have allowed the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company to embed interactive tools onto an existing e-textbook in a more intuitive way, for example, the ability to w-rite directly on the book with a finger stroke or tap on a keyword for notes. "Tablet was a needed development," says Kno"s founder Osman Rashid. Despite threats to their print book sales, university bookstores are also coming around to embracing e-books. Follett, which rims 930 university bookstores in North America, launched Follett CafeScribe last year, a cloud-based digital textbook platform.
Publishers not on sidelines
L. Textbook publishers are partnering with universities for exclusive trials, buying stakes in start-ups and developing their own technologies. Last year, publisher Cengage launched MindTap, an e-book/digital learning website that is now being tried by about 50 professors, says Bill Rieders, Cengage"s executive vice President of global new media. Instead of tables of content, MindTap provides "a learning path" that students can access for text, multimedia, self-assessment tools, quizzes and note sharing.
M. Pearson has introduced a competing product, OpenClass. The cloud-based website means students can access information wherever there"s an online connection—features social networking, and works with Google Apps for Education. Reed College in Portland, Ore., is one of several universities that will test OpenClass this fall.
N. The CourseLoad trial has been in place since 2009 on a limited basis, with students receiving free books. It has been expanded to 130 courses this spring semester. Students now pay a discounted price for access to CourseLoad books and learning kits, typically "60% to 70%" cheaper than new print books, Wheeler says. In exchange, students must pay a fee to enroll. Despite the lack of flexibility, school officials and students have embraced the low-cost approach, he says.
(选自USA Today)Publishers like Vineet Madan prefer e-textbooks because they cost less to publish.

答案： I。[解析] I段主要介绍了出版商渴望快一点转型到电子书形式，因为电子教科书出版费用低，并能从每一位购买电子教材的学生那...

填空题

Shopping and the Internet, Making It Click
A. Terry Lundgren and Kevin Ryan know and like each other. But when it comes to the future of retailing the boss of Macy"s, an American department-store giant, and the chief executive of Gilt Groupe, an online retailer, disagree wildly. Mr. Lundgren remains a firm believer in an empire of bricks and mortar (实体店). Mr. Ryan is betting big on online-only selling.
B. "It used to be mail-order catalogues killing physical stores, then it was TV shopping and now it is online retail," says Mr. Lundgren. Although he will not be pinned down on whether the Internet is a threat to shopkeepers or an opportunity for them, he is convinced that his chain is on the right path. Macy"s is embracing "omnichannel" integration, that is, selling stuff on television, through mail-order catalogues and online, as well as keeping its department stores. The company runs 810 shops across America under the mid-price, mid-market Macy"s brand and 38 more luxurious Bloomingdale"s outlets. Mr. Ryan argues that bricks-and-mortar shops are gravely threatened by Amazon and other online-only retailers, and says he can see "no evidence that there are big opportunities for traditional retailers in online retail."
C. Overall, retail sales in America are pretty flat, so the double-digit growth of online sellers is coming at the expense of physical shops. Amazon"s sales in the past year were $48 billion, compared with Macy"s $26 billion. Last year online sales in America reached $188 billion, about 8% of total retail sales. They are forecast to reach $270 billion by 2015. So far, Mr. Lundgren has good reason not to worry that the sky is falling. Most relevant for Mr. Lundgren"s debate with his friendly rival, online sales from the websites of Macy"s and Bloomingdale"s jumped by 40%. This reflects Macy"s efforts to expand its online business. It is building a new logistics (物流) center for online sales in West Virginia and expanding an existing one in Tennessee. And it is fixing a glaring flaw in its Internet-sales operation: until now online shoppers have only been able to buy goods in Macy"s warehouses; soon they will be able to order items from the stock of its stores.
Magic mirrors and Facebook friends
D. Mr. Lundgren is keen to continue experimenting with ways to use the Internet. In 2010 Macy"s introduced a virtual fitting room where customers tried on digital representations of clothes through their reflection in a "magic mirror" and shared them with their friends on Facebook. "It didn"t work," admits Mr. Lundgren. So Macy"s is now trying out virtual models. With its thriving Internet business, Macy"s is ahead of many other retailers.
E. Walmart, the world"s biggest, waited for a long time and hesitated over its online strategy until it finally decided to "make winning of e-commerce a key priority", as Mike Duke, its chief executive, puts it. Like an increasing number of store chains, Walmart is inviting online shoppers to pick up their purchases from its physical stores if that suits them. Since last June they have been able to do so on the day they place their order. Now, says Joel Anderson, who runs the company"s online business, more than half of Internet orders are collected from stores. The company claims this is saving shoppers millions of dollars in delivery charges. In spite of these recent improvements, Walmart is not yet reaping big profits from its online business. It does not break out its Internet sales from the total, but they are still tiny for its size.
F. There are some retailers, in particular those at the extremes of the market, that can safely ignore the threat from shoppers" migration to the Internet. At the luxury end, Yves Saint Laurent is unlikely to start selling its ball gowns over the net; at the cost-conscious end, dollar stores will continue "piling it high and selling it cheap". But the vast majority of retailers in between may have little choice but to counter the rise of online-only rivals by creating strong Internet operations of their own. The biggest threat to most of them is Amazon, the undisputed champion of online selling. Other online-only retailers have little chance of felling this giant. Their best bet is to be distinctive.
G. Mr. Ryan"s Gilt Groupe is modeled on France"s Vente Privée, an online shopping club for expensive branded stuff at reduced prices. The customers" average age for Mr. Ryan"s business is 34. Consumers aged 24 to 35 already do about a quarter of their shopping online, says John Deighton of Harvard Business School. In Mr. Deighton"s view the Internet-retail revolution is over, in that online buying is well established and will only keep growing. However, he says it is unclear how important a sales tool social networks like Facebook and Twitter, to which some online retailers are pinning their hopes, will turn out to be.
H. Some bricks-and-mortar retailers have already had disappointing experiences trying to sell through social media. Over the past year GAP, J. C. Penney and Nordstrom have opened and closed storefronts on Facebook. The social-networking site, which this month filed for an IPO (首次公开募股), is trying hard to be a top shopping destination for its 845m members. Yet so far people still tend to visit Facebook to socialize with their friends.
Shopping by smartphone
I. What does seem clear is that as personal computing goes mobile people are buying more via smart phones. Four years ago hardly anyone bought things on their mobile devices but today nearly one-quarter of Gilt Groupe"s revenue comes from smart phone shoppers; on some weekends the proportion reaches 40%. Nearly one third of people living in America own a smart phone, and 70% of these use it to do searches while they are inside a shop, usually to compare prices. "By 2014 mobile Internet will overtake desktop Internet usage for shopping," predicts Nigel Morris, chief executive of Aegis Media Americas.
Order online, pay cash in store
J. The most clued-up shopkeepers realize that they must make the most of such advantages over online rivals, and that to do so they must make their stores more enjoyable places to visit. In 2010 Macy"s company launched a training programme for its more than 130,000 sales people, "MAGIC Selling", which coached them to be more helpful and friendlier with customers. It is tailoring the merchandise stocked in its stores more closely to local tastes. Retailers with lavishly furnished stores and helpful assistants will increasingly have to put up with free-riders who come into the shop to check out the products and get some advice, before sneaking away to buy them for less online.
Have you got this in my size
K. However, there is no single recipe for retailing success in the Internet age. Retailers will need to balance their investment between staff, locations, inventory and online operations, says José Alvarez of Harvard Business School. For some expensive products it makes sense to have a low inventory, a big investment in showrooms, elaborate online operations and well qualified sales people. For more commoditized items it is more important to have a big inventory than a flashy display. Things that are increasingly being bought online must be swept off the shelves to make way for products that people still want to examine and compare before buying.
L. Whatever priorities retailers set, their physical stores are likely to shrink as the share of sales made online keeps rising. The retailers who want to survive the drift online are the ones "listening to the dynamic demands of customers," says Walmart"s Mr. Anderson.
(选自The Economist)The smart phones will replace desktop for shopping online by 2014.

答案： I。[解析] I段主要介绍了智能手机网上购物，到2014年手机网上购物将取代台式电脑购物。题干中的replace des...

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How Customs Work
A. One of the little rituals all international travelers go through is customs. To most people, this is just another stop in an airport or a minor inconvenience at a country"s borders. But when you go through customs, you are actually taking part in a key component of the global economy.
B. A nation"s customs service has many responsibilities. At its most basic level, its purpose is to regulate what comes into and goes out of a country. The foremost element of this regulation is controlling international trade. The concept of trade is as old as civilization itself. If my tribe has a huge supply of bananas, and your tribe has a huge supply of fur, we will trade goods so that both our tribes can eat and both can keep warm. In the modern world, international trade is based on money, but it works in pretty much the same way.
C. Any nation wants its own businesses to do well, so most of the time they prefer their people buy domestic goods over competing foreign goods. But in many cases, goods are available cheaper in another country than in your country, and people naturally want to buy them at the lower price. To tilt the balance in favor of domestic businesses, governments impose tariffs, also called duty, on foreign goods coming into the country.
D. In addition to encouraging domestic trade, duty also gives the nation a "piece of the action" when somebody buys something produced overseas. Customs agencies are often major sources of revenue for the government. The US Customs Service, for example, brings in more money than any other government office except the Internal Revenue Service. To control specific sorts of trade, a government may impose a higher tariff on certain types of goods (alcohol, for example). Certain countries may join together to work out mutually beneficial trade agreements, enabling businesses in those nations to trade more freely with each other than they can with businesses in other nations. This gives an advantage to nations that a country has a good relationship with.
E. Customs agencies also monitor what is being exported from a country. For example, most governments strictly regulate what weapons can be exported to other nations. This is simply a common-sense safety measure: It"s not a good idea to arm enemy nations, so the government has to know who is buying any domestically-produced weaponry. As we"ll see later on, customs agencies also pay careful attention to how much money citizens are transporting out of the country.
F. Duty charges have a huge effect on big businesses, which may import millions of dollars worth of goods every year. To regulate trade on this level, a country"s customs agency must keep track of all shipments that come into the nation"s ports or cross its borders. They can"t check every bit of foreign cargo, of course, so agents pick certain boxes to inspect and certain shipments to scrutinize. In an effort to speed up the process, the US Customs Service is implementing new, computerized systems for processing shipments and charging in, porters.
G. While large businesses are the main importers in a country, trade restrictions also apply to the individual traveler. When you bring home souvenirs (纪念品) from another country, you are actually importing goods. In the United States and many other countries, the customs agency grants each traveler a nominal duty exemption (免除) to allow them to bring back a reasonable amount of goods without having to pay tariffs.
H. In most countries, it isn"t feasible for the customs agency to check all of the goods that every single traveler is importing, so governments have to depend largely on people"s honesty. When you enter a country, you are asked to truthfully report what goods you are importing and make a good faith estimate of their value. They don"t put their entire trust in people"s good character, of course; customs performs a thorough search of some percentage of all travelers.
I. Some customs agencies decide which travelers to search based on random chance. You are asked to press a button on a machine that activates a random number generator. Depending on the number that comes up, either a green light comes on and you can pass through or a red light comes on and the agent searches your bags. Other customs agencies decide who to search based solely on intuition. After many years on the job, a customs agent develops a keen eye for people who are up to no good. Unlike the police, customs agents are fully authorized to search your luggage, clothes and even your body without any warrant or reason for suspicion. Customs agents often work side-by-side with immigration officials, and in some ports of entry, one inspector may represent both agencies. But at its core, a customs agency is concerned with the things that are coming in and out of a country, rather than the travelers themselves.
J. In addition to monitoring legal imports, a nation"s customs agency also works to keep out illegal or contraband (违禁品) items. Customs agencies must fight the flow of illegal materials across borders. In addition to drugs, customs agencies may watch for weaponry, child pornography (色情资料), counterfeit merchandise and stolen goods. They also watch for people carrying illegally gained money across borders. These sorts of illegal materials make up only one category of contraband goods. Customs agents also stop the importation of legal goods that are a threat to the nation"s security. In most countries, the importation of fruits, meats, animals and plants is heavily regulated due to the fear of disease or ecological imbalance. While it may seem strange that a piece of fruit is considered a threat to national security, the risk of biological contamination is very real. In the late 1980s, one traveler with one piece of contaminated fruit caused an infestation (大量滋生) of Mediterranean fruit flies that destroyed millions of dollars worth of crops in California.
K. Some completely harmless items are deemed contraband simply because of the country they come from. If country A is considered to be a national enemy of country B, or has a record of violating international law, country B (and other countries) might institute an embargo (禁运) against that country (a ban on the importation of country A"s goods). This cuts off potential business for country A, and this may persuade its leaders to change their policies. In the United States, the best known example of this sort of sanction is the embargo against Cuban products. There is a high demand for Cuban cigars in the United States, but they are strictly regulated because of the strained relationship between the United States and Cuba. As with drugs, smugglers are eager to sneak in a supply to meet this demand, and are constantly trying to get around customs.
L. In many countries, the customs agency closely monitors the importing and exporting of cultural artifacts. While a traveler may have purchased the item in good faith, it might have been stolen at an earlier point. Customs agencies have helped to restore many priceless artifacts to their rightful owners.
M. A country"s government might also ban importation of items based on ethics and morality. For example, in many countries, you cannot import ivory or other products that come from endangered animals. In 2000, the United States enacted the Dog and Cat Protection Act , banning the importation of any products made from dog and cat fur that was acquired inhumanly. The US Customs Service confiscates all such goods so that US citizens do not inadvertently support this practice.
N. Without customs agencies, nations would have no control over what comes in and goes out of their country. In order to protect its citizens and businesses, a government has to be vigilant in protecting its borders, not only against armed attack, but also against unwanted imports. As any customs agent will tell you, this is crucial to maintaining order in modern society.
(选自Time)Some items are considered contraband if they come from an enemy country or a country that have a bad record.

答案： K。[解析] K段提到如果A国被B国视为敌对国家，或者A国有违反国际法的记录，B国或者其他国家可以对A国实施禁运，即如果...

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Save for College
A. In this article, we"ll look at the rules for 529 Qualified State Tuition Plans. We"ll explore the difference between this savings vehicle and some of the other traditional education savings methods and see why this plan is the best yet!
The cost of college
B. You may never have thought you could get excited about big sums of money you won"t be spending on yourself until you read about this new college savings plan. The 529 plan offers the most painless way to save money for higher education to date. And if the child decides not to go to college, you can roll it over to someone else that does want to go, including yourself! The 529 Plan is a savings plan for college education. You have a couple of options when you open an account.
* One option lets you prepay tuition at a qualified educational institution at today"s tuition rates.
* Another option lets you save money in a tax-deferred account (earnings only) to be used to pay for education at future tuition rates.
C. The idea, with either option, is that the investment earnings will grow to meet the higher costs of future education. The savings account option is typically considered the more attractive of the two and is what we will focus on in this article. The 529 plan is a state-sponsored investment program. That is, the state sets up the plan with an asset management company of its choice, and you open a 529 account with that asset management company according to the state"s predetermined plan features. You are the owner of the account, and the child for whom the account is set up is the beneficiary (收益人). You won"t deal directly with the state, but rather with the asset management/investment company.
State-to-state variations
D. Because each state can control some of the features of its own plan, there are variations from state to state. Most plans follow the same general scheme (and federal requirements), but make sure you compare plans among states other than your own. Most states don"t require residency in order to participate, so shop around different states for the best deal.
The benefits: tax treatment
E. All of the account"s earnings are exempt from federal tax when they are withdrawn if they are used for qualified education expenses. This means that, unlike the taxes you have to pay on earnings from regular stock investments, you won"t pay any tax on the 529 account earnings unless you end up using the money for something other than higher education. Earnings are currently tax-deferred in most states, as well.
F. A break on the earnings tax isn"t the only tax advantage, either. Although your contributions aren"t pre-tax (you pay state and federal tax on the money you put into the account), there are some states that let you deduct a portion of your contributions from your state taxes. More states will probably follow suit in the coming years.
The benefits: account control
G. Unlike Education Savings Accounts (ESA), the account owner always has control of the money. This helps lessen that parental anxiety that the junior will take the money and tour Europe or buy a Porsche instead of going to college. There are no restrictions on who can open an account for whom. You can open an account for your child, a friend"s child, a relative, the paper boy, or even yourself.
The benefits: income eligibility
H. Did you know that with an ESA, you aren"t eligible to contribute if you make more than $110,000 per year ($220,000 for married couples) Unlike ESAs, your income does not affect your eligibility to open a 529 account. Contributions to 529 plans also qualify for the $11,000 ($22,000 for married couples in 2002) annual gift tax exclusion. You can also contribute up to five years of gifts during the first year, meaning you can put in up to $55,000 ($110,000 for married couples). This is a great benefit in situations where inheritance money enters the picture. Your account can grow up to $268,000 in some states. You can contribute as little as $25 to $50 per month.
The benefits: how the money can be used
I. In most states, there is no age limit or time limit for when the money has to be used. Your child can put off college indefinitely, in which case you have the option of rolling the account over to another child as long as that child is in the same family of the first beneficiary. In case you"re wondering just who is considered "family", the plan defines family members as "the original beneficiary"s spouse, children, sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces, first cousins, and any spouses of those persons."
J. Your child can go to any accredited (官方认可的) degree-granting educational institution, whether it is public, private, two-year, or four-year. There are even some international schools that qualify. In most states, qualified education costs include tuition, books, room, board, transportation, and even computers. In the event that your child gets a scholarship, then the remainder of the 529 account can be rolled over to another sibling (or relative), or it can be cashed out with no penalty other than the tax paid (at your rate) on the earnings. The same rule applies in the event of the child"s death or disability.
The benefits: investment control
K. If the thought of turning over your hard earned money to the state makes you a little uneasy, rest assured that the state doesn"t control your money. In fact, most states are signing on with well-known, successful investment companies such as TIAA-CREF, Vanguard and Fidelity. The number and types of investment options vary by state, and once you select your option you can"t change it. You can, however, roll your money over into another state"s plan if you"re not happy with your chosen investment option. There is no penalty to roll the money over into another state"s plan, and you can do it once every 12 months. Most states have no residence requirement for their 529 plans.
L. Many plans are also offering investment choices that are age-based. This means that if you"re starting early, perhaps when your child is age one to three, the investments can begin aggressively in stocks then gradually shift to bonds and money market accounts as your child gets closer to college age. Some state plans offer several levels of options for aggressive, moderate and conservative investments.
M. If you can"t reach the risk level you want in one plan, you can always open a second 529 account in the same or another state. You can have as many accounts as you want and can also contribute to both a 529 plan and an ESA. That way, you can diversify your investments in the event that the plan doesn"t offer the investment mix you would like.
(选自The New York Times)The 529 plan alms at helping to save money for higher education.

答案： B。[解析] B段主要介绍了529计划提供一种最轻松的方法积攒高等教育费用。题干中的aims at对应原文中的offer...

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Technology, Costs, Lack of Appeal Slow E-textbook Adoption
A. Textbooks are often a luxury for college senior Vatell Martin. The accounting major at Virginia State University got by in several courses with study groups and professors" lectures. "It"s not that I didn"t want to buy," he says. "Sometimes, I just didn"t have the money for a $200 book." VSU knows Martin isn"t the only one. More than half of its students routinely skip buying textbooks. For a solution, the school is turning to e-textbooks.
B. VSU partnered with Flat World Knowledge, a start-up publisher that produces exclusively written e-books with "open" content that can be modified by professors. In a trial with 14 business courses, students would be required to pay $20 and receive a Flat World e-book and digital learning supplements. The university and a local grant have been covering the cost, so far. "That"s nothing. It"s what I put in my gas tank," says Martin, who participated in the trial. "If I was walking into a discussion on a topic, I can just download and take out the book and read it on my phone."
C. With their promise of ubiquity (无处不在), convenience and perhaps affordability, e-textbooks have arrived in fits and starts throughout college campuses. And publishers and book resellers are spending millions attracting students to their online stores and e-reader platforms as mobile technology improves the readability of the material on devices such as tablet computers. Silicon Valley start-ups, such as Inkling and Kno, are also aggressively reinventing textbooks with interactive graphics, videos and social-media features.
D. Despite emerging attempts at innovation, the industry has been slowed by clumsy technology, the lasting appeal of print books, skeptical students who search online for cheaper alternatives, and customer confusion stemming from too many me-too e-textbook platforms that have failed to stand out.
E. The late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, believed textbooks to be an $8 billion market ripe for "digital destruction," biographer Walter Issacson writes in Steve Jobs . Apple is expected to make an announcement Thursday about its new education products. The market is small but growing. Sales for e-textbooks in the US higher education market grew 44.3% to $267.3 million in 2011, according to Simba Information, a publishing industry research firm.
Print still rules
F. So far, students have been less than impressed and more likely to choose print books. About 11% of college students have bought e-textbooks, according to market research firm Student Monitor. Availability isn"t the chief problem. Most popular textbooks have a digital version, and they"re available online. But students have largely stayed away because the most readily available technology today—PDF (portable document format) or other document reader versions of the print book—is clumsy and eye-straining to read.
G. When Andrea Soto, a freshman biology major at the University of Maryland, bought Principles of Biology, the $192 price tag came with a free online version. She prefers the touchable presence of a thick book on her lap. "You can"t highlight or underline things in the e-book. I find it more of a trouble," she says. However, digital books aren"t necessarily cheaper, either. While priced lower than new print books, they"re often more expensive than buying or renting used books online, says Kathy Mickey, an analyst at Simba.
H. A federally funded pilot study at Daytona State College in Florida found that some students who rented an e-textbook paid only a dollar less than students who bought a print edition. And e-textbook users couldn"t sell the book back after the class ended. Despite e-textbooks" shortcomings, most agree that the print market is ripe for a technological overhaul (彻底改革). Prices of new books are rising sharply. Authors complain about used book sales that don"t generate royalties. Professors and students are annoyed at new editions that seemingly add little in content VS the previous one.
I. "This is an industry that"s failing everyone—parents, authors, professors, and students," says Brad Wheeler, chief information officer at Indiana University, which is running a program that distributes cheaper e-textbooks but requires all students in the class to buy. Publishers are eager for a quicker transition to the format because e-textbooks cost less to publish and would generate income from every student who buys one. Digital books can"t be resold, at least, not legally. "We"d prefer that all of it to go digital," says Vineet Madan, senior vice President of new ventures at McGraw-Hill Education. "There isn"t a secondary market for e-books."
Seeking market niche (商机)
J. If current e-textbooks are mostly unappealing, what"s next Like online music in its infancy, the textbook industry"s key players—publishers, resellers, bookstores, tech companies, even some universities—are all scrambling to offer their digital solutions, an effort that has only intensified with the arrival of tablet computers and app stores. "Everybody and their brothers are coming out with an e-book platform," says Iam Williams, director of strategic learning solutions at Wiley, a textbook publisher.
K. They all agree on one thing: The quality of e-textbooks must improve dramatically. More value-added, interactive features will keep students interested and spur sales, they say. Tablet computers are a key stimulus in this endeavor. At Kno, tablets have allowed the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company to embed interactive tools onto an existing e-textbook in a more intuitive way, for example, the ability to w-rite directly on the book with a finger stroke or tap on a keyword for notes. "Tablet was a needed development," says Kno"s founder Osman Rashid. Despite threats to their print book sales, university bookstores are also coming around to embracing e-books. Follett, which rims 930 university bookstores in North America, launched Follett CafeScribe last year, a cloud-based digital textbook platform.
Publishers not on sidelines
L. Textbook publishers are partnering with universities for exclusive trials, buying stakes in start-ups and developing their own technologies. Last year, publisher Cengage launched MindTap, an e-book/digital learning website that is now being tried by about 50 professors, says Bill Rieders, Cengage"s executive vice President of global new media. Instead of tables of content, MindTap provides "a learning path" that students can access for text, multimedia, self-assessment tools, quizzes and note sharing.
M. Pearson has introduced a competing product, OpenClass. The cloud-based website means students can access information wherever there"s an online connection—features social networking, and works with Google Apps for Education. Reed College in Portland, Ore., is one of several universities that will test OpenClass this fall.
N. The CourseLoad trial has been in place since 2009 on a limited basis, with students receiving free books. It has been expanded to 130 courses this spring semester. Students now pay a discounted price for access to CourseLoad books and learning kits, typically "60% to 70%" cheaper than new print books, Wheeler says. In exchange, students must pay a fee to enroll. Despite the lack of flexibility, school officials and students have embraced the low-cost approach, he says.
(选自USA Today)OpenClass allows students to get information wherever they call get connected to the Internet.

答案： M。[解析] M段主要介绍了OpenClass这个基于云的网站，只要在任何能联网的地方，学生都可以获取信息。题干中的ge...

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Shopping and the Internet, Making It Click
A. Terry Lundgren and Kevin Ryan know and like each other. But when it comes to the future of retailing the boss of Macy"s, an American department-store giant, and the chief executive of Gilt Groupe, an online retailer, disagree wildly. Mr. Lundgren remains a firm believer in an empire of bricks and mortar (实体店). Mr. Ryan is betting big on online-only selling.
B. "It used to be mail-order catalogues killing physical stores, then it was TV shopping and now it is online retail," says Mr. Lundgren. Although he will not be pinned down on whether the Internet is a threat to shopkeepers or an opportunity for them, he is convinced that his chain is on the right path. Macy"s is embracing "omnichannel" integration, that is, selling stuff on television, through mail-order catalogues and online, as well as keeping its department stores. The company runs 810 shops across America under the mid-price, mid-market Macy"s brand and 38 more luxurious Bloomingdale"s outlets. Mr. Ryan argues that bricks-and-mortar shops are gravely threatened by Amazon and other online-only retailers, and says he can see "no evidence that there are big opportunities for traditional retailers in online retail."
C. Overall, retail sales in America are pretty flat, so the double-digit growth of online sellers is coming at the expense of physical shops. Amazon"s sales in the past year were $48 billion, compared with Macy"s $26 billion. Last year online sales in America reached $188 billion, about 8% of total retail sales. They are forecast to reach $270 billion by 2015. So far, Mr. Lundgren has good reason not to worry that the sky is falling. Most relevant for Mr. Lundgren"s debate with his friendly rival, online sales from the websites of Macy"s and Bloomingdale"s jumped by 40%. This reflects Macy"s efforts to expand its online business. It is building a new logistics (物流) center for online sales in West Virginia and expanding an existing one in Tennessee. And it is fixing a glaring flaw in its Internet-sales operation: until now online shoppers have only been able to buy goods in Macy"s warehouses; soon they will be able to order items from the stock of its stores.
Magic mirrors and Facebook friends
D. Mr. Lundgren is keen to continue experimenting with ways to use the Internet. In 2010 Macy"s introduced a virtual fitting room where customers tried on digital representations of clothes through their reflection in a "magic mirror" and shared them with their friends on Facebook. "It didn"t work," admits Mr. Lundgren. So Macy"s is now trying out virtual models. With its thriving Internet business, Macy"s is ahead of many other retailers.
E. Walmart, the world"s biggest, waited for a long time and hesitated over its online strategy until it finally decided to "make winning of e-commerce a key priority", as Mike Duke, its chief executive, puts it. Like an increasing number of store chains, Walmart is inviting online shoppers to pick up their purchases from its physical stores if that suits them. Since last June they have been able to do so on the day they place their order. Now, says Joel Anderson, who runs the company"s online business, more than half of Internet orders are collected from stores. The company claims this is saving shoppers millions of dollars in delivery charges. In spite of these recent improvements, Walmart is not yet reaping big profits from its online business. It does not break out its Internet sales from the total, but they are still tiny for its size.
F. There are some retailers, in particular those at the extremes of the market, that can safely ignore the threat from shoppers" migration to the Internet. At the luxury end, Yves Saint Laurent is unlikely to start selling its ball gowns over the net; at the cost-conscious end, dollar stores will continue "piling it high and selling it cheap". But the vast majority of retailers in between may have little choice but to counter the rise of online-only rivals by creating strong Internet operations of their own. The biggest threat to most of them is Amazon, the undisputed champion of online selling. Other online-only retailers have little chance of felling this giant. Their best bet is to be distinctive.
G. Mr. Ryan"s Gilt Groupe is modeled on France"s Vente Privée, an online shopping club for expensive branded stuff at reduced prices. The customers" average age for Mr. Ryan"s business is 34. Consumers aged 24 to 35 already do about a quarter of their shopping online, says John Deighton of Harvard Business School. In Mr. Deighton"s view the Internet-retail revolution is over, in that online buying is well established and will only keep growing. However, he says it is unclear how important a sales tool social networks like Facebook and Twitter, to which some online retailers are pinning their hopes, will turn out to be.
H. Some bricks-and-mortar retailers have already had disappointing experiences trying to sell through social media. Over the past year GAP, J. C. Penney and Nordstrom have opened and closed storefronts on Facebook. The social-networking site, which this month filed for an IPO (首次公开募股), is trying hard to be a top shopping destination for its 845m members. Yet so far people still tend to visit Facebook to socialize with their friends.
Shopping by smartphone
I. What does seem clear is that as personal computing goes mobile people are buying more via smart phones. Four years ago hardly anyone bought things on their mobile devices but today nearly one-quarter of Gilt Groupe"s revenue comes from smart phone shoppers; on some weekends the proportion reaches 40%. Nearly one third of people living in America own a smart phone, and 70% of these use it to do searches while they are inside a shop, usually to compare prices. "By 2014 mobile Internet will overtake desktop Internet usage for shopping," predicts Nigel Morris, chief executive of Aegis Media Americas.
Order online, pay cash in store
J. The most clued-up shopkeepers realize that they must make the most of such advantages over online rivals, and that to do so they must make their stores more enjoyable places to visit. In 2010 Macy"s company launched a training programme for its more than 130,000 sales people, "MAGIC Selling", which coached them to be more helpful and friendlier with customers. It is tailoring the merchandise stocked in its stores more closely to local tastes. Retailers with lavishly furnished stores and helpful assistants will increasingly have to put up with free-riders who come into the shop to check out the products and get some advice, before sneaking away to buy them for less online.
Have you got this in my size
K. However, there is no single recipe for retailing success in the Internet age. Retailers will need to balance their investment between staff, locations, inventory and online operations, says José Alvarez of Harvard Business School. For some expensive products it makes sense to have a low inventory, a big investment in showrooms, elaborate online operations and well qualified sales people. For more commoditized items it is more important to have a big inventory than a flashy display. Things that are increasingly being bought online must be swept off the shelves to make way for products that people still want to examine and compare before buying.
L. Whatever priorities retailers set, their physical stores are likely to shrink as the share of sales made online keeps rising. The retailers who want to survive the drift online are the ones "listening to the dynamic demands of customers," says Walmart"s Mr. Anderson.
(选自The Economist)Macy"s defect being corrected in online sales operation is that its only source of goods for online customers is the warehouses.

答案： C。[解析] C段主要介绍了美国的零售业平淡无奇，但朗格先生并不担心，因为他正在朝网络销售迈进。题干中的Macy"s d...

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How Customs Work
A. One of the little rituals all international travelers go through is customs. To most people, this is just another stop in an airport or a minor inconvenience at a country"s borders. But when you go through customs, you are actually taking part in a key component of the global economy.
B. A nation"s customs service has many responsibilities. At its most basic level, its purpose is to regulate what comes into and goes out of a country. The foremost element of this regulation is controlling international trade. The concept of trade is as old as civilization itself. If my tribe has a huge supply of bananas, and your tribe has a huge supply of fur, we will trade goods so that both our tribes can eat and both can keep warm. In the modern world, international trade is based on money, but it works in pretty much the same way.
C. Any nation wants its own businesses to do well, so most of the time they prefer their people buy domestic goods over competing foreign goods. But in many cases, goods are available cheaper in another country than in your country, and people naturally want to buy them at the lower price. To tilt the balance in favor of domestic businesses, governments impose tariffs, also called duty, on foreign goods coming into the country.
D. In addition to encouraging domestic trade, duty also gives the nation a "piece of the action" when somebody buys something produced overseas. Customs agencies are often major sources of revenue for the government. The US Customs Service, for example, brings in more money than any other government office except the Internal Revenue Service. To control specific sorts of trade, a government may impose a higher tariff on certain types of goods (alcohol, for example). Certain countries may join together to work out mutually beneficial trade agreements, enabling businesses in those nations to trade more freely with each other than they can with businesses in other nations. This gives an advantage to nations that a country has a good relationship with.
E. Customs agencies also monitor what is being exported from a country. For example, most governments strictly regulate what weapons can be exported to other nations. This is simply a common-sense safety measure: It"s not a good idea to arm enemy nations, so the government has to know who is buying any domestically-produced weaponry. As we"ll see later on, customs agencies also pay careful attention to how much money citizens are transporting out of the country.
F. Duty charges have a huge effect on big businesses, which may import millions of dollars worth of goods every year. To regulate trade on this level, a country"s customs agency must keep track of all shipments that come into the nation"s ports or cross its borders. They can"t check every bit of foreign cargo, of course, so agents pick certain boxes to inspect and certain shipments to scrutinize. In an effort to speed up the process, the US Customs Service is implementing new, computerized systems for processing shipments and charging in, porters.
G. While large businesses are the main importers in a country, trade restrictions also apply to the individual traveler. When you bring home souvenirs (纪念品) from another country, you are actually importing goods. In the United States and many other countries, the customs agency grants each traveler a nominal duty exemption (免除) to allow them to bring back a reasonable amount of goods without having to pay tariffs.
H. In most countries, it isn"t feasible for the customs agency to check all of the goods that every single traveler is importing, so governments have to depend largely on people"s honesty. When you enter a country, you are asked to truthfully report what goods you are importing and make a good faith estimate of their value. They don"t put their entire trust in people"s good character, of course; customs performs a thorough search of some percentage of all travelers.
I. Some customs agencies decide which travelers to search based on random chance. You are asked to press a button on a machine that activates a random number generator. Depending on the number that comes up, either a green light comes on and you can pass through or a red light comes on and the agent searches your bags. Other customs agencies decide who to search based solely on intuition. After many years on the job, a customs agent develops a keen eye for people who are up to no good. Unlike the police, customs agents are fully authorized to search your luggage, clothes and even your body without any warrant or reason for suspicion. Customs agents often work side-by-side with immigration officials, and in some ports of entry, one inspector may represent both agencies. But at its core, a customs agency is concerned with the things that are coming in and out of a country, rather than the travelers themselves.
J. In addition to monitoring legal imports, a nation"s customs agency also works to keep out illegal or contraband (违禁品) items. Customs agencies must fight the flow of illegal materials across borders. In addition to drugs, customs agencies may watch for weaponry, child pornography (色情资料), counterfeit merchandise and stolen goods. They also watch for people carrying illegally gained money across borders. These sorts of illegal materials make up only one category of contraband goods. Customs agents also stop the importation of legal goods that are a threat to the nation"s security. In most countries, the importation of fruits, meats, animals and plants is heavily regulated due to the fear of disease or ecological imbalance. While it may seem strange that a piece of fruit is considered a threat to national security, the risk of biological contamination is very real. In the late 1980s, one traveler with one piece of contaminated fruit caused an infestation (大量滋生) of Mediterranean fruit flies that destroyed millions of dollars worth of crops in California.
K. Some completely harmless items are deemed contraband simply because of the country they come from. If country A is considered to be a national enemy of country B, or has a record of violating international law, country B (and other countries) might institute an embargo (禁运) against that country (a ban on the importation of country A"s goods). This cuts off potential business for country A, and this may persuade its leaders to change their policies. In the United States, the best known example of this sort of sanction is the embargo against Cuban products. There is a high demand for Cuban cigars in the United States, but they are strictly regulated because of the strained relationship between the United States and Cuba. As with drugs, smugglers are eager to sneak in a supply to meet this demand, and are constantly trying to get around customs.
L. In many countries, the customs agency closely monitors the importing and exporting of cultural artifacts. While a traveler may have purchased the item in good faith, it might have been stolen at an earlier point. Customs agencies have helped to restore many priceless artifacts to their rightful owners.
M. A country"s government might also ban importation of items based on ethics and morality. For example, in many countries, you cannot import ivory or other products that come from endangered animals. In 2000, the United States enacted the Dog and Cat Protection Act , banning the importation of any products made from dog and cat fur that was acquired inhumanly. The US Customs Service confiscates all such goods so that US citizens do not inadvertently support this practice.
N. Without customs agencies, nations would have no control over what comes in and goes out of their country. In order to protect its citizens and businesses, a government has to be vigilant in protecting its borders, not only against armed attack, but also against unwanted imports. As any customs agent will tell you, this is crucial to maintaining order in modern society.
(选自Time)Some countries allow individual traveler to bring home a reasonable amount of goods by exempting the tariffs.

答案： G。[解析] G段主要介绍虽然一个国家大量的进口来源于大宗贸易，贸易进出口限制也适用于单个的出行者。题干中的exempt...

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Save for College
A. In this article, we"ll look at the rules for 529 Qualified State Tuition Plans. We"ll explore the difference between this savings vehicle and some of the other traditional education savings methods and see why this plan is the best yet!
The cost of college
B. You may never have thought you could get excited about big sums of money you won"t be spending on yourself until you read about this new college savings plan. The 529 plan offers the most painless way to save money for higher education to date. And if the child decides not to go to college, you can roll it over to someone else that does want to go, including yourself! The 529 Plan is a savings plan for college education. You have a couple of options when you open an account.
* One option lets you prepay tuition at a qualified educational institution at today"s tuition rates.
* Another option lets you save money in a tax-deferred account (earnings only) to be used to pay for education at future tuition rates.
C. The idea, with either option, is that the investment earnings will grow to meet the higher costs of future education. The savings account option is typically considered the more attractive of the two and is what we will focus on in this article. The 529 plan is a state-sponsored investment program. That is, the state sets up the plan with an asset management company of its choice, and you open a 529 account with that asset management company according to the state"s predetermined plan features. You are the owner of the account, and the child for whom the account is set up is the beneficiary (收益人). You won"t deal directly with the state, but rather with the asset management/investment company.
State-to-state variations
D. Because each state can control some of the features of its own plan, there are variations from state to state. Most plans follow the same general scheme (and federal requirements), but make sure you compare plans among states other than your own. Most states don"t require residency in order to participate, so shop around different states for the best deal.
The benefits: tax treatment
E. All of the account"s earnings are exempt from federal tax when they are withdrawn if they are used for qualified education expenses. This means that, unlike the taxes you have to pay on earnings from regular stock investments, you won"t pay any tax on the 529 account earnings unless you end up using the money for something other than higher education. Earnings are currently tax-deferred in most states, as well.
F. A break on the earnings tax isn"t the only tax advantage, either. Although your contributions aren"t pre-tax (you pay state and federal tax on the money you put into the account), there are some states that let you deduct a portion of your contributions from your state taxes. More states will probably follow suit in the coming years.
The benefits: account control
G. Unlike Education Savings Accounts (ESA), the account owner always has control of the money. This helps lessen that parental anxiety that the junior will take the money and tour Europe or buy a Porsche instead of going to college. There are no restrictions on who can open an account for whom. You can open an account for your child, a friend"s child, a relative, the paper boy, or even yourself.
The benefits: income eligibility
H. Did you know that with an ESA, you aren"t eligible to contribute if you make more than $110,000 per year ($220,000 for married couples) Unlike ESAs, your income does not affect your eligibility to open a 529 account. Contributions to 529 plans also qualify for the $11,000 ($22,000 for married couples in 2002) annual gift tax exclusion. You can also contribute up to five years of gifts during the first year, meaning you can put in up to $55,000 ($110,000 for married couples). This is a great benefit in situations where inheritance money enters the picture. Your account can grow up to $268,000 in some states. You can contribute as little as $25 to $50 per month.
The benefits: how the money can be used
I. In most states, there is no age limit or time limit for when the money has to be used. Your child can put off college indefinitely, in which case you have the option of rolling the account over to another child as long as that child is in the same family of the first beneficiary. In case you"re wondering just who is considered "family", the plan defines family members as "the original beneficiary"s spouse, children, sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces, first cousins, and any spouses of those persons."
J. Your child can go to any accredited (官方认可的) degree-granting educational institution, whether it is public, private, two-year, or four-year. There are even some international schools that qualify. In most states, qualified education costs include tuition, books, room, board, transportation, and even computers. In the event that your child gets a scholarship, then the remainder of the 529 account can be rolled over to another sibling (or relative), or it can be cashed out with no penalty other than the tax paid (at your rate) on the earnings. The same rule applies in the event of the child"s death or disability.
The benefits: investment control
K. If the thought of turning over your hard earned money to the state makes you a little uneasy, rest assured that the state doesn"t control your money. In fact, most states are signing on with well-known, successful investment companies such as TIAA-CREF, Vanguard and Fidelity. The number and types of investment options vary by state, and once you select your option you can"t change it. You can, however, roll your money over into another state"s plan if you"re not happy with your chosen investment option. There is no penalty to roll the money over into another state"s plan, and you can do it once every 12 months. Most states have no residence requirement for their 529 plans.
L. Many plans are also offering investment choices that are age-based. This means that if you"re starting early, perhaps when your child is age one to three, the investments can begin aggressively in stocks then gradually shift to bonds and money market accounts as your child gets closer to college age. Some state plans offer several levels of options for aggressive, moderate and conservative investments.
M. If you can"t reach the risk level you want in one plan, you can always open a second 529 account in the same or another state. You can have as many accounts as you want and can also contribute to both a 529 plan and an ESA. That way, you can diversify your investments in the event that the plan doesn"t offer the investment mix you would like.
(选自The New York Times)Your 529 account investment can be graded into three risk levels as aggressive, moderate and conservative.

答案： L。[解析] L段主要介绍了529计划的投资随着投资人承受能力的变化而变化，分为aggressive，moderate及...

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Technology, Costs, Lack of Appeal Slow E-textbook Adoption
A. Textbooks are often a luxury for college senior Vatell Martin. The accounting major at Virginia State University got by in several courses with study groups and professors" lectures. "It"s not that I didn"t want to buy," he says. "Sometimes, I just didn"t have the money for a $200 book." VSU knows Martin isn"t the only one. More than half of its students routinely skip buying textbooks. For a solution, the school is turning to e-textbooks.
B. VSU partnered with Flat World Knowledge, a start-up publisher that produces exclusively written e-books with "open" content that can be modified by professors. In a trial with 14 business courses, students would be required to pay $20 and receive a Flat World e-book and digital learning supplements. The university and a local grant have been covering the cost, so far. "That"s nothing. It"s what I put in my gas tank," says Martin, who participated in the trial. "If I was walking into a discussion on a topic, I can just download and take out the book and read it on my phone."
C. With their promise of ubiquity (无处不在), convenience and perhaps affordability, e-textbooks have arrived in fits and starts throughout college campuses. And publishers and book resellers are spending millions attracting students to their online stores and e-reader platforms as mobile technology improves the readability of the material on devices such as tablet computers. Silicon Valley start-ups, such as Inkling and Kno, are also aggressively reinventing textbooks with interactive graphics, videos and social-media features.
D. Despite emerging attempts at innovation, the industry has been slowed by clumsy technology, the lasting appeal of print books, skeptical students who search online for cheaper alternatives, and customer confusion stemming from too many me-too e-textbook platforms that have failed to stand out.
E. The late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, believed textbooks to be an $8 billion market ripe for "digital destruction," biographer Walter Issacson writes in Steve Jobs . Apple is expected to make an announcement Thursday about its new education products. The market is small but growing. Sales for e-textbooks in the US higher education market grew 44.3% to $267.3 million in 2011, according to Simba Information, a publishing industry research firm.
Print still rules
F. So far, students have been less than impressed and more likely to choose print books. About 11% of college students have bought e-textbooks, according to market research firm Student Monitor. Availability isn"t the chief problem. Most popular textbooks have a digital version, and they"re available online. But students have largely stayed away because the most readily available technology today—PDF (portable document format) or other document reader versions of the print book—is clumsy and eye-straining to read.
G. When Andrea Soto, a freshman biology major at the University of Maryland, bought Principles of Biology, the $192 price tag came with a free online version. She prefers the touchable presence of a thick book on her lap. "You can"t highlight or underline things in the e-book. I find it more of a trouble," she says. However, digital books aren"t necessarily cheaper, either. While priced lower than new print books, they"re often more expensive than buying or renting used books online, says Kathy Mickey, an analyst at Simba.
H. A federally funded pilot study at Daytona State College in Florida found that some students who rented an e-textbook paid only a dollar less than students who bought a print edition. And e-textbook users couldn"t sell the book back after the class ended. Despite e-textbooks" shortcomings, most agree that the print market is ripe for a technological overhaul (彻底改革). Prices of new books are rising sharply. Authors complain about used book sales that don"t generate royalties. Professors and students are annoyed at new editions that seemingly add little in content VS the previous one.
I. "This is an industry that"s failing everyone—parents, authors, professors, and students," says Brad Wheeler, chief information officer at Indiana University, which is running a program that distributes cheaper e-textbooks but requires all students in the class to buy. Publishers are eager for a quicker transition to the format because e-textbooks cost less to publish and would generate income from every student who buys one. Digital books can"t be resold, at least, not legally. "We"d prefer that all of it to go digital," says Vineet Madan, senior vice President of new ventures at McGraw-Hill Education. "There isn"t a secondary market for e-books."
Seeking market niche (商机)
J. If current e-textbooks are mostly unappealing, what"s next Like online music in its infancy, the textbook industry"s key players—publishers, resellers, bookstores, tech companies, even some universities—are all scrambling to offer their digital solutions, an effort that has only intensified with the arrival of tablet computers and app stores. "Everybody and their brothers are coming out with an e-book platform," says Iam Williams, director of strategic learning solutions at Wiley, a textbook publisher.
K. They all agree on one thing: The quality of e-textbooks must improve dramatically. More value-added, interactive features will keep students interested and spur sales, they say. Tablet computers are a key stimulus in this endeavor. At Kno, tablets have allowed the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company to embed interactive tools onto an existing e-textbook in a more intuitive way, for example, the ability to w-rite directly on the book with a finger stroke or tap on a keyword for notes. "Tablet was a needed development," says Kno"s founder Osman Rashid. Despite threats to their print book sales, university bookstores are also coming around to embracing e-books. Follett, which rims 930 university bookstores in North America, launched Follett CafeScribe last year, a cloud-based digital textbook platform.
Publishers not on sidelines
L. Textbook publishers are partnering with universities for exclusive trials, buying stakes in start-ups and developing their own technologies. Last year, publisher Cengage launched MindTap, an e-book/digital learning website that is now being tried by about 50 professors, says Bill Rieders, Cengage"s executive vice President of global new media. Instead of tables of content, MindTap provides "a learning path" that students can access for text, multimedia, self-assessment tools, quizzes and note sharing.
M. Pearson has introduced a competing product, OpenClass. The cloud-based website means students can access information wherever there"s an online connection—features social networking, and works with Google Apps for Education. Reed College in Portland, Ore., is one of several universities that will test OpenClass this fall.
N. The CourseLoad trial has been in place since 2009 on a limited basis, with students receiving free books. It has been expanded to 130 courses this spring semester. Students now pay a discounted price for access to CourseLoad books and learning kits, typically "60% to 70%" cheaper than new print books, Wheeler says. In exchange, students must pay a fee to enroll. Despite the lack of flexibility, school officials and students have embraced the low-cost approach, he says.
(选自USA Today)Because most of its students didn"t buy textbooks, VSU promotes e-textbooks to them.

答案： A。[解析] A段中提到VSU通常有一半以上的学生不买教科书，为了解决这个问题，该校便开始开发电子教科书。题干中的did...

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Shopping and the Internet, Making It Click
A. Terry Lundgren and Kevin Ryan know and like each other. But when it comes to the future of retailing the boss of Macy"s, an American department-store giant, and the chief executive of Gilt Groupe, an online retailer, disagree wildly. Mr. Lundgren remains a firm believer in an empire of bricks and mortar (实体店). Mr. Ryan is betting big on online-only selling.
B. "It used to be mail-order catalogues killing physical stores, then it was TV shopping and now it is online retail," says Mr. Lundgren. Although he will not be pinned down on whether the Internet is a threat to shopkeepers or an opportunity for them, he is convinced that his chain is on the right path. Macy"s is embracing "omnichannel" integration, that is, selling stuff on television, through mail-order catalogues and online, as well as keeping its department stores. The company runs 810 shops across America under the mid-price, mid-market Macy"s brand and 38 more luxurious Bloomingdale"s outlets. Mr. Ryan argues that bricks-and-mortar shops are gravely threatened by Amazon and other online-only retailers, and says he can see "no evidence that there are big opportunities for traditional retailers in online retail."
C. Overall, retail sales in America are pretty flat, so the double-digit growth of online sellers is coming at the expense of physical shops. Amazon"s sales in the past year were $48 billion, compared with Macy"s $26 billion. Last year online sales in America reached $188 billion, about 8% of total retail sales. They are forecast to reach $270 billion by 2015. So far, Mr. Lundgren has good reason not to worry that the sky is falling. Most relevant for Mr. Lundgren"s debate with his friendly rival, online sales from the websites of Macy"s and Bloomingdale"s jumped by 40%. This reflects Macy"s efforts to expand its online business. It is building a new logistics (物流) center for online sales in West Virginia and expanding an existing one in Tennessee. And it is fixing a glaring flaw in its Internet-sales operation: until now online shoppers have only been able to buy goods in Macy"s warehouses; soon they will be able to order items from the stock of its stores.
Magic mirrors and Facebook friends
D. Mr. Lundgren is keen to continue experimenting with ways to use the Internet. In 2010 Macy"s introduced a virtual fitting room where customers tried on digital representations of clothes through their reflection in a "magic mirror" and shared them with their friends on Facebook. "It didn"t work," admits Mr. Lundgren. So Macy"s is now trying out virtual models. With its thriving Internet business, Macy"s is ahead of many other retailers.
E. Walmart, the world"s biggest, waited for a long time and hesitated over its online strategy until it finally decided to "make winning of e-commerce a key priority", as Mike Duke, its chief executive, puts it. Like an increasing number of store chains, Walmart is inviting online shoppers to pick up their purchases from its physical stores if that suits them. Since last June they have been able to do so on the day they place their order. Now, says Joel Anderson, who runs the company"s online business, more than half of Internet orders are collected from stores. The company claims this is saving shoppers millions of dollars in delivery charges. In spite of these recent improvements, Walmart is not yet reaping big profits from its online business. It does not break out its Internet sales from the total, but they are still tiny for its size.
F. There are some retailers, in particular those at the extremes of the market, that can safely ignore the threat from shoppers" migration to the Internet. At the luxury end, Yves Saint Laurent is unlikely to start selling its ball gowns over the net; at the cost-conscious end, dollar stores will continue "piling it high and selling it cheap". But the vast majority of retailers in between may have little choice but to counter the rise of online-only rivals by creating strong Internet operations of their own. The biggest threat to most of them is Amazon, the undisputed champion of online selling. Other online-only retailers have little chance of felling this giant. Their best bet is to be distinctive.
G. Mr. Ryan"s Gilt Groupe is modeled on France"s Vente Privée, an online shopping club for expensive branded stuff at reduced prices. The customers" average age for Mr. Ryan"s business is 34. Consumers aged 24 to 35 already do about a quarter of their shopping online, says John Deighton of Harvard Business School. In Mr. Deighton"s view the Internet-retail revolution is over, in that online buying is well established and will only keep growing. However, he says it is unclear how important a sales tool social networks like Facebook and Twitter, to which some online retailers are pinning their hopes, will turn out to be.
H. Some bricks-and-mortar retailers have already had disappointing experiences trying to sell through social media. Over the past year GAP, J. C. Penney and Nordstrom have opened and closed storefronts on Facebook. The social-networking site, which this month filed for an IPO (首次公开募股), is trying hard to be a top shopping destination for its 845m members. Yet so far people still tend to visit Facebook to socialize with their friends.
Shopping by smartphone
I. What does seem clear is that as personal computing goes mobile people are buying more via smart phones. Four years ago hardly anyone bought things on their mobile devices but today nearly one-quarter of Gilt Groupe"s revenue comes from smart phone shoppers; on some weekends the proportion reaches 40%. Nearly one third of people living in America own a smart phone, and 70% of these use it to do searches while they are inside a shop, usually to compare prices. "By 2014 mobile Internet will overtake desktop Internet usage for shopping," predicts Nigel Morris, chief executive of Aegis Media Americas.
Order online, pay cash in store
J. The most clued-up shopkeepers realize that they must make the most of such advantages over online rivals, and that to do so they must make their stores more enjoyable places to visit. In 2010 Macy"s company launched a training programme for its more than 130,000 sales people, "MAGIC Selling", which coached them to be more helpful and friendlier with customers. It is tailoring the merchandise stocked in its stores more closely to local tastes. Retailers with lavishly furnished stores and helpful assistants will increasingly have to put up with free-riders who come into the shop to check out the products and get some advice, before sneaking away to buy them for less online.
Have you got this in my size
K. However, there is no single recipe for retailing success in the Internet age. Retailers will need to balance their investment between staff, locations, inventory and online operations, says José Alvarez of Harvard Business School. For some expensive products it makes sense to have a low inventory, a big investment in showrooms, elaborate online operations and well qualified sales people. For more commoditized items it is more important to have a big inventory than a flashy display. Things that are increasingly being bought online must be swept off the shelves to make way for products that people still want to examine and compare before buying.
L. Whatever priorities retailers set, their physical stores are likely to shrink as the share of sales made online keeps rising. The retailers who want to survive the drift online are the ones "listening to the dynamic demands of customers," says Walmart"s Mr. Anderson.
(选自The Economist)In its online strategy, Walmart finally put "to succeed in the business" in the first place after considering for a long time.

答案： E。[解析] E段主要介绍了沃尔玛如何在网络销售中采取好的销售策略。题干中的put "to succeed in the...

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Save for College
A. In this article, we"ll look at the rules for 529 Qualified State Tuition Plans. We"ll explore the difference between this savings vehicle and some of the other traditional education savings methods and see why this plan is the best yet!
The cost of college
B. You may never have thought you could get excited about big sums of money you won"t be spending on yourself until you read about this new college savings plan. The 529 plan offers the most painless way to save money for higher education to date. And if the child decides not to go to college, you can roll it over to someone else that does want to go, including yourself! The 529 Plan is a savings plan for college education. You have a couple of options when you open an account.
* One option lets you prepay tuition at a qualified educational institution at today"s tuition rates.
* Another option lets you save money in a tax-deferred account (earnings only) to be used to pay for education at future tuition rates.
C. The idea, with either option, is that the investment earnings will grow to meet the higher costs of future education. The savings account option is typically considered the more attractive of the two and is what we will focus on in this article. The 529 plan is a state-sponsored investment program. That is, the state sets up the plan with an asset management company of its choice, and you open a 529 account with that asset management company according to the state"s predetermined plan features. You are the owner of the account, and the child for whom the account is set up is the beneficiary (收益人). You won"t deal directly with the state, but rather with the asset management/investment company.
State-to-state variations
D. Because each state can control some of the features of its own plan, there are variations from state to state. Most plans follow the same general scheme (and federal requirements), but make sure you compare plans among states other than your own. Most states don"t require residency in order to participate, so shop around different states for the best deal.
The benefits: tax treatment
E. All of the account"s earnings are exempt from federal tax when they are withdrawn if they are used for qualified education expenses. This means that, unlike the taxes you have to pay on earnings from regular stock investments, you won"t pay any tax on the 529 account earnings unless you end up using the money for something other than higher education. Earnings are currently tax-deferred in most states, as well.
F. A break on the earnings tax isn"t the only tax advantage, either. Although your contributions aren"t pre-tax (you pay state and federal tax on the money you put into the account), there are some states that let you deduct a portion of your contributions from your state taxes. More states will probably follow suit in the coming years.
The benefits: account control
G. Unlike Education Savings Accounts (ESA), the account owner always has control of the money. This helps lessen that parental anxiety that the junior will take the money and tour Europe or buy a Porsche instead of going to college. There are no restrictions on who can open an account for whom. You can open an account for your child, a friend"s child, a relative, the paper boy, or even yourself.
The benefits: income eligibility
H. Did you know that with an ESA, you aren"t eligible to contribute if you make more than $110,000 per year ($220,000 for married couples) Unlike ESAs, your income does not affect your eligibility to open a 529 account. Contributions to 529 plans also qualify for the $11,000 ($22,000 for married couples in 2002) annual gift tax exclusion. You can also contribute up to five years of gifts during the first year, meaning you can put in up to $55,000 ($110,000 for married couples). This is a great benefit in situations where inheritance money enters the picture. Your account can grow up to $268,000 in some states. You can contribute as little as $25 to $50 per month.
The benefits: how the money can be used
I. In most states, there is no age limit or time limit for when the money has to be used. Your child can put off college indefinitely, in which case you have the option of rolling the account over to another child as long as that child is in the same family of the first beneficiary. In case you"re wondering just who is considered "family", the plan defines family members as "the original beneficiary"s spouse, children, sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces, first cousins, and any spouses of those persons."
J. Your child can go to any accredited (官方认可的) degree-granting educational institution, whether it is public, private, two-year, or four-year. There are even some international schools that qualify. In most states, qualified education costs include tuition, books, room, board, transportation, and even computers. In the event that your child gets a scholarship, then the remainder of the 529 account can be rolled over to another sibling (or relative), or it can be cashed out with no penalty other than the tax paid (at your rate) on the earnings. The same rule applies in the event of the child"s death or disability.
The benefits: investment control
K. If the thought of turning over your hard earned money to the state makes you a little uneasy, rest assured that the state doesn"t control your money. In fact, most states are signing on with well-known, successful investment companies such as TIAA-CREF, Vanguard and Fidelity. The number and types of investment options vary by state, and once you select your option you can"t change it. You can, however, roll your money over into another state"s plan if you"re not happy with your chosen investment option. There is no penalty to roll the money over into another state"s plan, and you can do it once every 12 months. Most states have no residence requirement for their 529 plans.
L. Many plans are also offering investment choices that are age-based. This means that if you"re starting early, perhaps when your child is age one to three, the investments can begin aggressively in stocks then gradually shift to bonds and money market accounts as your child gets closer to college age. Some state plans offer several levels of options for aggressive, moderate and conservative investments.
M. If you can"t reach the risk level you want in one plan, you can always open a second 529 account in the same or another state. You can have as many accounts as you want and can also contribute to both a 529 plan and an ESA. That way, you can diversify your investments in the event that the plan doesn"t offer the investment mix you would like.
(选自The New York Times)You don"t need to pay tax for the 529 plan savings if you use it for higher education.

答案： E。[解析] E段主要介绍了529计划的钱若用来支付大学学费就不必纳税。题干中的don"t need to pay ta...

填空题

Technology, Costs, Lack of Appeal Slow E-textbook Adoption
A. Textbooks are often a luxury for college senior Vatell Martin. The accounting major at Virginia State University got by in several courses with study groups and professors" lectures. "It"s not that I didn"t want to buy," he says. "Sometimes, I just didn"t have the money for a $200 book." VSU knows Martin isn"t the only one. More than half of its students routinely skip buying textbooks. For a solution, the school is turning to e-textbooks.
B. VSU partnered with Flat World Knowledge, a start-up publisher that produces exclusively written e-books with "open" content that can be modified by professors. In a trial with 14 business courses, students would be required to pay $20 and receive a Flat World e-book and digital learning supplements. The university and a local grant have been covering the cost, so far. "That"s nothing. It"s what I put in my gas tank," says Martin, who participated in the trial. "If I was walking into a discussion on a topic, I can just download and take out the book and read it on my phone."
C. With their promise of ubiquity (无处不在), convenience and perhaps affordability, e-textbooks have arrived in fits and starts throughout college campuses. And publishers and book resellers are spending millions attracting students to their online stores and e-reader platforms as mobile technology improves the readability of the material on devices such as tablet computers. Silicon Valley start-ups, such as Inkling and Kno, are also aggressively reinventing textbooks with interactive graphics, videos and social-media features.
D. Despite emerging attempts at innovation, the industry has been slowed by clumsy technology, the lasting appeal of print books, skeptical students who search online for cheaper alternatives, and customer confusion stemming from too many me-too e-textbook platforms that have failed to stand out.
E. The late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, believed textbooks to be an $8 billion market ripe for "digital destruction," biographer Walter Issacson writes in Steve Jobs . Apple is expected to make an announcement Thursday about its new education products. The market is small but growing. Sales for e-textbooks in the US higher education market grew 44.3% to $267.3 million in 2011, according to Simba Information, a publishing industry research firm.
Print still rules
F. So far, students have been less than impressed and more likely to choose print books. About 11% of college students have bought e-textbooks, according to market research firm Student Monitor. Availability isn"t the chief problem. Most popular textbooks have a digital version, and they"re available online. But students have largely stayed away because the most readily available technology today—PDF (portable document format) or other document reader versions of the print book—is clumsy and eye-straining to read.
G. When Andrea Soto, a freshman biology major at the University of Maryland, bought Principles of Biology, the $192 price tag came with a free online version. She prefers the touchable presence of a thick book on her lap. "You can"t highlight or underline things in the e-book. I find it more of a trouble," she says. However, digital books aren"t necessarily cheaper, either. While priced lower than new print books, they"re often more expensive than buying or renting used books online, says Kathy Mickey, an analyst at Simba.
H. A federally funded pilot study at Daytona State College in Florida found that some students who rented an e-textbook paid only a dollar less than students who bought a print edition. And e-textbook users couldn"t sell the book back after the class ended. Despite e-textbooks" shortcomings, most agree that the print market is ripe for a technological overhaul (彻底改革). Prices of new books are rising sharply. Authors complain about used book sales that don"t generate royalties. Professors and students are annoyed at new editions that seemingly add little in content VS the previous one.
I. "This is an industry that"s failing everyone—parents, authors, professors, and students," says Brad Wheeler, chief information officer at Indiana University, which is running a program that distributes cheaper e-textbooks but requires all students in the class to buy. Publishers are eager for a quicker transition to the format because e-textbooks cost less to publish and would generate income from every student who buys one. Digital books can"t be resold, at least, not legally. "We"d prefer that all of it to go digital," says Vineet Madan, senior vice President of new ventures at McGraw-Hill Education. "There isn"t a secondary market for e-books."
Seeking market niche (商机)
J. If current e-textbooks are mostly unappealing, what"s next Like online music in its infancy, the textbook industry"s key players—publishers, resellers, bookstores, tech companies, even some universities—are all scrambling to offer their digital solutions, an effort that has only intensified with the arrival of tablet computers and app stores. "Everybody and their brothers are coming out with an e-book platform," says Iam Williams, director of strategic learning solutions at Wiley, a textbook publisher.
K. They all agree on one thing: The quality of e-textbooks must improve dramatically. More value-added, interactive features will keep students interested and spur sales, they say. Tablet computers are a key stimulus in this endeavor. At Kno, tablets have allowed the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company to embed interactive tools onto an existing e-textbook in a more intuitive way, for example, the ability to w-rite directly on the book with a finger stroke or tap on a keyword for notes. "Tablet was a needed development," says Kno"s founder Osman Rashid. Despite threats to their print book sales, university bookstores are also coming around to embracing e-books. Follett, which rims 930 university bookstores in North America, launched Follett CafeScribe last year, a cloud-based digital textbook platform.
Publishers not on sidelines
L. Textbook publishers are partnering with universities for exclusive trials, buying stakes in start-ups and developing their own technologies. Last year, publisher Cengage launched MindTap, an e-book/digital learning website that is now being tried by about 50 professors, says Bill Rieders, Cengage"s executive vice President of global new media. Instead of tables of content, MindTap provides "a learning path" that students can access for text, multimedia, self-assessment tools, quizzes and note sharing.
M. Pearson has introduced a competing product, OpenClass. The cloud-based website means students can access information wherever there"s an online connection—features social networking, and works with Google Apps for Education. Reed College in Portland, Ore., is one of several universities that will test OpenClass this fall.
N. The CourseLoad trial has been in place since 2009 on a limited basis, with students receiving free books. It has been expanded to 130 courses this spring semester. Students now pay a discounted price for access to CourseLoad books and learning kits, typically "60% to 70%" cheaper than new print books, Wheeler says. In exchange, students must pay a fee to enroll. Despite the lack of flexibility, school officials and students have embraced the low-cost approach, he says.
(选自USA Today)Students can get a discounted price from CourseLoad books on the condition that they should pay the enrollment fee.

答案： N。[解析] N段中提到现在学生们支付折扣价就能获得CourseLoad的图书和学习包，通常比新版纸质图书便宜60%～7...

填空题

How Customs Work
A. One of the little rituals all international travelers go through is customs. To most people, this is just another stop in an airport or a minor inconvenience at a country"s borders. But when you go through customs, you are actually taking part in a key component of the global economy.
B. A nation"s customs service has many responsibilities. At its most basic level, its purpose is to regulate what comes into and goes out of a country. The foremost element of this regulation is controlling international trade. The concept of trade is as old as civilization itself. If my tribe has a huge supply of bananas, and your tribe has a huge supply of fur, we will trade goods so that both our tribes can eat and both can keep warm. In the modern world, international trade is based on money, but it works in pretty much the same way.
C. Any nation wants its own businesses to do well, so most of the time they prefer their people buy domestic goods over competing foreign goods. But in many cases, goods are available cheaper in another country than in your country, and people naturally want to buy them at the lower price. To tilt the balance in favor of domestic businesses, governments impose tariffs, also called duty, on foreign goods coming into the country.
D. In addition to encouraging domestic trade, duty also gives the nation a "piece of the action" when somebody buys something produced overseas. Customs agencies are often major sources of revenue for the government. The US Customs Service, for example, brings in more money than any other government office except the Internal Revenue Service. To control specific sorts of trade, a government may impose a higher tariff on certain types of goods (alcohol, for example). Certain countries may join together to work out mutually beneficial trade agreements, enabling businesses in those nations to trade more freely with each other than they can with businesses in other nations. This gives an advantage to nations that a country has a good relationship with.
E. Customs agencies also monitor what is being exported from a country. For example, most governments strictly regulate what weapons can be exported to other nations. This is simply a common-sense safety measure: It"s not a good idea to arm enemy nations, so the government has to know who is buying any domestically-produced weaponry. As we"ll see later on, customs agencies also pay careful attention to how much money citizens are transporting out of the country.
F. Duty charges have a huge effect on big businesses, which may import millions of dollars worth of goods every year. To regulate trade on this level, a country"s customs agency must keep track of all shipments that come into the nation"s ports or cross its borders. They can"t check every bit of foreign cargo, of course, so agents pick certain boxes to inspect and certain shipments to scrutinize. In an effort to speed up the process, the US Customs Service is implementing new, computerized systems for processing shipments and charging in, porters.
G. While large businesses are the main importers in a country, trade restrictions also apply to the individual traveler. When you bring home souvenirs (纪念品) from another country, you are actually importing goods. In the United States and many other countries, the customs agency grants each traveler a nominal duty exemption (免除) to allow them to bring back a reasonable amount of goods without having to pay tariffs.
H. In most countries, it isn"t feasible for the customs agency to check all of the goods that every single traveler is importing, so governments have to depend largely on people"s honesty. When you enter a country, you are asked to truthfully report what goods you are importing and make a good faith estimate of their value. They don"t put their entire trust in people"s good character, of course; customs performs a thorough search of some percentage of all travelers.
I. Some customs agencies decide which travelers to search based on random chance. You are asked to press a button on a machine that activates a random number generator. Depending on the number that comes up, either a green light comes on and you can pass through or a red light comes on and the agent searches your bags. Other customs agencies decide who to search based solely on intuition. After many years on the job, a customs agent develops a keen eye for people who are up to no good. Unlike the police, customs agents are fully authorized to search your luggage, clothes and even your body without any warrant or reason for suspicion. Customs agents often work side-by-side with immigration officials, and in some ports of entry, one inspector may represent both agencies. But at its core, a customs agency is concerned with the things that are coming in and out of a country, rather than the travelers themselves.
J. In addition to monitoring legal imports, a nation"s customs agency also works to keep out illegal or contraband (违禁品) items. Customs agencies must fight the flow of illegal materials across borders. In addition to drugs, customs agencies may watch for weaponry, child pornography (色情资料), counterfeit merchandise and stolen goods. They also watch for people carrying illegally gained money across borders. These sorts of illegal materials make up only one category of contraband goods. Customs agents also stop the importation of legal goods that are a threat to the nation"s security. In most countries, the importation of fruits, meats, animals and plants is heavily regulated due to the fear of disease or ecological imbalance. While it may seem strange that a piece of fruit is considered a threat to national security, the risk of biological contamination is very real. In the late 1980s, one traveler with one piece of contaminated fruit caused an infestation (大量滋生) of Mediterranean fruit flies that destroyed millions of dollars worth of crops in California.
K. Some completely harmless items are deemed contraband simply because of the country they come from. If country A is considered to be a national enemy of country B, or has a record of violating international law, country B (and other countries) might institute an embargo (禁运) against that country (a ban on the importation of country A"s goods). This cuts off potential business for country A, and this may persuade its leaders to change their policies. In the United States, the best known example of this sort of sanction is the embargo against Cuban products. There is a high demand for Cuban cigars in the United States, but they are strictly regulated because of the strained relationship between the United States and Cuba. As with drugs, smugglers are eager to sneak in a supply to meet this demand, and are constantly trying to get around customs.
L. In many countries, the customs agency closely monitors the importing and exporting of cultural artifacts. While a traveler may have purchased the item in good faith, it might have been stolen at an earlier point. Customs agencies have helped to restore many priceless artifacts to their rightful owners.
M. A country"s government might also ban importation of items based on ethics and morality. For example, in many countries, you cannot import ivory or other products that come from endangered animals. In 2000, the United States enacted the Dog and Cat Protection Act , banning the importation of any products made from dog and cat fur that was acquired inhumanly. The US Customs Service confiscates all such goods so that US citizens do not inadvertently support this practice.
N. Without customs agencies, nations would have no control over what comes in and goes out of their country. In order to protect its citizens and businesses, a government has to be vigilant in protecting its borders, not only against armed attack, but also against unwanted imports. As any customs agent will tell you, this is crucial to maintaining order in modern society.
(选自Time)In the US, such goods as dog or cat furs are forbidden to import based on ethics and morality.

答案： M。[解析] M段主要介绍了一个国家的政府还可能根据伦理和道德原则禁止某些物品的进口。题干中的are forbidden...

填空题

Save for College
A. In this article, we"ll look at the rules for 529 Qualified State Tuition Plans. We"ll explore the difference between this savings vehicle and some of the other traditional education savings methods and see why this plan is the best yet!
The cost of college
B. You may never have thought you could get excited about big sums of money you won"t be spending on yourself until you read about this new college savings plan. The 529 plan offers the most painless way to save money for higher education to date. And if the child decides not to go to college, you can roll it over to someone else that does want to go, including yourself! The 529 Plan is a savings plan for college education. You have a couple of options when you open an account.
* One option lets you prepay tuition at a qualified educational institution at today"s tuition rates.
* Another option lets you save money in a tax-deferred account (earnings only) to be used to pay for education at future tuition rates.
C. The idea, with either option, is that the investment earnings will grow to meet the higher costs of future education. The savings account option is typically considered the more attractive of the two and is what we will focus on in this article. The 529 plan is a state-sponsored investment program. That is, the state sets up the plan with an asset management company of its choice, and you open a 529 account with that asset management company according to the state"s predetermined plan features. You are the owner of the account, and the child for whom the account is set up is the beneficiary (收益人). You won"t deal directly with the state, but rather with the asset management/investment company.
State-to-state variations
D. Because each state can control some of the features of its own plan, there are variations from state to state. Most plans follow the same general scheme (and federal requirements), but make sure you compare plans among states other than your own. Most states don"t require residency in order to participate, so shop around different states for the best deal.
The benefits: tax treatment
E. All of the account"s earnings are exempt from federal tax when they are withdrawn if they are used for qualified education expenses. This means that, unlike the taxes you have to pay on earnings from regular stock investments, you won"t pay any tax on the 529 account earnings unless you end up using the money for something other than higher education. Earnings are currently tax-deferred in most states, as well.
F. A break on the earnings tax isn"t the only tax advantage, either. Although your contributions aren"t pre-tax (you pay state and federal tax on the money you put into the account), there are some states that let you deduct a portion of your contributions from your state taxes. More states will probably follow suit in the coming years.
The benefits: account control
G. Unlike Education Savings Accounts (ESA), the account owner always has control of the money. This helps lessen that parental anxiety that the junior will take the money and tour Europe or buy a Porsche instead of going to college. There are no restrictions on who can open an account for whom. You can open an account for your child, a friend"s child, a relative, the paper boy, or even yourself.
The benefits: income eligibility
H. Did you know that with an ESA, you aren"t eligible to contribute if you make more than $110,000 per year ($220,000 for married couples) Unlike ESAs, your income does not affect your eligibility to open a 529 account. Contributions to 529 plans also qualify for the $11,000 ($22,000 for married couples in 2002) annual gift tax exclusion. You can also contribute up to five years of gifts during the first year, meaning you can put in up to $55,000 ($110,000 for married couples). This is a great benefit in situations where inheritance money enters the picture. Your account can grow up to $268,000 in some states. You can contribute as little as $25 to $50 per month.
The benefits: how the money can be used
I. In most states, there is no age limit or time limit for when the money has to be used. Your child can put off college indefinitely, in which case you have the option of rolling the account over to another child as long as that child is in the same family of the first beneficiary. In case you"re wondering just who is considered "family", the plan defines family members as "the original beneficiary"s spouse, children, sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces, first cousins, and any spouses of those persons."
J. Your child can go to any accredited (官方认可的) degree-granting educational institution, whether it is public, private, two-year, or four-year. There are even some international schools that qualify. In most states, qualified education costs include tuition, books, room, board, transportation, and even computers. In the event that your child gets a scholarship, then the remainder of the 529 account can be rolled over to another sibling (or relative), or it can be cashed out with no penalty other than the tax paid (at your rate) on the earnings. The same rule applies in the event of the child"s death or disability.
The benefits: investment control
K. If the thought of turning over your hard earned money to the state makes you a little uneasy, rest assured that the state doesn"t control your money. In fact, most states are signing on with well-known, successful investment companies such as TIAA-CREF, Vanguard and Fidelity. The number and types of investment options vary by state, and once you select your option you can"t change it. You can, however, roll your money over into another state"s plan if you"re not happy with your chosen investment option. There is no penalty to roll the money over into another state"s plan, and you can do it once every 12 months. Most states have no residence requirement for their 529 plans.
L. Many plans are also offering investment choices that are age-based. This means that if you"re starting early, perhaps when your child is age one to three, the investments can begin aggressively in stocks then gradually shift to bonds and money market accounts as your child gets closer to college age. Some state plans offer several levels of options for aggressive, moderate and conservative investments.
M. If you can"t reach the risk level you want in one plan, you can always open a second 529 account in the same or another state. You can have as many accounts as you want and can also contribute to both a 529 plan and an ESA. That way, you can diversify your investments in the event that the plan doesn"t offer the investment mix you would like.
(选自The New York Times)As for those couples who earn more than $220,000 annually, they are entitled to the 529 plan.

答案： H。[解析] H段主要介绍了年收入22万美元的家庭不能申请ESA，但不影响申请529计划。题干中的are entitle...

填空题

Technology, Costs, Lack of Appeal Slow E-textbook Adoption
A. Textbooks are often a luxury for college senior Vatell Martin. The accounting major at Virginia State University got by in several courses with study groups and professors" lectures. "It"s not that I didn"t want to buy," he says. "Sometimes, I just didn"t have the money for a $200 book." VSU knows Martin isn"t the only one. More than half of its students routinely skip buying textbooks. For a solution, the school is turning to e-textbooks.
B. VSU partnered with Flat World Knowledge, a start-up publisher that produces exclusively written e-books with "open" content that can be modified by professors. In a trial with 14 business courses, students would be required to pay $20 and receive a Flat World e-book and digital learning supplements. The university and a local grant have been covering the cost, so far. "That"s nothing. It"s what I put in my gas tank," says Martin, who participated in the trial. "If I was walking into a discussion on a topic, I can just download and take out the book and read it on my phone."
C. With their promise of ubiquity (无处不在), convenience and perhaps affordability, e-textbooks have arrived in fits and starts throughout college campuses. And publishers and book resellers are spending millions attracting students to their online stores and e-reader platforms as mobile technology improves the readability of the material on devices such as tablet computers. Silicon Valley start-ups, such as Inkling and Kno, are also aggressively reinventing textbooks with interactive graphics, videos and social-media features.
D. Despite emerging attempts at innovation, the industry has been slowed by clumsy technology, the lasting appeal of print books, skeptical students who search online for cheaper alternatives, and customer confusion stemming from too many me-too e-textbook platforms that have failed to stand out.
E. The late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, believed textbooks to be an $8 billion market ripe for "digital destruction," biographer Walter Issacson writes in Steve Jobs . Apple is expected to make an announcement Thursday about its new education products. The market is small but growing. Sales for e-textbooks in the US higher education market grew 44.3% to $267.3 million in 2011, according to Simba Information, a publishing industry research firm.
Print still rules
F. So far, students have been less than impressed and more likely to choose print books. About 11% of college students have bought e-textbooks, according to market research firm Student Monitor. Availability isn"t the chief problem. Most popular textbooks have a digital version, and they"re available online. But students have largely stayed away because the most readily available technology today—PDF (portable document format) or other document reader versions of the print book—is clumsy and eye-straining to read.
G. When Andrea Soto, a freshman biology major at the University of Maryland, bought Principles of Biology, the $192 price tag came with a free online version. She prefers the touchable presence of a thick book on her lap. "You can"t highlight or underline things in the e-book. I find it more of a trouble," she says. However, digital books aren"t necessarily cheaper, either. While priced lower than new print books, they"re often more expensive than buying or renting used books online, says Kathy Mickey, an analyst at Simba.
H. A federally funded pilot study at Daytona State College in Florida found that some students who rented an e-textbook paid only a dollar less than students who bought a print edition. And e-textbook users couldn"t sell the book back after the class ended. Despite e-textbooks" shortcomings, most agree that the print market is ripe for a technological overhaul (彻底改革). Prices of new books are rising sharply. Authors complain about used book sales that don"t generate royalties. Professors and students are annoyed at new editions that seemingly add little in content VS the previous one.
I. "This is an industry that"s failing everyone—parents, authors, professors, and students," says Brad Wheeler, chief information officer at Indiana University, which is running a program that distributes cheaper e-textbooks but requires all students in the class to buy. Publishers are eager for a quicker transition to the format because e-textbooks cost less to publish and would generate income from every student who buys one. Digital books can"t be resold, at least, not legally. "We"d prefer that all of it to go digital," says Vineet Madan, senior vice President of new ventures at McGraw-Hill Education. "There isn"t a secondary market for e-books."
Seeking market niche (商机)
J. If current e-textbooks are mostly unappealing, what"s next Like online music in its infancy, the textbook industry"s key players—publishers, resellers, bookstores, tech companies, even some universities—are all scrambling to offer their digital solutions, an effort that has only intensified with the arrival of tablet computers and app stores. "Everybody and their brothers are coming out with an e-book platform," says Iam Williams, director of strategic learning solutions at Wiley, a textbook publisher.
K. They all agree on one thing: The quality of e-textbooks must improve dramatically. More value-added, interactive features will keep students interested and spur sales, they say. Tablet computers are a key stimulus in this endeavor. At Kno, tablets have allowed the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company to embed interactive tools onto an existing e-textbook in a more intuitive way, for example, the ability to w-rite directly on the book with a finger stroke or tap on a keyword for notes. "Tablet was a needed development," says Kno"s founder Osman Rashid. Despite threats to their print book sales, university bookstores are also coming around to embracing e-books. Follett, which rims 930 university bookstores in North America, launched Follett CafeScribe last year, a cloud-based digital textbook platform.
Publishers not on sidelines
L. Textbook publishers are partnering with universities for exclusive trials, buying stakes in start-ups and developing their own technologies. Last year, publisher Cengage launched MindTap, an e-book/digital learning website that is now being tried by about 50 professors, says Bill Rieders, Cengage"s executive vice President of global new media. Instead of tables of content, MindTap provides "a learning path" that students can access for text, multimedia, self-assessment tools, quizzes and note sharing.
M. Pearson has introduced a competing product, OpenClass. The cloud-based website means students can access information wherever there"s an online connection—features social networking, and works with Google Apps for Education. Reed College in Portland, Ore., is one of several universities that will test OpenClass this fall.
N. The CourseLoad trial has been in place since 2009 on a limited basis, with students receiving free books. It has been expanded to 130 courses this spring semester. Students now pay a discounted price for access to CourseLoad books and learning kits, typically "60% to 70%" cheaper than new print books, Wheeler says. In exchange, students must pay a fee to enroll. Despite the lack of flexibility, school officials and students have embraced the low-cost approach, he says.
(选自USA Today)The e-textbook publishers cooperate with universities to achieve sole tryouts.

答案： L。[解析] L段主要介绍了教科书出版商和大学合作是为了进行独家试用，购买新兴企业的股份以及开发他们自己的技术。题干中的...

填空题

Save for College
A. In this article, we"ll look at the rules for 529 Qualified State Tuition Plans. We"ll explore the difference between this savings vehicle and some of the other traditional education savings methods and see why this plan is the best yet!
The cost of college
B. You may never have thought you could get excited about big sums of money you won"t be spending on yourself until you read about this new college savings plan. The 529 plan offers the most painless way to save money for higher education to date. And if the child decides not to go to college, you can roll it over to someone else that does want to go, including yourself! The 529 Plan is a savings plan for college education. You have a couple of options when you open an account.
* One option lets you prepay tuition at a qualified educational institution at today"s tuition rates.
* Another option lets you save money in a tax-deferred account (earnings only) to be used to pay for education at future tuition rates.
C. The idea, with either option, is that the investment earnings will grow to meet the higher costs of future education. The savings account option is typically considered the more attractive of the two and is what we will focus on in this article. The 529 plan is a state-sponsored investment program. That is, the state sets up the plan with an asset management company of its choice, and you open a 529 account with that asset management company according to the state"s predetermined plan features. You are the owner of the account, and the child for whom the account is set up is the beneficiary (收益人). You won"t deal directly with the state, but rather with the asset management/investment company.
State-to-state variations
D. Because each state can control some of the features of its own plan, there are variations from state to state. Most plans follow the same general scheme (and federal requirements), but make sure you compare plans among states other than your own. Most states don"t require residency in order to participate, so shop around different states for the best deal.
The benefits: tax treatment
E. All of the account"s earnings are exempt from federal tax when they are withdrawn if they are used for qualified education expenses. This means that, unlike the taxes you have to pay on earnings from regular stock investments, you won"t pay any tax on the 529 account earnings unless you end up using the money for something other than higher education. Earnings are currently tax-deferred in most states, as well.
F. A break on the earnings tax isn"t the only tax advantage, either. Although your contributions aren"t pre-tax (you pay state and federal tax on the money you put into the account), there are some states that let you deduct a portion of your contributions from your state taxes. More states will probably follow suit in the coming years.
The benefits: account control
G. Unlike Education Savings Accounts (ESA), the account owner always has control of the money. This helps lessen that parental anxiety that the junior will take the money and tour Europe or buy a Porsche instead of going to college. There are no restrictions on who can open an account for whom. You can open an account for your child, a friend"s child, a relative, the paper boy, or even yourself.
The benefits: income eligibility
H. Did you know that with an ESA, you aren"t eligible to contribute if you make more than $110,000 per year ($220,000 for married couples) Unlike ESAs, your income does not affect your eligibility to open a 529 account. Contributions to 529 plans also qualify for the $11,000 ($22,000 for married couples in 2002) annual gift tax exclusion. You can also contribute up to five years of gifts during the first year, meaning you can put in up to $55,000 ($110,000 for married couples). This is a great benefit in situations where inheritance money enters the picture. Your account can grow up to $268,000 in some states. You can contribute as little as $25 to $50 per month.
The benefits: how the money can be used
I. In most states, there is no age limit or time limit for when the money has to be used. Your child can put off college indefinitely, in which case you have the option of rolling the account over to another child as long as that child is in the same family of the first beneficiary. In case you"re wondering just who is considered "family", the plan defines family members as "the original beneficiary"s spouse, children, sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces, first cousins, and any spouses of those persons."
J. Your child can go to any accredited (官方认可的) degree-granting educational institution, whether it is public, private, two-year, or four-year. There are even some international schools that qualify. In most states, qualified education costs include tuition, books, room, board, transportation, and even computers. In the event that your child gets a scholarship, then the remainder of the 529 account can be rolled over to another sibling (or relative), or it can be cashed out with no penalty other than the tax paid (at your rate) on the earnings. The same rule applies in the event of the child"s death or disability.
The benefits: investment control
K. If the thought of turning over your hard earned money to the state makes you a little uneasy, rest assured that the state doesn"t control your money. In fact, most states are signing on with well-known, successful investment companies such as TIAA-CREF, Vanguard and Fidelity. The number and types of investment options vary by state, and once you select your option you can"t change it. You can, however, roll your money over into another state"s plan if you"re not happy with your chosen investment option. There is no penalty to roll the money over into another state"s plan, and you can do it once every 12 months. Most states have no residence requirement for their 529 plans.
L. Many plans are also offering investment choices that are age-based. This means that if you"re starting early, perhaps when your child is age one to three, the investments can begin aggressively in stocks then gradually shift to bonds and money market accounts as your child gets closer to college age. Some state plans offer several levels of options for aggressive, moderate and conservative investments.
M. If you can"t reach the risk level you want in one plan, you can always open a second 529 account in the same or another state. You can have as many accounts as you want and can also contribute to both a 529 plan and an ESA. That way, you can diversify your investments in the event that the plan doesn"t offer the investment mix you would like.
(选自The New York Times)When your child gets a scholarship, the rest 529 account can be either cashed out or given to another sibling (or relative).

答案： J。[解析] J段提到如果孩子获得了奖学金，529账户中的剩余款可转给其他孩子或亲属，或将余款兑现。题干中的given ...

填空题

Technology, Costs, Lack of Appeal Slow E-textbook Adoption
A. Textbooks are often a luxury for college senior Vatell Martin. The accounting major at Virginia State University got by in several courses with study groups and professors" lectures. "It"s not that I didn"t want to buy," he says. "Sometimes, I just didn"t have the money for a $200 book." VSU knows Martin isn"t the only one. More than half of its students routinely skip buying textbooks. For a solution, the school is turning to e-textbooks.
B. VSU partnered with Flat World Knowledge, a start-up publisher that produces exclusively written e-books with "open" content that can be modified by professors. In a trial with 14 business courses, students would be required to pay $20 and receive a Flat World e-book and digital learning supplements. The university and a local grant have been covering the cost, so far. "That"s nothing. It"s what I put in my gas tank," says Martin, who participated in the trial. "If I was walking into a discussion on a topic, I can just download and take out the book and read it on my phone."
C. With their promise of ubiquity (无处不在), convenience and perhaps affordability, e-textbooks have arrived in fits and starts throughout college campuses. And publishers and book resellers are spending millions attracting students to their online stores and e-reader platforms as mobile technology improves the readability of the material on devices such as tablet computers. Silicon Valley start-ups, such as Inkling and Kno, are also aggressively reinventing textbooks with interactive graphics, videos and social-media features.
D. Despite emerging attempts at innovation, the industry has been slowed by clumsy technology, the lasting appeal of print books, skeptical students who search online for cheaper alternatives, and customer confusion stemming from too many me-too e-textbook platforms that have failed to stand out.
E. The late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, believed textbooks to be an $8 billion market ripe for "digital destruction," biographer Walter Issacson writes in Steve Jobs . Apple is expected to make an announcement Thursday about its new education products. The market is small but growing. Sales for e-textbooks in the US higher education market grew 44.3% to $267.3 million in 2011, according to Simba Information, a publishing industry research firm.
Print still rules
F. So far, students have been less than impressed and more likely to choose print books. About 11% of college students have bought e-textbooks, according to market research firm Student Monitor. Availability isn"t the chief problem. Most popular textbooks have a digital version, and they"re available online. But students have largely stayed away because the most readily available technology today—PDF (portable document format) or other document reader versions of the print book—is clumsy and eye-straining to read.
G. When Andrea Soto, a freshman biology major at the University of Maryland, bought Principles of Biology, the $192 price tag came with a free online version. She prefers the touchable presence of a thick book on her lap. "You can"t highlight or underline things in the e-book. I find it more of a trouble," she says. However, digital books aren"t necessarily cheaper, either. While priced lower than new print books, they"re often more expensive than buying or renting used books online, says Kathy Mickey, an analyst at Simba.
H. A federally funded pilot study at Daytona State College in Florida found that some students who rented an e-textbook paid only a dollar less than students who bought a print edition. And e-textbook users couldn"t sell the book back after the class ended. Despite e-textbooks" shortcomings, most agree that the print market is ripe for a technological overhaul (彻底改革). Prices of new books are rising sharply. Authors complain about used book sales that don"t generate royalties. Professors and students are annoyed at new editions that seemingly add little in content VS the previous one.
I. "This is an industry that"s failing everyone—parents, authors, professors, and students," says Brad Wheeler, chief information officer at Indiana University, which is running a program that distributes cheaper e-textbooks but requires all students in the class to buy. Publishers are eager for a quicker transition to the format because e-textbooks cost less to publish and would generate income from every student who buys one. Digital books can"t be resold, at least, not legally. "We"d prefer that all of it to go digital," says Vineet Madan, senior vice President of new ventures at McGraw-Hill Education. "There isn"t a secondary market for e-books."
Seeking market niche (商机)
J. If current e-textbooks are mostly unappealing, what"s next Like online music in its infancy, the textbook industry"s key players—publishers, resellers, bookstores, tech companies, even some universities—are all scrambling to offer their digital solutions, an effort that has only intensified with the arrival of tablet computers and app stores. "Everybody and their brothers are coming out with an e-book platform," says Iam Williams, director of strategic learning solutions at Wiley, a textbook publisher.
K. They all agree on one thing: The quality of e-textbooks must improve dramatically. More value-added, interactive features will keep students interested and spur sales, they say. Tablet computers are a key stimulus in this endeavor. At Kno, tablets have allowed the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company to embed interactive tools onto an existing e-textbook in a more intuitive way, for example, the ability to w-rite directly on the book with a finger stroke or tap on a keyword for notes. "Tablet was a needed development," says Kno"s founder Osman Rashid. Despite threats to their print book sales, university bookstores are also coming around to embracing e-books. Follett, which rims 930 university bookstores in North America, launched Follett CafeScribe last year, a cloud-based digital textbook platform.
Publishers not on sidelines
L. Textbook publishers are partnering with universities for exclusive trials, buying stakes in start-ups and developing their own technologies. Last year, publisher Cengage launched MindTap, an e-book/digital learning website that is now being tried by about 50 professors, says Bill Rieders, Cengage"s executive vice President of global new media. Instead of tables of content, MindTap provides "a learning path" that students can access for text, multimedia, self-assessment tools, quizzes and note sharing.
M. Pearson has introduced a competing product, OpenClass. The cloud-based website means students can access information wherever there"s an online connection—features social networking, and works with Google Apps for Education. Reed College in Portland, Ore., is one of several universities that will test OpenClass this fall.
N. The CourseLoad trial has been in place since 2009 on a limited basis, with students receiving free books. It has been expanded to 130 courses this spring semester. Students now pay a discounted price for access to CourseLoad books and learning kits, typically "60% to 70%" cheaper than new print books, Wheeler says. In exchange, students must pay a fee to enroll. Despite the lack of flexibility, school officials and students have embraced the low-cost approach, he says.
(选自USA Today)Despite so many attempts at innovation of e-textbooks, the industry has been still restricted.

答案： D。[解析] D段主要介绍了尽管不断尝试创新，但是电子教科书行业一直以来受到以下因素的限制：拙劣的技术、纸质图书持久的吸...

填空题

How Customs Work
A. One of the little rituals all international travelers go through is customs. To most people, this is just another stop in an airport or a minor inconvenience at a country"s borders. But when you go through customs, you are actually taking part in a key component of the global economy.
B. A nation"s customs service has many responsibilities. At its most basic level, its purpose is to regulate what comes into and goes out of a country. The foremost element of this regulation is controlling international trade. The concept of trade is as old as civilization itself. If my tribe has a huge supply of bananas, and your tribe has a huge supply of fur, we will trade goods so that both our tribes can eat and both can keep warm. In the modern world, international trade is based on money, but it works in pretty much the same way.
C. Any nation wants its own businesses to do well, so most of the time they prefer their people buy domestic goods over competing foreign goods. But in many cases, goods are available cheaper in another country than in your country, and people naturally want to buy them at the lower price. To tilt the balance in favor of domestic businesses, governments impose tariffs, also called duty, on foreign goods coming into the country.
D. In addition to encouraging domestic trade, duty also gives the nation a "piece of the action" when somebody buys something produced overseas. Customs agencies are often major sources of revenue for the government. The US Customs Service, for example, brings in more money than any other government office except the Internal Revenue Service. To control specific sorts of trade, a government may impose a higher tariff on certain types of goods (alcohol, for example). Certain countries may join together to work out mutually beneficial trade agreements, enabling businesses in those nations to trade more freely with each other than they can with businesses in other nations. This gives an advantage to nations that a country has a good relationship with.
E. Customs agencies also monitor what is being exported from a country. For example, most governments strictly regulate what weapons can be exported to other nations. This is simply a common-sense safety measure: It"s not a good idea to arm enemy nations, so the government has to know who is buying any domestically-produced weaponry. As we"ll see later on, customs agencies also pay careful attention to how much money citizens are transporting out of the country.
F. Duty charges have a huge effect on big businesses, which may import millions of dollars worth of goods every year. To regulate trade on this level, a country"s customs agency must keep track of all shipments that come into the nation"s ports or cross its borders. They can"t check every bit of foreign cargo, of course, so agents pick certain boxes to inspect and certain shipments to scrutinize. In an effort to speed up the process, the US Customs Service is implementing new, computerized systems for processing shipments and charging in, porters.
G. While large businesses are the main importers in a country, trade restrictions also apply to the individual traveler. When you bring home souvenirs (纪念品) from another country, you are actually importing goods. In the United States and many other countries, the customs agency grants each traveler a nominal duty exemption (免除) to allow them to bring back a reasonable amount of goods without having to pay tariffs.
H. In most countries, it isn"t feasible for the customs agency to check all of the goods that every single traveler is importing, so governments have to depend largely on people"s honesty. When you enter a country, you are asked to truthfully report what goods you are importing and make a good faith estimate of their value. They don"t put their entire trust in people"s good character, of course; customs performs a thorough search of some percentage of all travelers.
I. Some customs agencies decide which travelers to search based on random chance. You are asked to press a button on a machine that activates a random number generator. Depending on the number that comes up, either a green light comes on and you can pass through or a red light comes on and the agent searches your bags. Other customs agencies decide who to search based solely on intuition. After many years on the job, a customs agent develops a keen eye for people who are up to no good. Unlike the police, customs agents are fully authorized to search your luggage, clothes and even your body without any warrant or reason for suspicion. Customs agents often work side-by-side with immigration officials, and in some ports of entry, one inspector may represent both agencies. But at its core, a customs agency is concerned with the things that are coming in and out of a country, rather than the travelers themselves.
J. In addition to monitoring legal imports, a nation"s customs agency also works to keep out illegal or contraband (违禁品) items. Customs agencies must fight the flow of illegal materials across borders. In addition to drugs, customs agencies may watch for weaponry, child pornography (色情资料), counterfeit merchandise and stolen goods. They also watch for people carrying illegally gained money across borders. These sorts of illegal materials make up only one category of contraband goods. Customs agents also stop the importation of legal goods that are a threat to the nation"s security. In most countries, the importation of fruits, meats, animals and plants is heavily regulated due to the fear of disease or ecological imbalance. While it may seem strange that a piece of fruit is considered a threat to national security, the risk of biological contamination is very real. In the late 1980s, one traveler with one piece of contaminated fruit caused an infestation (大量滋生) of Mediterranean fruit flies that destroyed millions of dollars worth of crops in California.
K. Some completely harmless items are deemed contraband simply because of the country they come from. If country A is considered to be a national enemy of country B, or has a record of violating international law, country B (and other countries) might institute an embargo (禁运) against that country (a ban on the importation of country A"s goods). This cuts off potential business for country A, and this may persuade its leaders to change their policies. In the United States, the best known example of this sort of sanction is the embargo against Cuban products. There is a high demand for Cuban cigars in the United States, but they are strictly regulated because of the strained relationship between the United States and Cuba. As with drugs, smugglers are eager to sneak in a supply to meet this demand, and are constantly trying to get around customs.
L. In many countries, the customs agency closely monitors the importing and exporting of cultural artifacts. While a traveler may have purchased the item in good faith, it might have been stolen at an earlier point. Customs agencies have helped to restore many priceless artifacts to their rightful owners.
M. A country"s government might also ban importation of items based on ethics and morality. For example, in many countries, you cannot import ivory or other products that come from endangered animals. In 2000, the United States enacted the Dog and Cat Protection Act , banning the importation of any products made from dog and cat fur that was acquired inhumanly. The US Customs Service confiscates all such goods so that US citizens do not inadvertently support this practice.
N. Without customs agencies, nations would have no control over what comes in and goes out of their country. In order to protect its citizens and businesses, a government has to be vigilant in protecting its borders, not only against armed attack, but also against unwanted imports. As any customs agent will tell you, this is crucial to maintaining order in modern society.
(选自Time)Some countries are able to do business more freely with each other, if they make trade agreements in favor of both sides.

答案： D。[解析] D段主要介绍了关税的重要作用。国家可以通过关税增加财政收入、调节进出口商品种类，甚至可以通过和其他国家建立...

填空题

How Customs Work
A. One of the little rituals all international travelers go through is customs. To most people, this is just another stop in an airport or a minor inconvenience at a country"s borders. But when you go through customs, you are actually taking part in a key component of the global economy.
B. A nation"s customs service has many responsibilities. At its most basic level, its purpose is to regulate what comes into and goes out of a country. The foremost element of this regulation is controlling international trade. The concept of trade is as old as civilization itself. If my tribe has a huge supply of bananas, and your tribe has a huge supply of fur, we will trade goods so that both our tribes can eat and both can keep warm. In the modern world, international trade is based on money, but it works in pretty much the same way.
C. Any nation wants its own businesses to do well, so most of the time they prefer their people buy domestic goods over competing foreign goods. But in many cases, goods are available cheaper in another country than in your country, and people naturally want to buy them at the lower price. To tilt the balance in favor of domestic businesses, governments impose tariffs, also called duty, on foreign goods coming into the country.
D. In addition to encouraging domestic trade, duty also gives the nation a "piece of the action" when somebody buys something produced overseas. Customs agencies are often major sources of revenue for the government. The US Customs Service, for example, brings in more money than any other government office except the Internal Revenue Service. To control specific sorts of trade, a government may impose a higher tariff on certain types of goods (alcohol, for example). Certain countries may join together to work out mutually beneficial trade agreements, enabling businesses in those nations to trade more freely with each other than they can with businesses in other nations. This gives an advantage to nations that a country has a good relationship with.
E. Customs agencies also monitor what is being exported from a country. For example, most governments strictly regulate what weapons can be exported to other nations. This is simply a common-sense safety measure: It"s not a good idea to arm enemy nations, so the government has to know who is buying any domestically-produced weaponry. As we"ll see later on, customs agencies also pay careful attention to how much money citizens are transporting out of the country.
F. Duty charges have a huge effect on big businesses, which may import millions of dollars worth of goods every year. To regulate trade on this level, a country"s customs agency must keep track of all shipments that come into the nation"s ports or cross its borders. They can"t check every bit of foreign cargo, of course, so agents pick certain boxes to inspect and certain shipments to scrutinize. In an effort to speed up the process, the US Customs Service is implementing new, computerized systems for processing shipments and charging in, porters.
G. While large businesses are the main importers in a country, trade restrictions also apply to the individual traveler. When you bring home souvenirs (纪念品) from another country, you are actually importing goods. In the United States and many other countries, the customs agency grants each traveler a nominal duty exemption (免除) to allow them to bring back a reasonable amount of goods without having to pay tariffs.
H. In most countries, it isn"t feasible for the customs agency to check all of the goods that every single traveler is importing, so governments have to depend largely on people"s honesty. When you enter a country, you are asked to truthfully report what goods you are importing and make a good faith estimate of their value. They don"t put their entire trust in people"s good character, of course; customs performs a thorough search of some percentage of all travelers.
I. Some customs agencies decide which travelers to search based on random chance. You are asked to press a button on a machine that activates a random number generator. Depending on the number that comes up, either a green light comes on and you can pass through or a red light comes on and the agent searches your bags. Other customs agencies decide who to search based solely on intuition. After many years on the job, a customs agent develops a keen eye for people who are up to no good. Unlike the police, customs agents are fully authorized to search your luggage, clothes and even your body without any warrant or reason for suspicion. Customs agents often work side-by-side with immigration officials, and in some ports of entry, one inspector may represent both agencies. But at its core, a customs agency is concerned with the things that are coming in and out of a country, rather than the travelers themselves.
J. In addition to monitoring legal imports, a nation"s customs agency also works to keep out illegal or contraband (违禁品) items. Customs agencies must fight the flow of illegal materials across borders. In addition to drugs, customs agencies may watch for weaponry, child pornography (色情资料), counterfeit merchandise and stolen goods. They also watch for people carrying illegally gained money across borders. These sorts of illegal materials make up only one category of contraband goods. Customs agents also stop the importation of legal goods that are a threat to the nation"s security. In most countries, the importation of fruits, meats, animals and plants is heavily regulated due to the fear of disease or ecological imbalance. While it may seem strange that a piece of fruit is considered a threat to national security, the risk of biological contamination is very real. In the late 1980s, one traveler with one piece of contaminated fruit caused an infestation (大量滋生) of Mediterranean fruit flies that destroyed millions of dollars worth of crops in California.
K. Some completely harmless items are deemed contraband simply because of the country they come from. If country A is considered to be a national enemy of country B, or has a record of violating international law, country B (and other countries) might institute an embargo (禁运) against that country (a ban on the importation of country A"s goods). This cuts off potential business for country A, and this may persuade its leaders to change their policies. In the United States, the best known example of this sort of sanction is the embargo against Cuban products. There is a high demand for Cuban cigars in the United States, but they are strictly regulated because of the strained relationship between the United States and Cuba. As with drugs, smugglers are eager to sneak in a supply to meet this demand, and are constantly trying to get around customs.
L. In many countries, the customs agency closely monitors the importing and exporting of cultural artifacts. While a traveler may have purchased the item in good faith, it might have been stolen at an earlier point. Customs agencies have helped to restore many priceless artifacts to their rightful owners.
M. A country"s government might also ban importation of items based on ethics and morality. For example, in many countries, you cannot import ivory or other products that come from endangered animals. In 2000, the United States enacted the Dog and Cat Protection Act , banning the importation of any products made from dog and cat fur that was acquired inhumanly. The US Customs Service confiscates all such goods so that US citizens do not inadvertently support this practice.
N. Without customs agencies, nations would have no control over what comes in and goes out of their country. In order to protect its citizens and businesses, a government has to be vigilant in protecting its borders, not only against armed attack, but also against unwanted imports. As any customs agent will tell you, this is crucial to maintaining order in modern society.
(选自Time)Most customs agencies regulate plants and animals importation heavily mainly because they may affect domestic security.

答案： J。[解析] J段主要介绍了大多数国家海关控制肉类、水果和动植物的进口，因为它们可能携带病菌或破坏生态平衡进而威胁国家安...

填空题

Business Ideas
A. What makes a business idea good Have you ever thought you had a great idea for a business but didn"t do anything about it, only to find out that, a short while later, someone else did How do you know ff you"ll be able to make the business work
B. If you think you want to start your own business you have to first eliminate any doubts you may have about yourself and your abilities. That means that you have to first identify your own strengths and decide if you"re the type of person who can build a business and make it a success. Once you have determined that, then you need a good—no, make that a great—idea for a business.
Do you have what it takes
C. There are some basic skills that you, as a potential business owner, should have. If you don"t have them then you need to at least have a friend or family member who does or be willing to pay an outside service or consultant to do these things for you.
D. Financial management and accounting—If you don"t have the skills now, you either need to take the time to learn, or have someone else you can depend on to handle this side of the business for you.
E. Marketing—You have to be able to sell yourself or your business. If people don"t know about you then you won"t get any business, and if you don"t have any business then, technically, you aren"t really in business. So, marketing is a very important part of your skill set. Fortunately, it is also an easy skill to farm out to experts.
F. Management skills—You must have the management skills and organizational skills in order to run your business. If you have no management experience at least start reading management books of all types that would apply to your business.
G. Determination, enthusiasm, energy—No one ever said being your own boss was easy! In fact, you"ll probably work harder than ever—you"ll just get to reap more of the benefits. You have to have the energy to make your business succeed. If you have any doubts then maybe you should rethink the idea. If you read the success stories behind many businesses, you"ll see the recurring theme that the business owner had no doubts that he or she would succeed, or that the thought of failing never entered their minds.
Identifying your talents
H. For some, coming up with the business idea is the easy part. They simply turn a hobby, or something else that they love doing, into a business. In some cases, this works great. In other cases, it doesn"t work so great. Why the difference Because you can"t just try on the pants when you want to buy the whole suit. In other words, there are a lot of different things to consider when you"re trying to come up with an idea for a business that will fit you.
I. Those people that have made a go of it by converting their hobby into a business were lucky in that there was a market for their business in the first place. It doesn"t matter how skilled you are and how much you love building those miniature replicas (复制品) of Star Wars (tm) Millennium Falcons inside authentic 1940"s 6-ounce Coca-Cola(tm) bottles, if there aren"t people who want to buy them (i. e. a market) then you"re not going to be able to support yourself doing it. It will still be a "hobby".
J. It still makes sense, however, to start a business that is based on things you know and are good at. You just can"t stop there. It is also possible to start a business based on something you know nothing about. In this case, however, you probably should try and learn as much as you can before you get in too deeply. Or, consider buying a franchise (特许经营权) that offers training, or an existing business from someone you can pump for information. You can also try working in the industry for a few months to pick up information. You may be surprised at how much you can learn even in low level positions.
Finding business ideas that fit your talents
K. The Internet is full of web sites that list page after page of business ideas. We don"t list those ideas here, but have provided links to some sites that do on our Links page. What we want to do is to help you discover and evaluate the ideas that appeal to you and best fit you as an individual.
L. Any list of business ideas you find will basically boil down to three types of businesses. Those business types are manufactured products that you build and sell yourself, distributed products or services that you buy wholesale and then resell at a higher price, and services that you provide.
M. For those three business types, there are typically four possible strategies. The strategies you might use include inventing a completely new product for a completely new market, inventing a completely new product for an existing market, improving on an existing product and selling it to the existing market, and selling an existing product to a completely new market.
N. Coming up with an idea for any of these areas requires some observation skills and creative thought. Start with the things you know about and enjoy and look for ways to make improvements, or sell them to new people. Be observant everywhere you go. Look at how existing businesses operate and make note of the problems you see. Can you come up with a way to eliminate those problems Can you see a way to improve the service, product or marketability of it Do you see trends in the market such as larger retired populations Are there special products or services that that increasing market will need
O. Brainstorm with friends, write everything down, and study your list often. Make notes as you think of them. Ideas multiply into lots of new ideas. Evaluate these ideas based on what you like and what you know about. Once you"ve narrowed the list down to the finalists, read on to find out how to evaluate those ideas.
Other deciding factors
P. There are few more things to consider when thinking about starting your own business. They include the followings: Your own level of commitment—Consider the extent or length to which you would go to make your business work (i. e. travel, commuting, relocating, etc.) Your family"s support and approval of your idea—Having the support of your family is very important to the success of your business, as well as the stress levels you endure in working to making it happen. Make sure you have the support you"ll need both emotionally and from a workload standpoint. Zoning restrictions for the location you are looking at—Make sure you know the restrictions on the types of businesses that can occupy a space (particularly if you are operating your business out of your home). Your town planning office or City Hall can provide that information. Your willingness to seek outside help if you need it—Don"t hesitate to get professional help for your business. There are many resources that can provide you with great ideas and information that can help manage more efficiently and perhaps even find that " edge (优势)". The compatibility of the business with your lifestyle—If you"re a night person and hate mornings then you probably don"t want to open a doughnut shop. Make sure your business idea fits the schedule you work best in.
(选自The Washington Post)It is not difficult for some people to offer the business idea.

答案： H。[解析] H段主要介绍商业想法来自于亲身经历，说明实践和亲历对于创业的重要性。题干中的offer the busin...

填空题

Business Ideas
A. What makes a business idea good Have you ever thought you had a great idea for a business but didn"t do anything about it, only to find out that, a short while later, someone else did How do you know ff you"ll be able to make the business work
B. If you think you want to start your own business you have to first eliminate any doubts you may have about yourself and your abilities. That means that you have to first identify your own strengths and decide if you"re the type of person who can build a business and make it a success. Once you have determined that, then you need a good—no, make that a great—idea for a business.
Do you have what it takes
C. There are some basic skills that you, as a potential business owner, should have. If you don"t have them then you need to at least have a friend or family member who does or be willing to pay an outside service or consultant to do these things for you.
D. Financial management and accounting—If you don"t have the skills now, you either need to take the time to learn, or have someone else you can depend on to handle this side of the business for you.
E. Marketing—You have to be able to sell yourself or your business. If people don"t know about you then you won"t get any business, and if you don"t have any business then, technically, you aren"t really in business. So, marketing is a very important part of your skill set. Fortunately, it is also an easy skill to farm out to experts.
F. Management skills—You must have the management skills and organizational skills in order to run your business. If you have no management experience at least start reading management books of all types that would apply to your business.
G. Determination, enthusiasm, energy—No one ever said being your own boss was easy! In fact, you"ll probably work harder than ever—you"ll just get to reap more of the benefits. You have to have the energy to make your business succeed. If you have any doubts then maybe you should rethink the idea. If you read the success stories behind many businesses, you"ll see the recurring theme that the business owner had no doubts that he or she would succeed, or that the thought of failing never entered their minds.
Identifying your talents
H. For some, coming up with the business idea is the easy part. They simply turn a hobby, or something else that they love doing, into a business. In some cases, this works great. In other cases, it doesn"t work so great. Why the difference Because you can"t just try on the pants when you want to buy the whole suit. In other words, there are a lot of different things to consider when you"re trying to come up with an idea for a business that will fit you.
I. Those people that have made a go of it by converting their hobby into a business were lucky in that there was a market for their business in the first place. It doesn"t matter how skilled you are and how much you love building those miniature replicas (复制品) of Star Wars (tm) Millennium Falcons inside authentic 1940"s 6-ounce Coca-Cola(tm) bottles, if there aren"t people who want to buy them (i. e. a market) then you"re not going to be able to support yourself doing it. It will still be a "hobby".
J. It still makes sense, however, to start a business that is based on things you know and are good at. You just can"t stop there. It is also possible to start a business based on something you know nothing about. In this case, however, you probably should try and learn as much as you can before you get in too deeply. Or, consider buying a franchise (特许经营权) that offers training, or an existing business from someone you can pump for information. You can also try working in the industry for a few months to pick up information. You may be surprised at how much you can learn even in low level positions.
Finding business ideas that fit your talents
K. The Internet is full of web sites that list page after page of business ideas. We don"t list those ideas here, but have provided links to some sites that do on our Links page. What we want to do is to help you discover and evaluate the ideas that appeal to you and best fit you as an individual.
L. Any list of business ideas you find will basically boil down to three types of businesses. Those business types are manufactured products that you build and sell yourself, distributed products or services that you buy wholesale and then resell at a higher price, and services that you provide.
M. For those three business types, there are typically four possible strategies. The strategies you might use include inventing a completely new product for a completely new market, inventing a completely new product for an existing market, improving on an existing product and selling it to the existing market, and selling an existing product to a completely new market.
N. Coming up with an idea for any of these areas requires some observation skills and creative thought. Start with the things you know about and enjoy and look for ways to make improvements, or sell them to new people. Be observant everywhere you go. Look at how existing businesses operate and make note of the problems you see. Can you come up with a way to eliminate those problems Can you see a way to improve the service, product or marketability of it Do you see trends in the market such as larger retired populations Are there special products or services that that increasing market will need
O. Brainstorm with friends, write everything down, and study your list often. Make notes as you think of them. Ideas multiply into lots of new ideas. Evaluate these ideas based on what you like and what you know about. Once you"ve narrowed the list down to the finalists, read on to find out how to evaluate those ideas.
Other deciding factors
P. There are few more things to consider when thinking about starting your own business. They include the followings: Your own level of commitment—Consider the extent or length to which you would go to make your business work (i. e. travel, commuting, relocating, etc.) Your family"s support and approval of your idea—Having the support of your family is very important to the success of your business, as well as the stress levels you endure in working to making it happen. Make sure you have the support you"ll need both emotionally and from a workload standpoint. Zoning restrictions for the location you are looking at—Make sure you know the restrictions on the types of businesses that can occupy a space (particularly if you are operating your business out of your home). Your town planning office or City Hall can provide that information. Your willingness to seek outside help if you need it—Don"t hesitate to get professional help for your business. There are many resources that can provide you with great ideas and information that can help manage more efficiently and perhaps even find that " edge (优势)". The compatibility of the business with your lifestyle—If you"re a night person and hate mornings then you probably don"t want to open a doughnut shop. Make sure your business idea fits the schedule you work best in.
(选自The Washington Post)Whatever an business idea you put forward, you"d better have a look at how the existing businesses run and keep track of the problems.

答案： N。[解析] N段指出，商业想法的获得需要具有观察事物的能力和创新能力。题干中的keep track of对应原文中的m...

填空题

Business Ideas
A. What makes a business idea good Have you ever thought you had a great idea for a business but didn"t do anything about it, only to find out that, a short while later, someone else did How do you know ff you"ll be able to make the business work
B. If you think you want to start your own business you have to first eliminate any doubts you may have about yourself and your abilities. That means that you have to first identify your own strengths and decide if you"re the type of person who can build a business and make it a success. Once you have determined that, then you need a good—no, make that a great—idea for a business.
Do you have what it takes
C. There are some basic skills that you, as a potential business owner, should have. If you don"t have them then you need to at least have a friend or family member who does or be willing to pay an outside service or consultant to do these things for you.
D. Financial management and accounting—If you don"t have the skills now, you either need to take the time to learn, or have someone else you can depend on to handle this side of the business for you.
E. Marketing—You have to be able to sell yourself or your business. If people don"t know about you then you won"t get any business, and if you don"t have any business then, technically, you aren"t really in business. So, marketing is a very important part of your skill set. Fortunately, it is also an easy skill to farm out to experts.
F. Management skills—You must have the management skills and organizational skills in order to run your business. If you have no management experience at least start reading management books of all types that would apply to your business.
G. Determination, enthusiasm, energy—No one ever said being your own boss was easy! In fact, you"ll probably work harder than ever—you"ll just get to reap more of the benefits. You have to have the energy to make your business succeed. If you have any doubts then maybe you should rethink the idea. If you read the success stories behind many businesses, you"ll see the recurring theme that the business owner had no doubts that he or she would succeed, or that the thought of failing never entered their minds.
Identifying your talents
H. For some, coming up with the business idea is the easy part. They simply turn a hobby, or something else that they love doing, into a business. In some cases, this works great. In other cases, it doesn"t work so great. Why the difference Because you can"t just try on the pants when you want to buy the whole suit. In other words, there are a lot of different things to consider when you"re trying to come up with an idea for a business that will fit you.
I. Those people that have made a go of it by converting their hobby into a business were lucky in that there was a market for their business in the first place. It doesn"t matter how skilled you are and how much you love building those miniature replicas (复制品) of Star Wars (tm) Millennium Falcons inside authentic 1940"s 6-ounce Coca-Cola(tm) bottles, if there aren"t people who want to buy them (i. e. a market) then you"re not going to be able to support yourself doing it. It will still be a "hobby".
J. It still makes sense, however, to start a business that is based on things you know and are good at. You just can"t stop there. It is also possible to start a business based on something you know nothing about. In this case, however, you probably should try and learn as much as you can before you get in too deeply. Or, consider buying a franchise (特许经营权) that offers training, or an existing business from someone you can pump for information. You can also try working in the industry for a few months to pick up information. You may be surprised at how much you can learn even in low level positions.
Finding business ideas that fit your talents
K. The Internet is full of web sites that list page after page of business ideas. We don"t list those ideas here, but have provided links to some sites that do on our Links page. What we want to do is to help you discover and evaluate the ideas that appeal to you and best fit you as an individual.
L. Any list of business ideas you find will basically boil down to three types of businesses. Those business types are manufactured products that you build and sell yourself, distributed products or services that you buy wholesale and then resell at a higher price, and services that you provide.
M. For those three business types, there are typically four possible strategies. The strategies you might use include inventing a completely new product for a completely new market, inventing a completely new product for an existing market, improving on an existing product and selling it to the existing market, and selling an existing product to a completely new market.
N. Coming up with an idea for any of these areas requires some observation skills and creative thought. Start with the things you know about and enjoy and look for ways to make improvements, or sell them to new people. Be observant everywhere you go. Look at how existing businesses operate and make note of the problems you see. Can you come up with a way to eliminate those problems Can you see a way to improve the service, product or marketability of it Do you see trends in the market such as larger retired populations Are there special products or services that that increasing market will need
O. Brainstorm with friends, write everything down, and study your list often. Make notes as you think of them. Ideas multiply into lots of new ideas. Evaluate these ideas based on what you like and what you know about. Once you"ve narrowed the list down to the finalists, read on to find out how to evaluate those ideas.
Other deciding factors
P. There are few more things to consider when thinking about starting your own business. They include the followings: Your own level of commitment—Consider the extent or length to which you would go to make your business work (i. e. travel, commuting, relocating, etc.) Your family"s support and approval of your idea—Having the support of your family is very important to the success of your business, as well as the stress levels you endure in working to making it happen. Make sure you have the support you"ll need both emotionally and from a workload standpoint. Zoning restrictions for the location you are looking at—Make sure you know the restrictions on the types of businesses that can occupy a space (particularly if you are operating your business out of your home). Your town planning office or City Hall can provide that information. Your willingness to seek outside help if you need it—Don"t hesitate to get professional help for your business. There are many resources that can provide you with great ideas and information that can help manage more efficiently and perhaps even find that " edge (优势)". The compatibility of the business with your lifestyle—If you"re a night person and hate mornings then you probably don"t want to open a doughnut shop. Make sure your business idea fits the schedule you work best in.
(选自The Washington Post)If one works harder, he will benefit a great deal from setting up his business.

答案： G。[解析] G段主要介绍创业应具备的素质——决心、热情、活力，除此之外还有勤奋以及必胜信念。题干中的benefit a...

填空题

Business Ideas
A. What makes a business idea good Have you ever thought you had a great idea for a business but didn"t do anything about it, only to find out that, a short while later, someone else did How do you know ff you"ll be able to make the business work
B. If you think you want to start your own business you have to first eliminate any doubts you may have about yourself and your abilities. That means that you have to first identify your own strengths and decide if you"re the type of person who can build a business and make it a success. Once you have determined that, then you need a good—no, make that a great—idea for a business.
Do you have what it takes
C. There are some basic skills that you, as a potential business owner, should have. If you don"t have them then you need to at least have a friend or family member who does or be willing to pay an outside service or consultant to do these things for you.
D. Financial management and accounting—If you don"t have the skills now, you either need to take the time to learn, or have someone else you can depend on to handle this side of the business for you.
E. Marketing—You have to be able to sell yourself or your business. If people don"t know about you then you won"t get any business, and if you don"t have any business then, technically, you aren"t really in business. So, marketing is a very important part of your skill set. Fortunately, it is also an easy skill to farm out to experts.
F. Management skills—You must have the management skills and organizational skills in order to run your business. If you have no management experience at least start reading management books of all types that would apply to your business.
G. Determination, enthusiasm, energy—No one ever said being your own boss was easy! In fact, you"ll probably work harder than ever—you"ll just get to reap more of the benefits. You have to have the energy to make your business succeed. If you have any doubts then maybe you should rethink the idea. If you read the success stories behind many businesses, you"ll see the recurring theme that the business owner had no doubts that he or she would succeed, or that the thought of failing never entered their minds.
Identifying your talents
H. For some, coming up with the business idea is the easy part. They simply turn a hobby, or something else that they love doing, into a business. In some cases, this works great. In other cases, it doesn"t work so great. Why the difference Because you can"t just try on the pants when you want to buy the whole suit. In other words, there are a lot of different things to consider when you"re trying to come up with an idea for a business that will fit you.
I. Those people that have made a go of it by converting their hobby into a business were lucky in that there was a market for their business in the first place. It doesn"t matter how skilled you are and how much you love building those miniature replicas (复制品) of Star Wars (tm) Millennium Falcons inside authentic 1940"s 6-ounce Coca-Cola(tm) bottles, if there aren"t people who want to buy them (i. e. a market) then you"re not going to be able to support yourself doing it. It will still be a "hobby".
J. It still makes sense, however, to start a business that is based on things you know and are good at. You just can"t stop there. It is also possible to start a business based on something you know nothing about. In this case, however, you probably should try and learn as much as you can before you get in too deeply. Or, consider buying a franchise (特许经营权) that offers training, or an existing business from someone you can pump for information. You can also try working in the industry for a few months to pick up information. You may be surprised at how much you can learn even in low level positions.
Finding business ideas that fit your talents
K. The Internet is full of web sites that list page after page of business ideas. We don"t list those ideas here, but have provided links to some sites that do on our Links page. What we want to do is to help you discover and evaluate the ideas that appeal to you and best fit you as an individual.
L. Any list of business ideas you find will basically boil down to three types of businesses. Those business types are manufactured products that you build and sell yourself, distributed products or services that you buy wholesale and then resell at a higher price, and services that you provide.
M. For those three business types, there are typically four possible strategies. The strategies you might use include inventing a completely new product for a completely new market, inventing a completely new product for an existing market, improving on an existing product and selling it to the existing market, and selling an existing product to a completely new market.
N. Coming up with an idea for any of these areas requires some observation skills and creative thought. Start with the things you know about and enjoy and look for ways to make improvements, or sell them to new people. Be observant everywhere you go. Look at how existing businesses operate and make note of the problems you see. Can you come up with a way to eliminate those problems Can you see a way to improve the service, product or marketability of it Do you see trends in the market such as larger retired populations Are there special products or services that that increasing market will need
O. Brainstorm with friends, write everything down, and study your list often. Make notes as you think of them. Ideas multiply into lots of new ideas. Evaluate these ideas based on what you like and what you know about. Once you"ve narrowed the list down to the finalists, read on to find out how to evaluate those ideas.
Other deciding factors
P. There are few more things to consider when thinking about starting your own business. They include the followings: Your own level of commitment—Consider the extent or length to which you would go to make your business work (i. e. travel, commuting, relocating, etc.) Your family"s support and approval of your idea—Having the support of your family is very important to the success of your business, as well as the stress levels you endure in working to making it happen. Make sure you have the support you"ll need both emotionally and from a workload standpoint. Zoning restrictions for the location you are looking at—Make sure you know the restrictions on the types of businesses that can occupy a space (particularly if you are operating your business out of your home). Your town planning office or City Hall can provide that information. Your willingness to seek outside help if you need it—Don"t hesitate to get professional help for your business. There are many resources that can provide you with great ideas and information that can help manage more efficiently and perhaps even find that " edge (优势)". The compatibility of the business with your lifestyle—If you"re a night person and hate mornings then you probably don"t want to open a doughnut shop. Make sure your business idea fits the schedule you work best in.
(选自The Washington Post)Many new" ideas originate from existing ideas.

答案： O。[解析] O段中作者介绍了商业想法的具体方面，比如和朋友探讨问题，记录下相关详情，养成记笔记的习惯等。题干是对原文中...

填空题

Business Ideas
A. What makes a business idea good Have you ever thought you had a great idea for a business but didn"t do anything about it, only to find out that, a short while later, someone else did How do you know ff you"ll be able to make the business work
B. If you think you want to start your own business you have to first eliminate any doubts you may have about yourself and your abilities. That means that you have to first identify your own strengths and decide if you"re the type of person who can build a business and make it a success. Once you have determined that, then you need a good—no, make that a great—idea for a business.
Do you have what it takes
C. There are some basic skills that you, as a potential business owner, should have. If you don"t have them then you need to at least have a friend or family member who does or be willing to pay an outside service or consultant to do these things for you.
D. Financial management and accounting—If you don"t have the skills now, you either need to take the time to learn, or have someone else you can depend on to handle this side of the business for you.
E. Marketing—You have to be able to sell yourself or your business. If people don"t know about you then you won"t get any business, and if you don"t have any business then, technically, you aren"t really in business. So, marketing is a very important part of your skill set. Fortunately, it is also an easy skill to farm out to experts.
F. Management skills—You must have the management skills and organizational skills in order to run your business. If you have no management experience at least start reading management books of all types that would apply to your business.
G. Determination, enthusiasm, energy—No one ever said being your own boss was easy! In fact, you"ll probably work harder than ever—you"ll just get to reap more of the benefits. You have to have the energy to make your business succeed. If you have any doubts then maybe you should rethink the idea. If you read the success stories behind many businesses, you"ll see the recurring theme that the business owner had no doubts that he or she would succeed, or that the thought of failing never entered their minds.
Identifying your talents
H. For some, coming up with the business idea is the easy part. They simply turn a hobby, or something else that they love doing, into a business. In some cases, this works great. In other cases, it doesn"t work so great. Why the difference Because you can"t just try on the pants when you want to buy the whole suit. In other words, there are a lot of different things to consider when you"re trying to come up with an idea for a business that will fit you.
I. Those people that have made a go of it by converting their hobby into a business were lucky in that there was a market for their business in the first place. It doesn"t matter how skilled you are and how much you love building those miniature replicas (复制品) of Star Wars (tm) Millennium Falcons inside authentic 1940"s 6-ounce Coca-Cola(tm) bottles, if there aren"t people who want to buy them (i. e. a market) then you"re not going to be able to support yourself doing it. It will still be a "hobby".
J. It still makes sense, however, to start a business that is based on things you know and are good at. You just can"t stop there. It is also possible to start a business based on something you know nothing about. In this case, however, you probably should try and learn as much as you can before you get in too deeply. Or, consider buying a franchise (特许经营权) that offers training, or an existing business from someone you can pump for information. You can also try working in the industry for a few months to pick up information. You may be surprised at how much you can learn even in low level positions.
Finding business ideas that fit your talents
K. The Internet is full of web sites that list page after page of business ideas. We don"t list those ideas here, but have provided links to some sites that do on our Links page. What we want to do is to help you discover and evaluate the ideas that appeal to you and best fit you as an individual.
L. Any list of business ideas you find will basically boil down to three types of businesses. Those business types are manufactured products that you build and sell yourself, distributed products or services that you buy wholesale and then resell at a higher price, and services that you provide.
M. For those three business types, there are typically four possible strategies. The strategies you might use include inventing a completely new product for a completely new market, inventing a completely new product for an existing market, improving on an existing product and selling it to the existing market, and selling an existing product to a completely new market.
N. Coming up with an idea for any of these areas requires some observation skills and creative thought. Start with the things you know about and enjoy and look for ways to make improvements, or sell them to new people. Be observant everywhere you go. Look at how existing businesses operate and make note of the problems you see. Can you come up with a way to eliminate those problems Can you see a way to improve the service, product or marketability of it Do you see trends in the market such as larger retired populations Are there special products or services that that increasing market will need
O. Brainstorm with friends, write everything down, and study your list often. Make notes as you think of them. Ideas multiply into lots of new ideas. Evaluate these ideas based on what you like and what you know about. Once you"ve narrowed the list down to the finalists, read on to find out how to evaluate those ideas.
Other deciding factors
P. There are few more things to consider when thinking about starting your own business. They include the followings: Your own level of commitment—Consider the extent or length to which you would go to make your business work (i. e. travel, commuting, relocating, etc.) Your family"s support and approval of your idea—Having the support of your family is very important to the success of your business, as well as the stress levels you endure in working to making it happen. Make sure you have the support you"ll need both emotionally and from a workload standpoint. Zoning restrictions for the location you are looking at—Make sure you know the restrictions on the types of businesses that can occupy a space (particularly if you are operating your business out of your home). Your town planning office or City Hall can provide that information. Your willingness to seek outside help if you need it—Don"t hesitate to get professional help for your business. There are many resources that can provide you with great ideas and information that can help manage more efficiently and perhaps even find that " edge (优势)". The compatibility of the business with your lifestyle—If you"re a night person and hate mornings then you probably don"t want to open a doughnut shop. Make sure your business idea fits the schedule you work best in.
(选自The Washington Post)The person who wants to set up his business should first know what his advantages are.

答案： B。[解析] B段主要讲述了创立企业的人员应该首先摈弃对自己能力的疑虑，建立自信，并了解自己的优势所在和性格特点，最终获...

填空题

Business Ideas
A. What makes a business idea good Have you ever thought you had a great idea for a business but didn"t do anything about it, only to find out that, a short while later, someone else did How do you know ff you"ll be able to make the business work
B. If you think you want to start your own business you have to first eliminate any doubts you may have about yourself and your abilities. That means that you have to first identify your own strengths and decide if you"re the type of person who can build a business and make it a success. Once you have determined that, then you need a good—no, make that a great—idea for a business.
Do you have what it takes
C. There are some basic skills that you, as a potential business owner, should have. If you don"t have them then you need to at least have a friend or family member who does or be willing to pay an outside service or consultant to do these things for you.
D. Financial management and accounting—If you don"t have the skills now, you either need to take the time to learn, or have someone else you can depend on to handle this side of the business for you.
E. Marketing—You have to be able to sell yourself or your business. If people don"t know about you then you won"t get any business, and if you don"t have any business then, technically, you aren"t really in business. So, marketing is a very important part of your skill set. Fortunately, it is also an easy skill to farm out to experts.
F. Management skills—You must have the management skills and organizational skills in order to run your business. If you have no management experience at least start reading management books of all types that would apply to your business.
G. Determination, enthusiasm, energy—No one ever said being your own boss was easy! In fact, you"ll probably work harder than ever—you"ll just get to reap more of the benefits. You have to have the energy to make your business succeed. If you have any doubts then maybe you should rethink the idea. If you read the success stories behind many businesses, you"ll see the recurring theme that the business owner had no doubts that he or she would succeed, or that the thought of failing never entered their minds.
Identifying your talents
H. For some, coming up with the business idea is the easy part. They simply turn a hobby, or something else that they love doing, into a business. In some cases, this works great. In other cases, it doesn"t work so great. Why the difference Because you can"t just try on the pants when you want to buy the whole suit. In other words, there are a lot of different things to consider when you"re trying to come up with an idea for a business that will fit you.
I. Those people that have made a go of it by converting their hobby into a business were lucky in that there was a market for their business in the first place. It doesn"t matter how skilled you are and how much you love building those miniature replicas (复制品) of Star Wars (tm) Millennium Falcons inside authentic 1940"s 6-ounce Coca-Cola(tm) bottles, if there aren"t people who want to buy them (i. e. a market) then you"re not going to be able to support yourself doing it. It will still be a "hobby".
J. It still makes sense, however, to start a business that is based on things you know and are good at. You just can"t stop there. It is also possible to start a business based on something you know nothing about. In this case, however, you probably should try and learn as much as you can before you get in too deeply. Or, consider buying a franchise (特许经营权) that offers training, or an existing business from someone you can pump for information. You can also try working in the industry for a few months to pick up information. You may be surprised at how much you can learn even in low level positions.
Finding business ideas that fit your talents
K. The Internet is full of web sites that list page after page of business ideas. We don"t list those ideas here, but have provided links to some sites that do on our Links page. What we want to do is to help you discover and evaluate the ideas that appeal to you and best fit you as an individual.
L. Any list of business ideas you find will basically boil down to three types of businesses. Those business types are manufactured products that you build and sell yourself, distributed products or services that you buy wholesale and then resell at a higher price, and services that you provide.
M. For those three business types, there are typically four possible strategies. The strategies you might use include inventing a completely new product for a completely new market, inventing a completely new product for an existing market, improving on an existing product and selling it to the existing market, and selling an existing product to a completely new market.
N. Coming up with an idea for any of these areas requires some observation skills and creative thought. Start with the things you know about and enjoy and look for ways to make improvements, or sell them to new people. Be observant everywhere you go. Look at how existing businesses operate and make note of the problems you see. Can you come up with a way to eliminate those problems Can you see a way to improve the service, product or marketability of it Do you see trends in the market such as larger retired populations Are there special products or services that that increasing market will need
O. Brainstorm with friends, write everything down, and study your list often. Make notes as you think of them. Ideas multiply into lots of new ideas. Evaluate these ideas based on what you like and what you know about. Once you"ve narrowed the list down to the finalists, read on to find out how to evaluate those ideas.
Other deciding factors
P. There are few more things to consider when thinking about starting your own business. They include the followings: Your own level of commitment—Consider the extent or length to which you would go to make your business work (i. e. travel, commuting, relocating, etc.) Your family"s support and approval of your idea—Having the support of your family is very important to the success of your business, as well as the stress levels you endure in working to making it happen. Make sure you have the support you"ll need both emotionally and from a workload standpoint. Zoning restrictions for the location you are looking at—Make sure you know the restrictions on the types of businesses that can occupy a space (particularly if you are operating your business out of your home). Your town planning office or City Hall can provide that information. Your willingness to seek outside help if you need it—Don"t hesitate to get professional help for your business. There are many resources that can provide you with great ideas and information that can help manage more efficiently and perhaps even find that " edge (优势)". The compatibility of the business with your lifestyle—If you"re a night person and hate mornings then you probably don"t want to open a doughnut shop. Make sure your business idea fits the schedule you work best in.
(选自The Washington Post)It is sensible to start your business if you are familiar with or good at what you do.

答案： J。[解析] J段指出创立企业时掌握信息、熟悉相关环节的重要性。题干中的It is sensible to start ...

填空题

Business Ideas
A. What makes a business idea good Have you ever thought you had a great idea for a business but didn"t do anything about it, only to find out that, a short while later, someone else did How do you know ff you"ll be able to make the business work
B. If you think you want to start your own business you have to first eliminate any doubts you may have about yourself and your abilities. That means that you have to first identify your own strengths and decide if you"re the type of person who can build a business and make it a success. Once you have determined that, then you need a good—no, make that a great—idea for a business.
Do you have what it takes
C. There are some basic skills that you, as a potential business owner, should have. If you don"t have them then you need to at least have a friend or family member who does or be willing to pay an outside service or consultant to do these things for you.
D. Financial management and accounting—If you don"t have the skills now, you either need to take the time to learn, or have someone else you can depend on to handle this side of the business for you.
E. Marketing—You have to be able to sell yourself or your business. If people don"t know about you then you won"t get any business, and if you don"t have any business then, technically, you aren"t really in business. So, marketing is a very important part of your skill set. Fortunately, it is also an easy skill to farm out to experts.
F. Management skills—You must have the management skills and organizational skills in order to run your business. If you have no management experience at least start reading management books of all types that would apply to your business.
G. Determination, enthusiasm, energy—No one ever said being your own boss was easy! In fact, you"ll probably work harder than ever—you"ll just get to reap more of the benefits. You have to have the energy to make your business succeed. If you have any doubts then maybe you should rethink the idea. If you read the success stories behind many businesses, you"ll see the recurring theme that the business owner had no doubts that he or she would succeed, or that the thought of failing never entered their minds.
Identifying your talents
H. For some, coming up with the business idea is the easy part. They simply turn a hobby, or something else that they love doing, into a business. In some cases, this works great. In other cases, it doesn"t work so great. Why the difference Because you can"t just try on the pants when you want to buy the whole suit. In other words, there are a lot of different things to consider when you"re trying to come up with an idea for a business that will fit you.
I. Those people that have made a go of it by converting their hobby into a business were lucky in that there was a market for their business in the first place. It doesn"t matter how skilled you are and how much you love building those miniature replicas (复制品) of Star Wars (tm) Millennium Falcons inside authentic 1940"s 6-ounce Coca-Cola(tm) bottles, if there aren"t people who want to buy them (i. e. a market) then you"re not going to be able to support yourself doing it. It will still be a "hobby".
J. It still makes sense, however, to start a business that is based on things you know and are good at. You just can"t stop there. It is also possible to start a business based on something you know nothing about. In this case, however, you probably should try and learn as much as you can before you get in too deeply. Or, consider buying a franchise (特许经营权) that offers training, or an existing business from someone you can pump for information. You can also try working in the industry for a few months to pick up information. You may be surprised at how much you can learn even in low level positions.
Finding business ideas that fit your talents
K. The Internet is full of web sites that list page after page of business ideas. We don"t list those ideas here, but have provided links to some sites that do on our Links page. What we want to do is to help you discover and evaluate the ideas that appeal to you and best fit you as an individual.
L. Any list of business ideas you find will basically boil down to three types of businesses. Those business types are manufactured products that you build and sell yourself, distributed products or services that you buy wholesale and then resell at a higher price, and services that you provide.
M. For those three business types, there are typically four possible strategies. The strategies you might use include inventing a completely new product for a completely new market, inventing a completely new product for an existing market, improving on an existing product and selling it to the existing market, and selling an existing product to a completely new market.
N. Coming up with an idea for any of these areas requires some observation skills and creative thought. Start with the things you know about and enjoy and look for ways to make improvements, or sell them to new people. Be observant everywhere you go. Look at how existing businesses operate and make note of the problems you see. Can you come up with a way to eliminate those problems Can you see a way to improve the service, product or marketability of it Do you see trends in the market such as larger retired populations Are there special products or services that that increasing market will need
O. Brainstorm with friends, write everything down, and study your list often. Make notes as you think of them. Ideas multiply into lots of new ideas. Evaluate these ideas based on what you like and what you know about. Once you"ve narrowed the list down to the finalists, read on to find out how to evaluate those ideas.
Other deciding factors
P. There are few more things to consider when thinking about starting your own business. They include the followings: Your own level of commitment—Consider the extent or length to which you would go to make your business work (i. e. travel, commuting, relocating, etc.) Your family"s support and approval of your idea—Having the support of your family is very important to the success of your business, as well as the stress levels you endure in working to making it happen. Make sure you have the support you"ll need both emotionally and from a workload standpoint. Zoning restrictions for the location you are looking at—Make sure you know the restrictions on the types of businesses that can occupy a space (particularly if you are operating your business out of your home). Your town planning office or City Hall can provide that information. Your willingness to seek outside help if you need it—Don"t hesitate to get professional help for your business. There are many resources that can provide you with great ideas and information that can help manage more efficiently and perhaps even find that " edge (优势)". The compatibility of the business with your lifestyle—If you"re a night person and hate mornings then you probably don"t want to open a doughnut shop. Make sure your business idea fits the schedule you work best in.
(选自The Washington Post)For the person who wants to run his business, he should be good at management and organization.

答案： F。[解析] F段指出管理技能是开办公司的必备要素，如果缺乏这样的技能，你至少要阅读各种类型的管理书籍以便用于管理公司。...

填空题

Business Ideas
A. What makes a business idea good Have you ever thought you had a great idea for a business but didn"t do anything about it, only to find out that, a short while later, someone else did How do you know ff you"ll be able to make the business work
B. If you think you want to start your own business you have to first eliminate any doubts you may have about yourself and your abilities. That means that you have to first identify your own strengths and decide if you"re the type of person who can build a business and make it a success. Once you have determined that, then you need a good—no, make that a great—idea for a business.
Do you have what it takes
C. There are some basic skills that you, as a potential business owner, should have. If you don"t have them then you need to at least have a friend or family member who does or be willing to pay an outside service or consultant to do these things for you.
D. Financial management and accounting—If you don"t have the skills now, you either need to take the time to learn, or have someone else you can depend on to handle this side of the business for you.
E. Marketing—You have to be able to sell yourself or your business. If people don"t know about you then you won"t get any business, and if you don"t have any business then, technically, you aren"t really in business. So, marketing is a very important part of your skill set. Fortunately, it is also an easy skill to farm out to experts.
F. Management skills—You must have the management skills and organizational skills in order to run your business. If you have no management experience at least start reading management books of all types that would apply to your business.
G. Determination, enthusiasm, energy—No one ever said being your own boss was easy! In fact, you"ll probably work harder than ever—you"ll just get to reap more of the benefits. You have to have the energy to make your business succeed. If you have any doubts then maybe you should rethink the idea. If you read the success stories behind many businesses, you"ll see the recurring theme that the business owner had no doubts that he or she would succeed, or that the thought of failing never entered their minds.
Identifying your talents
H. For some, coming up with the business idea is the easy part. They simply turn a hobby, or something else that they love doing, into a business. In some cases, this works great. In other cases, it doesn"t work so great. Why the difference Because you can"t just try on the pants when you want to buy the whole suit. In other words, there are a lot of different things to consider when you"re trying to come up with an idea for a business that will fit you.
I. Those people that have made a go of it by converting their hobby into a business were lucky in that there was a market for their business in the first place. It doesn"t matter how skilled you are and how much you love building those miniature replicas (复制品) of Star Wars (tm) Millennium Falcons inside authentic 1940"s 6-ounce Coca-Cola(tm) bottles, if there aren"t people who want to buy them (i. e. a market) then you"re not going to be able to support yourself doing it. It will still be a "hobby".
J. It still makes sense, however, to start a business that is based on things you know and are good at. You just can"t stop there. It is also possible to start a business based on something you know nothing about. In this case, however, you probably should try and learn as much as you can before you get in too deeply. Or, consider buying a franchise (特许经营权) that offers training, or an existing business from someone you can pump for information. You can also try working in the industry for a few months to pick up information. You may be surprised at how much you can learn even in low level positions.
Finding business ideas that fit your talents
K. The Internet is full of web sites that list page after page of business ideas. We don"t list those ideas here, but have provided links to some sites that do on our Links page. What we want to do is to help you discover and evaluate the ideas that appeal to you and best fit you as an individual.
L. Any list of business ideas you find will basically boil down to three types of businesses. Those business types are manufactured products that you build and sell yourself, distributed products or services that you buy wholesale and then resell at a higher price, and services that you provide.
M. For those three business types, there are typically four possible strategies. The strategies you might use include inventing a completely new product for a completely new market, inventing a completely new product for an existing market, improving on an existing product and selling it to the existing market, and selling an existing product to a completely new market.
N. Coming up with an idea for any of these areas requires some observation skills and creative thought. Start with the things you know about and enjoy and look for ways to make improvements, or sell them to new people. Be observant everywhere you go. Look at how existing businesses operate and make note of the problems you see. Can you come up with a way to eliminate those problems Can you see a way to improve the service, product or marketability of it Do you see trends in the market such as larger retired populations Are there special products or services that that increasing market will need
O. Brainstorm with friends, write everything down, and study your list often. Make notes as you think of them. Ideas multiply into lots of new ideas. Evaluate these ideas based on what you like and what you know about. Once you"ve narrowed the list down to the finalists, read on to find out how to evaluate those ideas.
Other deciding factors
P. There are few more things to consider when thinking about starting your own business. They include the followings: Your own level of commitment—Consider the extent or length to which you would go to make your business work (i. e. travel, commuting, relocating, etc.) Your family"s support and approval of your idea—Having the support of your family is very important to the success of your business, as well as the stress levels you endure in working to making it happen. Make sure you have the support you"ll need both emotionally and from a workload standpoint. Zoning restrictions for the location you are looking at—Make sure you know the restrictions on the types of businesses that can occupy a space (particularly if you are operating your business out of your home). Your town planning office or City Hall can provide that information. Your willingness to seek outside help if you need it—Don"t hesitate to get professional help for your business. There are many resources that can provide you with great ideas and information that can help manage more efficiently and perhaps even find that " edge (优势)". The compatibility of the business with your lifestyle—If you"re a night person and hate mornings then you probably don"t want to open a doughnut shop. Make sure your business idea fits the schedule you work best in.
(选自The Washington Post)As for the financial management and accounting, one could ask someone else he trusts for help.

答案： D。[解析] D段讲述了在财务管理和财会方面，创办企业的人可以依靠信得过的人进行管理。题干中的ask someone e...

填空题

Business Ideas
A. What makes a business idea good Have you ever thought you had a great idea for a business but didn"t do anything about it, only to find out that, a short while later, someone else did How do you know ff you"ll be able to make the business work
B. If you think you want to start your own business you have to first eliminate any doubts you may have about yourself and your abilities. That means that you have to first identify your own strengths and decide if you"re the type of person who can build a business and make it a success. Once you have determined that, then you need a good—no, make that a great—idea for a business.
Do you have what it takes
C. There are some basic skills that you, as a potential business owner, should have. If you don"t have them then you need to at least have a friend or family member who does or be willing to pay an outside service or consultant to do these things for you.
D. Financial management and accounting—If you don"t have the skills now, you either need to take the time to learn, or have someone else you can depend on to handle this side of the business for you.
E. Marketing—You have to be able to sell yourself or your business. If people don"t know about you then you won"t get any business, and if you don"t have any business then, technically, you aren"t really in business. So, marketing is a very important part of your skill set. Fortunately, it is also an easy skill to farm out to experts.
F. Management skills—You must have the management skills and organizational skills in order to run your business. If you have no management experience at least start reading management books of all types that would apply to your business.
G. Determination, enthusiasm, energy—No one ever said being your own boss was easy! In fact, you"ll probably work harder than ever—you"ll just get to reap more of the benefits. You have to have the energy to make your business succeed. If you have any doubts then maybe you should rethink the idea. If you read the success stories behind many businesses, you"ll see the recurring theme that the business owner had no doubts that he or she would succeed, or that the thought of failing never entered their minds.
Identifying your talents
H. For some, coming up with the business idea is the easy part. They simply turn a hobby, or something else that they love doing, into a business. In some cases, this works great. In other cases, it doesn"t work so great. Why the difference Because you can"t just try on the pants when you want to buy the whole suit. In other words, there are a lot of different things to consider when you"re trying to come up with an idea for a business that will fit you.
I. Those people that have made a go of it by converting their hobby into a business were lucky in that there was a market for their business in the first place. It doesn"t matter how skilled you are and how much you love building those miniature replicas (复制品) of Star Wars (tm) Millennium Falcons inside authentic 1940"s 6-ounce Coca-Cola(tm) bottles, if there aren"t people who want to buy them (i. e. a market) then you"re not going to be able to support yourself doing it. It will still be a "hobby".
J. It still makes sense, however, to start a business that is based on things you know and are good at. You just can"t stop there. It is also possible to start a business based on something you know nothing about. In this case, however, you probably should try and learn as much as you can before you get in too deeply. Or, consider buying a franchise (特许经营权) that offers training, or an existing business from someone you can pump for information. You can also try working in the industry for a few months to pick up information. You may be surprised at how much you can learn even in low level positions.
Finding business ideas that fit your talents
K. The Internet is full of web sites that list page after page of business ideas. We don"t list those ideas here, but have provided links to some sites that do on our Links page. What we want to do is to help you discover and evaluate the ideas that appeal to you and best fit you as an individual.
L. Any list of business ideas you find will basically boil down to three types of businesses. Those business types are manufactured products that you build and sell yourself, distributed products or services that you buy wholesale and then resell at a higher price, and services that you provide.
M. For those three business types, there are typically four possible strategies. The strategies you might use include inventing a completely new product for a completely new market, inventing a completely new product for an existing market, improving on an existing product and selling it to the existing market, and selling an existing product to a completely new market.
N. Coming up with an idea for any of these areas requires some observation skills and creative thought. Start with the things you know about and enjoy and look for ways to make improvements, or sell them to new people. Be observant everywhere you go. Look at how existing businesses operate and make note of the problems you see. Can you come up with a way to eliminate those problems Can you see a way to improve the service, product or marketability of it Do you see trends in the market such as larger retired populations Are there special products or services that that increasing market will need
O. Brainstorm with friends, write everything down, and study your list often. Make notes as you think of them. Ideas multiply into lots of new ideas. Evaluate these ideas based on what you like and what you know about. Once you"ve narrowed the list down to the finalists, read on to find out how to evaluate those ideas.
Other deciding factors
P. There are few more things to consider when thinking about starting your own business. They include the followings: Your own level of commitment—Consider the extent or length to which you would go to make your business work (i. e. travel, commuting, relocating, etc.) Your family"s support and approval of your idea—Having the support of your family is very important to the success of your business, as well as the stress levels you endure in working to making it happen. Make sure you have the support you"ll need both emotionally and from a workload standpoint. Zoning restrictions for the location you are looking at—Make sure you know the restrictions on the types of businesses that can occupy a space (particularly if you are operating your business out of your home). Your town planning office or City Hall can provide that information. Your willingness to seek outside help if you need it—Don"t hesitate to get professional help for your business. There are many resources that can provide you with great ideas and information that can help manage more efficiently and perhaps even find that " edge (优势)". The compatibility of the business with your lifestyle—If you"re a night person and hate mornings then you probably don"t want to open a doughnut shop. Make sure your business idea fits the schedule you work best in.
(选自The Washington Post)The help from your family is of great value in gaining success in business.

答案： P。[解析] P段指出创办企业者事业成功的其他因素(诸如敬业程度、家人的支持等)。题干中的is of great val...

填空题

Business Ideas
A. What makes a business idea good Have you ever thought you had a great idea for a business but didn"t do anything about it, only to find out that, a short while later, someone else did How do you know ff you"ll be able to make the business work
B. If you think you want to start your own business you have to first eliminate any doubts you may have about yourself and your abilities. That means that you have to first identify your own strengths and decide if you"re the type of person who can build a business and make it a success. Once you have determined that, then you need a good—no, make that a great—idea for a business.
Do you have what it takes
C. There are some basic skills that you, as a potential business owner, should have. If you don"t have them then you need to at least have a friend or family member who does or be willing to pay an outside service or consultant to do these things for you.
D. Financial management and accounting—If you don"t have the skills now, you either need to take the time to learn, or have someone else you can depend on to handle this side of the business for you.
E. Marketing—You have to be able to sell yourself or your business. If people don"t know about you then you won"t get any business, and if you don"t have any business then, technically, you aren"t really in business. So, marketing is a very important part of your skill set. Fortunately, it is also an easy skill to farm out to experts.
F. Management skills—You must have the management skills and organizational skills in order to run your business. If you have no management experience at least start reading management books of all types that would apply to your business.
G. Determination, enthusiasm, energy—No one ever said being your own boss was easy! In fact, you"ll probably work harder than ever—you"ll just get to reap more of the benefits. You have to have the energy to make your business succeed. If you have any doubts then maybe you should rethink the idea. If you read the success stories behind many businesses, you"ll see the recurring theme that the business owner had no doubts that he or she would succeed, or that the thought of failing never entered their minds.
Identifying your talents
H. For some, coming up with the business idea is the easy part. They simply turn a hobby, or something else that they love doing, into a business. In some cases, this works great. In other cases, it doesn"t work so great. Why the difference Because you can"t just try on the pants when you want to buy the whole suit. In other words, there are a lot of different things to consider when you"re trying to come up with an idea for a business that will fit you.
I. Those people that have made a go of it by converting their hobby into a business were lucky in that there was a market for their business in the first place. It doesn"t matter how skilled you are and how much you love building those miniature replicas (复制品) of Star Wars (tm) Millennium Falcons inside authentic 1940"s 6-ounce Coca-Cola(tm) bottles, if there aren"t people who want to buy them (i. e. a market) then you"re not going to be able to support yourself doing it. It will still be a "hobby".
J. It still makes sense, however, to start a business that is based on things you know and are good at. You just can"t stop there. It is also possible to start a business based on something you know nothing about. In this case, however, you probably should try and learn as much as you can before you get in too deeply. Or, consider buying a franchise (特许经营权) that offers training, or an existing business from someone you can pump for information. You can also try working in the industry for a few months to pick up information. You may be surprised at how much you can learn even in low level positions.
Finding business ideas that fit your talents
K. The Internet is full of web sites that list page after page of business ideas. We don"t list those ideas here, but have provided links to some sites that do on our Links page. What we want to do is to help you discover and evaluate the ideas that appeal to you and best fit you as an individual.
L. Any list of business ideas you find will basically boil down to three types of businesses. Those business types are manufactured products that you build and sell yourself, distributed products or services that you buy wholesale and then resell at a higher price, and services that you provide.
M. For those three business types, there are typically four possible strategies. The strategies you might use include inventing a completely new product for a completely new market, inventing a completely new product for an existing market, improving on an existing product and selling it to the existing market, and selling an existing product to a completely new market.
N. Coming up with an idea for any of these areas requires some observation skills and creative thought. Start with the things you know about and enjoy and look for ways to make improvements, or sell them to new people. Be observant everywhere you go. Look at how existing businesses operate and make note of the problems you see. Can you come up with a way to eliminate those problems Can you see a way to improve the service, product or marketability of it Do you see trends in the market such as larger retired populations Are there special products or services that that increasing market will need
O. Brainstorm with friends, write everything down, and study your list often. Make notes as you think of them. Ideas multiply into lots of new ideas. Evaluate these ideas based on what you like and what you know about. Once you"ve narrowed the list down to the finalists, read on to find out how to evaluate those ideas.
Other deciding factors
P. There are few more things to consider when thinking about starting your own business. They include the followings: Your own level of commitment—Consider the extent or length to which you would go to make your business work (i. e. travel, commuting, relocating, etc.) Your family"s support and approval of your idea—Having the support of your family is very important to the success of your business, as well as the stress levels you endure in working to making it happen. Make sure you have the support you"ll need both emotionally and from a workload standpoint. Zoning restrictions for the location you are looking at—Make sure you know the restrictions on the types of businesses that can occupy a space (particularly if you are operating your business out of your home). Your town planning office or City Hall can provide that information. Your willingness to seek outside help if you need it—Don"t hesitate to get professional help for your business. There are many resources that can provide you with great ideas and information that can help manage more efficiently and perhaps even find that " edge (优势)". The compatibility of the business with your lifestyle—If you"re a night person and hate mornings then you probably don"t want to open a doughnut shop. Make sure your business idea fits the schedule you work best in.
(选自The Washington Post)If you are not sure of your idea, you should think about it again.

答案： G。[解析] G段主要介绍创业应具备的五大素质——决心、热情、活力、勤奋和必胜信念。题干中的not sure of yo...