单项选择题  Everyone in the UK seems to agree that recorded crime is decreasing. This is one of the arguments the government is using to justify its savage cuts in police budgets. All we have to do now is to get the police more efficient—working smarter, making better use of IT. Reduction in crime means we don’t need so many police officers.
    This belief is based on a false premise. Recorded crime is declining, but that’s largely due to the fact that crime has moved from the physical world to cyberspace or the Internet: cybercrime is much safer and more appealing. The rewards are much greater, and the risks of being caught and convicted are vanishingly small. So if you’re a rational criminal with a reasonable IQ, why would you bother robbing people, breaking into houses, stealing cars and doing all the other things that old- style crooks do—and that old-style cops are good at catching them doing
    Each senior police officer believes that cybercrime has been at alarming levels but none seems confident that our law enforcement system can deal with it. These views are supported by the experiences of the 5% of UK Internet users who have been the victims of various cybercrime; they report a variety of responses—almost none of them helpful—from the local police forces to whom they turn for help.
    One good reason is that the criminals are hard to identify or turn out to be operating abroad. Other reasons include bureaucratic inertia, lack of technical knowledge and a shortage of resources, which means that cybercrime receives lower priority than other, more urgent, responsibilities. Or simply the fact that officers often don’t take it seriously.
    It’s exceedingly difficult to measure accurately, for a variety of reasons—the spectrum of wrongdoing, the fact that much of it is under-reported and widely distributed, and the high cost that includes not only the actual damage done, but the costs of self-protection and the costs of clearing up after an attack. And then there are the opportunity costs: for example, security software used by online merchants typically rejects 4.3% of orders out of fear of fraud, even though many of those potential orders are in fact genuine.
    The reality we face is that cybercrime is vast and flourishing. But do not expect to hear much about it in the election. What we actually need are more policemen on the net.

单项选择题  The death of Harambe, the endangered lowland gorilla (大猩猩) shot at the Cincinnati Zoo after a 4-year-old crawled through a barrier and fell into his enclosure, was a shocking event. After such a tragedy, it seems someone must be blamed, but fingers are pointed in the wrong direction.
    Many in the animal protection community suggest that Harambe wasn’t a threat to the boy. Gorillas tend not to be aggressive, and if Harambe wanted to hurt the child, he could have done so immediately, not after playing with this curious creature for 10 minutes.
    Did the gorilla care staff do enough to separate Harambe from the child If they could lure the female gorillas away, why not Harambe Some activists are calling the killing of Harambe an act of cowardice by incompetent zoo employees. Others are arguing that the boy’s mother is to blame. How could she let her child fall into a wild-animal enclosure How long did she let her child wander unsupervised before he got through the barriers Some people suggest that she be deemed legally negligent and charged with causing the death of an endangered animal.
    For me, the real question is not who to blame, but why anyone was in a situation in which they had to make a choice between the life of a human child and the life of an endangered teenage gorilla. Keeping wild animals in captivity is detrimental to their health. This tragic choice arose only because we keep animals in zoos. So why have zoos
    One of the reasons often given is that zoos protect endangered wild animals. A few zoos, including the Cincinnati Zoo, do fund conservation efforts that are praiseworthy, but captive animals, especially large mammals born in captivity, like Harambe, cannot be "returned to the wild." These sensitive, smart, long-lived gorillas are destined to remain confined, never to experience the freedom of the wild. They are, at best, symbols meant to represent their wild counterparts. Zoos distort our understanding of these wonderful beings and perpetuate the notion that they are here for our purposes.
    If we really need someone to blame, maybe we should look at our society, which supports these types of institutions of captivity. If zoos were more like shelters where captive animals are treated with respect, free from screaming crowds and external dangers, no one would have had to decide to kill Harambe. Kids could see gorillas in cinemas, where their curiosity could be safely satisfied.

单项选择题  On the surface, shopping online seems environmentally friendly: it eliminates car trips and carbon emissions. But what about the emissions from fleets of delivery vehicles bringing orders to houses Delivery trucks also contribute substantially to the burden of PM2.5, which is associated with many effects on human health.
    Researchers recently conducted a survey of downtown Newark residents’ shopping habits and preferences to calculate the quantity of goods purchased online. They also used the information from delivery companies about the number of trucks on the road and the number of packages per truck to determine how many delivery trucks are required to distribute home shopping purchases. Finally, the researchers used transportation simulation software and data from local transportation authorities to determine the effect of delivery trucks on the transportation network, focusing on an area of downtown Newark that includes a portion of the university’s campus. They conducted similar analyses in 2001, at the dawn of the online shopping era, and again in 2008.
    Curiously, the 2008 data suggested that home shopping in Newark had grown by only 14.8% since 2001. That’s much less than the researchers predicted in their earlier study. It also contrasts with data from other researchers showing that Internet shopping increased six-fold between 2001 and 2011.
    This is an unexpected finding. However, a large proportion of their survey respondents were university students, and the convenience of Internet shopping may appeal more to people who are running a household. Also, the researchers’ latest data are from 2008, which suggests that their study underestimates the effect of home shopping on the transportation network.
    In any case, the researchers found that even though home shopping by residents of Newark grew more slowly than anticipated, traffic in 2008 was worse than they had predicted, for more home shopping purchases increase travel time, traffic delays, and vehicle emissions of the transportation network.
    While some previous studies suggest that e-commerce is associated with lower carbon emissions than traditional retail, other researchers have warned of a "rebound effect," which occurs when gains in efficiency merely stimulate new consumption. Something similar may be going on in Newark, the results suggest.
    "We found that the total number of vehicles miles travelled hasn’t decreased at all with the growth of online shopping," says study leader Arde Faghri. "This suggests that people are using the time saved by Internet shopping to do things like eating out at restaurants, going to the movies, or visiting friends."

单项选择题  Teams have become the basic building—blocks of organizations. Recruitment ads routinely call for "team players". Business schools grade their students in part on their performance in group projects. Office managers knock down walls to encourage team-building. Numerous companies were either in the middle of restructuring or about to embark on it, and restructuring meant putting more emphasis on teams.
    Companies are abandoning functional silos and organizing employees into cross-disciplinary teams that focus on particular products, problems or customers, with more power to run their own affairs and more time to work with each other rather than reporting upwards. A network of teams is replacing the conventional hierarchy.
    However, teams are not always the answer—teams may provide more insight, creativity and knowledge, but teamwork may also lead to confusion, delay and poor decision-making.
    It is noted that teams are hindered by problems of coordination and motivation that erode the benefits of collaboration. High-flyers forced to work in teams may be undervalued and free-riders empowered. Groupthink may be unavoidable. Less than 10% of the supposed members agree on who exactly is on the team. Agreeing on its purpose is harder.
    Profound changes in the workforce are making teams trickier to manage. Teams work best if their members have a strong common culture. This is hard to achieve when, as is now the case in many big firms, a large proportion of staff are temporary contractors. Teamwork improves with time: 73% of the incidents in a civil-aviation database occurred on a crew’s first day of flying together.
    Companies need to think harder about managing teams to keep teams small and focused. A new study finds that the best way to ensure employees are "engaged" is to give them more control over where and how they do their work—which may mean liberating them from having to do everything in collaboration with others.
    However, organizations need to ask themselves whether teams are the best tools for the job. Team-building skills are in short supply: Deloitte reports that only 12% of the executives understand the way people work together in networks and only 21% feel capable of building cross-functional teams. Slackly managed teams can become hotbeds of distraction—employees routinely complain that they can’t get their work done because they are forced to spend too much time in meetings or in noisy offices. Even in the age of open-plan offices and social networks some work is best left to the individual.

单项选择题  Free schools are flourishing in the UK. More than 400 free schools have either opened or been approved to open across England     1    . These schools have been made possible by the hundreds of teachers, parents and charities working in their own time to go through a     2    application process to bring their     3    of a new school to life.     4    these schools proving so popular, parents and groups continue to come forward in significant numbers to set them up. The government’s commitment to expand the program with another new 500 schools is     5    a logical next step.
    Importantly these schools are already making a(n)     6    to the education of thousands of pupils around the country. Over 70% of those inspected have been judged good or outstanding by inspectors, and     7    they are being opened where they are most needed. There are far more free schools in     8    local communities than in wealthy neighborhoods. Obviously free schools can play a role in     9    the current shortage of school places. For free schools to continue to have the biggest impact, they must be allowed to bring in new ideas and challenge existing schools in areas where low     10    have been accepted for far too long.