What does balk mean in the third paragraph-找考题网

单项选择题Which of the following statements is TRUE of Frisen [A] He was encouraged by his parents to do research on stem-cells. [B] He founded a company on drug research in Karolinska. [C] He was considered the best person on stem-cells research. [D] After graduation, he did what he had intended to do.

单项选择题In 1964-1966, major resource of natural gas were discovered in the British sector of ______.

A. North Sea
B. Ireland
C. Wales
D. London

单项选择题According to Wade Henderson, the US Supreme Court [A] once helped maintain apartheid in Michigan. [B] was against racism and racial segregation. [C] states its position on preferential treatment. [D] is going to rule on two new cases of segregation.

All of which raises a question: why are we still wrestling with this stuff Why, more than a quarter of a century after the high court ruled race had a legitimate place in university admissions decisions, are we still fighting over whether race should play a role
One answer is that the very idea of affirmative action--that is, systematically treating members of various groups differently in the pursuit of diversity or social justice--strikes some people as downright immoral. For to believe in affirmative action is to believe in a concept of equality turned upside down. It is to believe that "to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently, " as the idea was expressed by U. S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun.
That argument has never been an easy sell, even when made passionately by President Lyndon B. Johnson during an era in which prejudice was thicker than L. A. smog. Now the argument is infinitely more difficult to make. Even those generally supportive of affirmative action don’t like the connotations it sometimes carries. "No one wants preferential treatment, including African-Americans, "observed Ed Sarpolis, vice president of EPIC-MRA, a Michigan polling firm.
In 2003, the Supreme Court upheld the University of Michigan’s right to use race in the pursuit of "diversity," even as it condemned the way the undergraduate school had chosen to do so. The decision left Jennifer Gratz, the named plaintiff, fuming. "I called Ward Connerly... and I said, ’We need to do something about this’, " recalled Gratz, an animated former cheerleader. They decided that if the Supreme Court wouldn’t give them what they wanted, they would take their case--and their proposition--directly to the people.
Californians disagree about the impact of Connerly’s proposition on their state. But despite some exceedingly grim predictions, the sky did not fall in. Most people went about their lives much as they always had.
In a sane world, the battle in Michigan, and indeed the battle over affirmative action writ large, would offer an opportunity to seriously engage a question the enemies and defenders of affirmative action claim to care about: how do you go about creating a society where all people--not just the lucky few--have the opportunities they deserve It is a question much broader than the debate over affirmative action. But until we begin to move toward an answer, the debate over affirmative action will continue--even if it is something of a sideshow to what should be the main event.

单项选择题What is Edward’s idea about the size of a garden attached to a house().

A. The bigger, the better.
B. The smaller, the better.
C. It depends on the owner’s preference and time.
D. It depends on the size of the house.

单项选择题The assembly line reduced the time to make a magneto by ______ within a year. [A] 20% [B] 38% [C] 65% [D] 75%

A revolutionary manufacturing process made it possible for anyone to own a car. Henry Ford is the man who put the world on wheels.
When it comes to singling out those who have made a difference in all our lives, you cannot overlook Henry Ford. A historian a century from now might well conclude that it was Henry Ford who most influenced all manufacturing everywhere, even to this day, by introducing a new way to make cars—one, strange to say, that originated in slaughter houses.
Back in the early 1900s, slaughter houses used what could have been called a "disassembly line." That is, the carcass of a slain steer or a pig was moved past various meat-cutters, each of whom cut off only a certain portion. Ford reversed this process to see if it would speed up production of a part of an automobile engine called a magneto. Rather than have each worker completely assemble a magneto, one of its elements was placed on a conveyer, and each worker, as it passed, added another component to it, the same one each time. Professor David Hounshell, of The University of Delaware, an expert on industrial development tells what happened: "The previous day, workers carrying out the entire process had averaged one magneto every 20 minutes. But on that day, on the line, the assembly team averaged one every 13 minutes and 10 seconds per person."
Within a year, the time had been reduced to five minutes. In 1913, Ford went all the way. Hooked together by ropes, partially assembled vehicles were towed past workers who completed them one piece at a time. It wasn’t long before Ford was turning out several hundred thousand cars a year, a remarkable achievement then. And so efficient and economical was this new system that he cut the price of his cars in half, to $260, putting them within reach of all those who, up until that time, could not afford them. Soon, auto makers over the world copied him. In fact, he encouraged them to do so by writing a book about all of his innovations, entitled Today and Tomorrow. The Age of the Automobile had arrived. Today, aided by robots and other forms of automation, everything from toasters to perfumes is made on assembly lines.
Edsel Ford, Henry’s great-grandson, and a Ford vice president: “I think that my great-grandfather would just be amazed at how far technology has come."
Many of today’s innovations come from Japan. Norman Bodek, who publishes books about manufacturing processes, finds this ironic. On a recent trip to Japan he talked to two of the top officials of Toyota. "When I asked them where these secrets came from, where their ideas came from to manufacture in a totally different way, they laughed, and they said. ’Well. We just read it in Henry Ford’s book from 1926: Today and Tomorrow.’\