Is there a nationwide shortage of nurses? It's hard to say. However, some characteristic symptoms often indicate that there is indeed a shortage. One symptom is the vacancy rate, or the percentage of budgeted positions that are unfilled. New England's hospitals currently report that an average of 7 to 12 percent of their registered nurse positions are vacant, the highest level since the last shortage in the late 1980s. Vermont has a ly low vacancy rate, at 7.8 percent. But its vacancies were at 1.2 percent just five years ago. Another symptom is the increased use of stopgap measures to fill empty positions. For instance, many nurses report an _ in how frequently they are asked to stay past their shifts. According to Murphy, working in the St. Elizabeth's Hospital, "The shortage has definitely created a lot of opportunities of overtime for our nurses, whether they want them or not." Similarly, a national survey of registered nurses shows that in an average week, nurses in the U.S. work 2.4 more hours than they are scheduled to. Much of this extra time is voluntary, as nurses earn overtime pay when they stay to fill in blanks in the schedule. When they can't fill open positions by more traditional means, health care providers hire temporary staff to tide them over. Travelling workers are the largest part of the temporary health care workforce, hired for thirteen-week reduction at health care facilities facing short-term lack of workers. Temporary workers, mainly nurses, cost hospitals $ 7.2 billion in 2000. "Any successful solution to the shortage depends on convincing more people to become nurses, and that is not an easy goal to reach. To achieve it," says Buerhaus, "society needs to place more value on nursing. Legislation can't do that - it should come from people." And if this continues, we might have to learn to care for ourselves in the hospital. The temporary staff hired by a hospital _ . A) cost a large part of the hospital's budget B) meet the need for nurses in the hospital for a short time C) should work on a weekly basis and on a scheduled timetable D) ought to work passively for thirty continuous weeks
B
(Question)
About 12,000 years ago- long before the famous UFO crash make headlines in America--an alien spaceship crashed in China. And their descendants are still living in a faraway Chinese village today! That is the mind-bending claim made in the new book Out of Time and Place, a collection of reports from the files of Fate, a magazine edited by Terry O'Neil. The story first came to light in 1937 when an expedition led by Chi Pu-Tei came across a group of caves deep in the Bayan-Kara-Ula Mountains. In the caves were found strange-looking skeletons with big heads and small, slender bodies--closely matching typical descriptions of space aliens. The explorers also uncovered 716 mysterious stone discs with strange hieroglyphics on them. In Qinghai Province, where the mountains lie, ancient stories tell of small, skinny beings with oversize heads who came from the sky long long ago. And to this day, locals live in fear of attack from strange-looking creatures from above. And there is more. In 1947, British scientist Karyl Robin-Evans led an expedition into the mountains and discovered a group of dwarfs who called themselves the Droza. "They told him that their ancestors came from a planet in the Sirius system and crashed in this mountain area a long time ago," writes Hausdorf, "Many of them were killed, but survivors adapted to living on this rough planet far from home." For decades, Robin-Evans' claims were dismissed as nonsense. But in 1995, the Associated Press reported that in the region a village named Huilong had been discovered--populated by 120 dwarfs ranging from 3-foot-10 to 2-foot-1tall.Hausdorf asks, "Could these people be the last living descendants of the survivors of the legendary UGO crash--the Chinese Roswell?" What can be safely concluded from the passage? A) This passage is a piece of science news recently issued. B) Chinese are descendants to the survivors of the alien spaceship crash C) The UFO crash in the Byan-Kara-Ula Mountains has recently been seen D) Many people are curious about aliens from outer space
(Answer)
D
Question: Many years ago in a small German town, a Jewish businessman had the misfortune of owing a large sum of money to the moneylender. The moneylender, who was old and ugly, fancied the businessman's beautiful daughter. So he proposed a bargain. The moneylender told them that he would put a black pebble and a white pebble into an empty bag. The girl would then have to pick one pebble from the bag. If she picked the black pebble, she would become the moneylender's wife and he would _ her father's debt. If she picked the white pebble, she need not marry him and her father's debt would still be forgiven. But if she refused to pick a pebble, her father would be thrown into jail. They were standing on a pebble-strewn path. As they talked, the moneylender bent over to pick up two pebbles. The sharp-eyed girl noticed that he had picked up two black pebbles and put them into the bag. He then asked the girl to pick a pebble from the bag. No doubt she was caught in a dilemma. What would you have done if you were the girl? Careful analysis would produce three possibilities: 1.The girl should refuse to take a pebble. 2.The girl should know that there were two black pebbles in the bag and expose the money-lender as a cheat. 3.The girl should pick a black pebble and sacrifice herself in order to save her father from his debt and imprisonment. The above story is used with the hope that it will make us appreciate the difference between lateral and logical thinking. Read on... The girl put her hand into the moneybag and drew out a pebble. Without looking at it, she fumbled and let it fall onto the pebble-strewn path where it immediately became lost among all the other pebbles. "Oh, how clumsy of me!" she said. "But never mind, if you look into the bag for the one that is left, you will be able to tell which pebble I picked." Since the remaining pebble is black, it must be assumed that she had picked the white one. And since the moneylender dared not admit his dishonesty, the girl changed what seemed an impossible situation into an... What lesson can we learn from the story? A) Keeping calm when facing a difficult situation. B) Thinking about a complicated problem in another way. C) Thinking twice before making a final choice. D) Coming up with a clever answer is easy.
Answer:
B