单选题Researchers have come to believe that neurobics

单选题Laptops in the classroom enhance the academic performance of students. They do in fact allow students to do more, like engage in online activities and demonstrations, 1 more easily on papers and projects, access information from the Internet. 2 , because students can type 3 faster than they can write, those who use laptops in the classroom tend to take more notes. Obviously it is 4 to draft more complete notes that precisely capture the course content. 5 , a new research demonstrates that students, writing out their notes on paper, actually learn more because they have a stronger conceptual 6 . Across some experiments, taking notes by hand requires different types of cognitive processing, and these different processes have 7 for learning. Writing by hand is slower and more 8 than typing, and students cannot possibly write down every word in a lecture. 9 , they listen, digest, and 10 so that they can capture the 11 of the information. Thus, taking notes by hand forces the brain to engage in some heavy "mental 12 ," and these efforts foster comprehension and retention. 13 , when typing students can easily produce a written record of the lecture without processing its meaning, 14 faster typing speeds allow students to 15 a lecture word for word without devoting much thought to the content. 16 altering students" cognitive processes and reducing learning, laptops pose other 17 in the classroom. In most typical college settings, Internet access is 18 , and evidence suggests that when college students use laptops, they spend 40% of class time using applications 19 to coursework and are distracted for half the class. They are more likely to 20 up task and less satisfied with their education.

单选题Increasingly, historians are blaming diseases imported from the Old World for the great disparity between the native population of America in 1492--new estimates of which jump as high as 100 million, or approximately one-sixth of the human race at that time--and the few million full-blooded Native Americans alive at the end of the nineteenth century. There is no doubt that chronic disease was an important factor in the sharp decline, and it is highly probable that the greatest killer was epidemic disease, especially as manifested in virgin-soil epidemics. Virgin-soil epidemics are those in which the populations at risk have had no previous contact with the diseases that strike them and are therefore immunologically almost defenseless. That virgin-soil epidemics were important in American history is strongly indicated by evidence that a number of dangerous maladies--smallpox, measles, malaria, yellow fever, and undoubtedly several more--were unknown in the pre-Columbian New World. The effects of their sudden introduction are demonstrated in the early chronicles of America, which contain reports of horrible epidemics and steep population declines, confirmed in many cases by quantitative analyzes of Spanish tribute records and other sources. The evidence provided by the documents of British and French colonies is not as definitive because the conquerors of those areas did not establish permanent settlements and began to keep continuous records until the seventeenth century, by which time the worst epidemics had probably already taken place. Furthermore, the British tended to drive the native populations away, rather than to enslave them as the Spaniards did; so that the epidemics of British America occurred beyond the range of colonists' direct observation. Even so, the surviving records of North America do contain references to deadly epidemics among the native population. In 1616--1619 an epidemic, possibly of pneumonic plague, swept coastal New England, killing as many as nine out of ten. During the 1630's smallpox, the disease most fatal to the Native American people, eliminated half the population of the Huron and Iroquois confederations. In the 1820's fever ruined the people of the Columbia River area, killing eight out of ten of them. Unfortunately, the documentation of these and other epidemics is slight and frequently unreliable, and it is necessary to supplement what little we de know with evidence from recent epidemics among Native Americans. For example, in 1952 an outbreak of measles among the Native American inhabitants of Ungava Bay, Quebec, affected 99 percent of the population and killed 7 percent, even though some had the benefit of modern medicine. Cases such as this demonstrate that even diseases that are not normally fatal can have destroying consequences when they strike an immunologically defenseless community.Notes: disparity 差距。 virgin-soil处女地。 malady 疾病 chronicle 编年史。 tribute 贡品。 pneumonic plague肺鼠疫。confederation 同盟。 smallpox 天花。measles 麻疹。

单选题 Harvard University plans to spend at least $ 50 million over the next decade to create a more diverse academic community in all disciplines, including throughout the sciences. President Lawrence Summers announced the outlay this week after receiving two reports commissioned in February following his comments about the ability of women to do science, which triggered a national debate. The initiative will tackle all aspects of gender and minority issues, from the safety of women working late at night at research labs to the need for a high-level advocate within the Harvard administration. Such a comprehensive strategy is essential, say the chairs of the two task forces that reported to Summers. "Women need to see careers in science as desirable and realistic life choices," says Barbara Grosz, a computer scientist who led one of the task forces that focused on science and engineering. A second task force, led by science historian Evelynn Hammonds, examined challenges facing all women faculty. Outside researchers are impressed with the breadth of the recommendations." This is very encouraging," says Donna Nelson, a chemist at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, who tracks the status of women and minority academic scientists. "If they can implement this, they can take a leadership role." Harvard has long been criticized by its lack of diversity of science faculty in several disciplines, a situation made worse by Harvard's decentralized structure and its policy not to grant tenure to junior faculty, task force members said. Last year, for example, 4 women and 28 men in the school of arts and sciences received tenure offers. But the long-simmering issue did not come to a head until Summers's comments at a January workshop on women in science became public. The resulting outcry triggered a faculty vote of no confidence in Summers, who apologized repeatedly. Hammonds's committee called for a senior provost for diversity and faculty development to work with Harvard deans to promote gender and ethnic equity. Harvard Provost Steven Hyman hopes to name that person-who likely would come from within Harvard—by September. The panel also proposed two funds, one to provide partial salary support for hiring scholars who increase diversity, the second to fund their labs. It said Harvard should begin to gather systematic data on faculty hiring, retention, and other measures and make the academic culture more family-friendly, through enhanced maternity leave practices, child-care support, and adjustments to the tenure clock. Grosz's panel urged the university to set up summer research programs for undergraduates, expand mentoring for all students, and provide research money for faculty {{U}}juggling{{/U}}family and career. Funding will not be a problem, Summers assured reporters, referring to the likelihood of "more resources allotted down the road." The biggest challenge Harvard faces, he said, is to overcome "issues of culture" within a university created "by men for men." Harvard is accepting comments on the report through the end of June, and academics around the country will be watching closely to see how well Harvard succeeds in transforming that culture.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Plato asked "What is man?" and St Augustine asked "Who am I?" A new breed of criminals has a novel answer: "I am you!" Although impostors have existed for ages, the growing frequency and cost of identity theft is worrisome. Around 10m Americans are victims annually, and it is the leading consumer-fraud complaint over the past five years. The cost to businesses was almost ＄ 50 billion, and to consumers ＄ 5 billion, in 2002, the most recent year that America's Federal Trade Commission collected figures. After two recent, big privacy disasters, people and politicians are calling for action. In February, ChoicePoint, a large data-collection agency, began sending out letters warning 145,000 Americans that it had wrongly provided fraudsters with their personal details, including Social Security numbers. Around 750 people have already spotted fraudulent activity. And on February 25th, Bank of America revealed that it lost data tapes that contain personal information on over 1m government employees, including some Senators. Although accident and not illegality is suspected, all must take precautions against identity theft. Faced with such incidents, state and national lawmakers are calling for new regulations, including over companies that collect and sell personal information. As an industry, the firms—such as ChoicePoint, Acxiom, LexisNexis and Westlaw—are largely unregulated. They have also grown enormous. For example, ChoicePoint was founded in 1997 and has acquired nearly 60 firms to amass databases with 19 billion records on people. It is used by insurance firms, landlords and even police agencies. California is the only state with a law requiring companies to notify individuals when their personal information has been compromised—which made ChoicePoint reveal the fraud (albeit five months after it was noticed, and after its top two bosses exercised stock options). Legislation to make the requirement a federal law is under consideration. Moreover, lawmakers say they will propose that rules governing credit bureaus and medical companies are extended to data-collection firms. And alongside legislation, there is always litigation. Already, ChoicePoint has been sued for failing to safeguard individuals' data. Yet the legal remedies would still be far looser than in Europe, where identity theft is also a menace, though less frequent and costly. The European Data Protection Directive, implemented in 1998, gives people the right to access theft information, change inaccuracies, and deny permission for it to be shared. Moreover, it places the cost of mistakes on the companies that collect the data, not on individuals. When the law was put in force, American policymakers groaned that it was bad for business. But now they seem to be reconsidering it.

单选题Good looks, the video-games industry is discovering, will get you only so far. The graphics on a modern game may far outstrip the pixellated blobs of the 1980s, but there is more to a good game than eye candy. Photo-realistic graphics make the lack of authenticity of other aspects of gameplay more apparent. It is not enough for game characters to look better—their behaviour must also be more sophisticated, say researchers working at the interface between gaming and artificial intelligence(AI). Today' s games may look better, but the gameplay is"basically the same" as it was a few years ago, says Michael Mateas, the founder of the Experimental Game Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. AI, he suggests, offers an" untapped frontier" of new possibilities. "We are topping out on the graphics, so what' s going to be the next thing that improves gameplay?" asks John Laird, director of the A1 lab at the University of Michigan. Improved Al is a big part of the answer, he says. Those in the industry agree. The high-definition graphics possible on next-generation games consoles, such as Microsoft' s Xbox 360, are raising expectatious across the board, says Neff Young of Electronic Arts, the world' s biggest games publisher. "You have to have high-resolution models, which requires high-resolution animation," he says," so now I expect high-resolution behaviour." Representatives from industry and academia will converge in Marina del Rey, California, later this month for the second annual Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment(AIIDE ) conference. The aim, says Dr Laird, who will chair the event, is to Increase the traffic of people and ideas between the two spheres. "Games have been very important to AI through the years," he notes. Alan Turing, one of the pioneers of computing in the 1940s, wrote a simple chess-playing program before there were any computers to run it on; he also proposed the Turing test, a question-and-answer game that is a yardstick for machine intelligence. Even so ,AI research and video games existed in separate worlds until recently. The Al techniques used in games were very simplistic from an academic perspective, says Dr. Mateas, while Al researchers were, in turn, clueless about modern games. But, he says, "both sides are learning, and are now much closer." Consider, for example, the software that controls an enemy in a first-person shooter (FPS) —a game in which the player views the world along the barrel of a gun. The behaviour of enemies used to be pre-scripted: wait until the player is nearby, pop up from behind a box, fire weapon, and then roll and hide behind another box, for example. But some games now use far more advanced" planning systems" imported from academia. "Instead of scripts and hand-coded behaviour, the AI monsters in an FPS can reason from first principles," says Dr. Mateas. They can, for example, work out whether the player can see them or not, seek out cover when injured, and so on. "Rather than just moving between predefined spots, the characters in a war game can dynamically shift, depending on what's happening," says Fiona Sperry of Electronic Arts. If the industry is borrowing ideas from academia, the opposite is also true. Commercial games such as "Unreal Tournament", which can be easily modified or scripted, are being adopted as research tools in universities, says Dr. Laird. Such tools provide flexible environments for experiments, and also mean that students end up with transferable skills. But the greatest potential lies in combining research with game development, argues Dr. Mateas. "Only by wrestling with real content are the technical problems revealed, and only by wrestling with technology does it give you insight into what new kinds of content are possible, "he says.

单选题 In an ideal world, the nation's elite schools would enroll the most qualified students. But that's not how it works. Applicants whose parents are alumni get special treatment, as so athletes and rich kids. Underrepresented minorities are also given preference. Thirty years of affirmative action have changed the complexion of mostly white universities; now about 13 percent of all undergraduates are black or Latino. But most come from middle-and upper middle-class families. Poor kids of all ethnicities remain scarce. A recent study by the Century Foundation found that at the nation's 146 most competitive schools, 74 percent of students came from upper-middle-class and wealthy families, while only about 5 percent came from families with an annual income of roughly $ 35,000 or less. Many schools say diversity—racial, economic and geographic—is key to maintaining intellectually vital campuses. But Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation says that even though colleges claim they want poor kids, "they don't try very hard to find them." As for rural students, many colleges don't try at all. "Unfortunately, we go where we can generate a sizable number of potential applicants, " says Tulane admissions chief Richard Whiteside, who recruits aggressively—and in person-from metropolitan areas. Kids in rural areas get a glossy brochure in the mail. Even when poor rural students have the grades for top colleges, their high schools often don't know how to get them there. Admissions officers rely on guidance counselors to direct them to promising prospects. In affluent high schools guidance counselors often have personal relationships with both kids and admissions officers. In rural areas, a teacher, a counselor or even an alumnus "can help put rural students on our radar screen," says Wesleyan admissions dean Nancy Meislahn. But poor rural schools rarely have college advisers with those connections; without them, admission " {{U}}can be a crapshoot,{{/U}}" says Carnegie Mellon's Steidel. In the past few years some schools have begun to open that door a little wider. At MIT it's something of a mission for Marilee Jones, the dean of admissions. Twenty years ago, 25 percent of each MIT class was first-generation college goers from poor backgrounds who used the celebrated engineering school as a ticket out of the blue-collar world. Five years ago, when that number dipped below 10 percent, Jones began scouring the country for bright kids, and then paired the potential applicants with MIT faculty and students who could answer questions about college life. In four years Jones has doubled the number of poor first-generation students at MT.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} By the 1950's and 60's "going for Chinese" had become part of the suburban vernacular. In places like New York City, eating Chinese food became intertwined with the traditions of other ethnic groups, especially that of Jewish immigrants. Many Jewish families faithfully visited their favorite Chinese restaurant every Sunday night. Among the menus in the exhibition are selections from Glatt Wok: Kosher Chinese Restaurant and Takeout in Monsey, N. Y. , and Wok Toy in Cedarhurst, N. Y. Until 1965 Cantonese-speaking immigrants, mainly from the county of Toisan, dominated the industry and menus reflected a standard repertory of tasty but bland Americanizations of Cantonese dishes. But loosening immigration restrictions that year brought a flood of people from many different regions of China, starting "authenticity revolution," said Ed Schoenfeld, a restaurateur and Chinese food consultant. Top chefs who were trained in spicy and more unusual regional specialties, like Hunan and Sic hunan cooking, came to New York then, Mr. Schoenfeld said. President Richard M. Nixon's trip to China in 1972 awakened interest in the country and accounts of his meals helped whet diners' appetites for new dishes. An illustration of a scowling Nixon with a pair of chopsticks glares down from the wall at the exhibition. Hunan and Sichuan restaurants in New York influenced the taste of the whole country, Mr. Schoenfeld said. Dishes like General Tso's chicken and crispy orange beef caught on everywhere. But as with the Cantonese food before it, Mr. Schoenfeld said, the cooking degraded over time, as it became mass produced. Today's batter-fried, syrup-laden version of Chinese food, he said, bears little resemblance to authentic cuisine. The real explosion of Chinese restaurants that made them ubiquitous came in the 1980's, said Betty Xie, editor of Chinese Restaurant News. "Now you see there are almost one or two Chinese restaurants in every town in the United States," she said. There are signs that some have tired of Chinese food. A 2004 Zagat survey showed that its popularity has ebbed somewhat in New York City. But the journey of the Chinese restaurant remains the story of the American dream, as experienced by a constant but evolving stream of Chinese immigrants who realized the potential of 12-hour days, borrowed capital and a willingness to cook whatever Americans wanted. Sales margins are tight, and wages are low. Restaurants are passed from one family member to the next, or sold by one Chinese family to another. Often a contingency written into Sales contracts is that the previous owners train the new owners. "The competition in Chinese communities is cutthroat," Mr. Chen, the co-curator, said. "What people realize is you can make much, much better profit in places like Montana."

单选题From the text, we can see that the writer' overall attitude towards the issue seems to be

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} European farm ministers have ended three weeks of negotiations with a deal which they claim represents genuine reform of the common agricultural policy(CAP). Will it be enough to kickstart the Doha world trade negotiations? On the face of it, the deal agreed in the early hours of Thursday June 26th looks promising. Most subsidies linked to specific farm products are, at last, to be broken--the idea is to replace these with a direct payment to farmers, unconnected to particular products. Support prices for several key products, including milk and butter, are to be cut--that should mean European prices eventually falling towards the world market level. Cutting the link between subsidy and production was the main objective of proposals put forward by Mr. Fischler, which had formed the starting point for the negotiations. The CAP is hugely unpopular around the world. It subsidises European farmers to such an extent that they can undercut farmers from poor countries, who also face trade barriers that largely exclude them from the potentially lucrative European market. Farm trade is also a key feature of the Doha round of trade talks, launched under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in November 2001. Developing countries have lined up alongside a number of industrial countries to demand an end to the massive subsidies Europe pays its farmers. Several Doha deadlines have already been missed because of the EU's intransigence, and the survival of the talks will be at risk if no progress is made by September, when the world's trade ministers meet in Cancun, Mexico. But now even the French seem to have gone along with the deal hammered out in Luxembourg. Up to a point, anyway. The package of measures gives the green light for the most eager reformers to move fast to implement the changes within their own countries. But there is an escape clause of sorts for the French and other reform-averse nations. They can delay implementation for up to two years. There is also a suggestion that the reforms might not apply where there is a chance that they would lead to a reduction in land under cultivation. These let-outs are potentially damaging for Europe's negotiators in the Doha round. They could significantly reduce the cost savings that the reforms might otherwise generate and, in turn, keep European expenditure on farm support unacceptably high by world standards. More generally, the escape clauses could undermine the reforms by encouraging the suspicion that the new package will not deliver the changes that its supporters claim. Close analysis of what is inevitably a very complicated package might confirm the sceptics' fears.

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}}Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} Bilingual education in New York City was originally viewed as a transitional program that would teach foreign-born children in their native languages until they were fluent enough in English to enter the educational mainstream. But over the last 25 years, bilingual programs at many schools have become foreign-language ghettos from which many children never escape. The need to expose foreign-born students to more English during the school day--and to move them as quickly as possible into the mainstream-was underscored this week in a pair of reports, one from Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's task force on bilingual education and one form Schools Chancellor Harold Levy. The push to reform bilingual education has intensified across the country since the Silicon Valley millionaire Ron k. Unz championed a ballot initiative that ended bilingual education in California two years ago. Opponents of bilingual education want it replaced with the so-called immersion method, in which students are forced to "sink or swim" in classes taught entirely in English. Immersion has at least a chance of success in the early grades, where children are mainly being taught to read and write. But it is a recipe for failure in the upper grades, where older foreign-born students must simultaneously learn English and master complex subjects like math, science and literature. Mayor Giuliani and Schools Chancellor Levy have wisely called for reforming special education instead of dismantling it. Both reports want to end the practice of dragooning children into the system, and call on administrators to offer parents a range of choices. Instead of automatically assigning students to bilingual classes— where they take subjects like mathematics and social studies in their native languages—parents would be allowed to choose other options, including the strategy of English as a second language, in which most instruction is offered in English. Children would be moved into the mainstream as quickly as possible, preferably within three years. But these sensible reforms have little chance of succeeding unless the city and the state act quickly to train and recruit teachers who can perform the needed task. Nearly 30 percent of bilingual instructors are uncertified. Some have not even mastered the languages they have been hired to teach. True reform will require dollars, determination and a qualified teacher in every classroom.

单选题“scarcely that” ( Par

单选题Horse thieves, cattle rustlers, bank robbers, train and stagecoach robbers, highwaymen, murderers, these were but some of the criminals who infested the American frontier during the 19th century. In English legend Robin Hood can be considered a bandit, but the outlaws of the Old West were far more violent men and women without any scruples when it came to taking property or life. The careers of many outlaws have been glamorized through fictional accounts of their deeds and their exploits have been the basis for many movie scripts. The era of the American outlaw lasted about 100 years roughly from 1800 to 1900．There had been lawlessness during the Colonial Era. Frontiers have always attracted misfits, failures and renegades who hope to profit by being beyond the reach of government. In the years just before the Revolutionary War, gangs of horse thieves in the back country of South Carolina were broken up by organized bands of farmers called regulators. As frontier settlement expanded rapidly after the Revolution, more opportunities for criminals opened, two common types of bandits were highwaymen and river pirates. Highwaymen accosted people who traveled on foot or horseback, while river pirates preyed upon the boat traffic on the Ohio, Mississippi, and other rivers. Some bandits engaged in both. Criminals in the West gathered momentum with the gold rushes to California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and other states. Stagecoaches and trains carrying gold and money became prime targets for bands of outlaws. Bank robberies emerged after the California Gold Rush of 1849 and as prosperity found its way to frontier towns. The first stage robbery was recorded in 1851, and the first train robbery happened in 1866. After the Civil War there was the growth of the cattle kingdom in Texas and neighboring states. Cattle rustling and horse theft turned into significant operations. Range wars bred a great amount of violence. Cattlemen fought over land and water rights, and they fought with great bitterness against sheep farmers. In Texas, range wars were fought over the use of barbed wire to fence grazing land. By the end of the 19th century, the frontier era was past. Major crime shifted to the cities. Ethnic gangs had existed in the slums for decades, preying mostly on their fellow immigrants. With the arrival of Prohibition in the 1920s, an impetus was given to the formation of organized crime as it exists today.

单选题In science fiction there is to be found the recurrent theme of the omniscient computer which ultimately takes over the ordering of human life and affairs. Is this possible? I believe is it not: but also believe that the arguments commonly advanced to refute this possibility are the worng ones. First it is often said that computers "do not really think". This I submit is nonsense: if computers do not think, then nor do human beings. For how do I define the process of thinking? I present data—say, an examination paper—to a student, which he scans with a photoelectric organ we call an "eye", the computer scans its data with a photoelectric organ we call a "tape-reader". There is then a period when nothing obvious happens, through electroencephalogram—for the student. Lastly, information based on the data is transcribed by means of a mechanical organ called a "hand" by the student and a "teleprinter" by the computer. In other words, the actions of man and machine differ only in the appliances they use. Secondly, it is said that computers "only do what they are told", that they have to be programmed for every computation they undertake. But I do not believe that I was born with an innate ability to solve quadratic equations or to identify common members of the Britain flora: I, too, had to be programmed for these activities, but I happened to call my programmers by different names, such as "schoolteacher", "lecture" or "professor". Lastly, we are told that computers, unlike human beings, cannot interpret their own results. But interpretation is always of one set of information in the light of another set of information: it consists simply of finding the joint pattern in two sets of data. The mathematics of doing this is cumbersome but well known; the computer would be perfectly willing to do the job if asked.

单选题Accounting has become political. Fair-value rules, which require assets to be marked to market prices, are blamed by some for exaggerating banks' losses. Although it will take years to establish whether banks' accounts have painted too bleak a picture, the rows are already in full swing. Confidence in "efficient" market prices has been hammered, as has the principle that accounts are designed mainly for investors. The Intemational Accounting Standards Board (IASB), which sets rules for most countries apart from America, has made tactical concessions to avoid the nightmare scenario of banks and politicians writing the rules themselves. On November 12th it issued new rules for financial assets that will be optional from this year and mandatory from 2013. Loans, or securities similar to loans, will be held at the price banks paid for them, provided the bit of the firm that owns them is not engaged in trading. Everything else will be held at fair value. Most observers, including the IASB, reckon this will cut the proportion of assets held at fair value. Critically, for those who believe most firms try to warm up, if not fully cook, their books, the notes to the accounts will disclose all assets at fair value. The IASB also proposes a rearrangement of how bad debts are recognized. Instead of booking losses as things go sour, they will be spread over the life of a loan, although the draft rules do not go as far as Spain's system of "generic provisions" which leads to more reserves being built up in good times than in bad, smooth- ing profits even more. The IASB also wants to end the practice of banks marking the price of their own debt to market, though details are not agreed. The IASB has made big concessions. Yet it is the European Commission (EC) which decides if the European Union adopts the standard-setter's new rules. The G20 has called for independent, global standards, that "reaffirm... the framework of fair value", but a few countries, notably France, are hostile. In a letter to Sir David Tweedie, the IASB's chairman, the commission said the rules "may not yet have struck the fight balance". The IASB will probably plough on and hope the commission backs down. The IASB's position has been weakened by differences with the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), which sets rules in America and which wants to merge eventually with the IASB. The FASB has yet to produce proposals on financial assets and is more wedded to a fair-value regime. It also faces a proposal in Congress that could allow America's new systemic-risk regulator to suspend the rules. Strength comes from unity--without it, accounting risks becoming just another tool for governments to attempt to manage the economic cycle.

单选题Nobody ever went into academia to make a fast buck. Professors, especially those in medical-and technology-related fields, typically earn a fraction of what their colleagues in industry do. But suddenly, big money is starting to flow into the ivory tower, as university administrators wake up to the commercial potential of academic research. And the institutions are wrestling with a whole new set of issues. The profits are impressive: the Association of University Technology Managers surveyed 132 universities and found that they earned a combined $ 576 million from patent royalties in 1998, a number that promises to keep rising dramatically. Schools like Columbia University in New York have aggressively marketed their inventions to corporations, particularly pharmaceutical and high-tech companies. Now Columbia is going retail on the Web. It plans to go beyond the typical "dot. edu" model, free sites listing courses and professors' research interests. Instead, it will offer the expertise of its faculty on a new for-profit site which will be spun off as an independent company. The site will provide free access to educational and research content, say administrators, as well as advanced features that are already available to Columbia students, such as a simulation of the construction and architecture of a French cathedral and interactive 3-D models of organic chemicals. Free pages will feel into profit-generating areas, such as online courses and seminars, and related books and tapes. Columbia executive vice provost Michael Crow imagines "millions of visitors" to the new site, including retirees and students willing to pay to tap into this educational resource. "We can offer the best of what's thought and written and researched," says Ann Kirschner, who heads the project. Columbia also is anxious not be aced out by some of the other for-profit "knowledge sites," such as About. com and Hungry Minds. " If they capture this space," says Crow, "they'll begin to cherry-pick our best faculty. " Profits from the sale of patents typically have been divided between the researcher, the department and the university, and Web profits would work the same way, so many faculty members are delighted. But others find the trend worrisome: is a professor who stands to profit from his or her research as credible as one who doesn't? Will universities provide more support to researchers working in profitable fields than to scholars toiling in more musty areas? "If there's the perception that we might be making money from our efforts, the authority of the university could be diminished," worries Herve Varenne, a cultural anthropology professor at Columbia's education school. Says Kirschner: "We would never compromise the integrity of the university. "Whether the new site can add to the growing profits from patents remains to be seen, but one thing is clear. It's going to take the best minds on campus to find a new balance between profit and purity.