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The dirty little secret about Europe's "Grand Tour of Contemporary Art" this summer is that there simply isn't enough good art to go around. The Grand Tour, of course, is this year's unprecedented coincidence of well-established major art extravaganzas—the Venice Biennale, the bi-annual ArtBasel in Switzerland, the quinquennial Documenta in Kassel, Germany—all of which opened during the same week in mid-June. And they've even added the Sculpture Project at Muenster in Germany, which is only held once every 10 years. That means Europe's curators have had to hang and install more than 1,400 works by some 400 artists. Clearly, it can't all be of prime quality. In fact, sometimes, they've had to scrape the bottom of the barrel. "Everybody knows there's just not enough good art to meet this kind of demand," says Maria Finders, a London-based art event organizer. "But the positive side of that is that it's giving younger artists a chance to emerge." It's not hard to tell where the mega-shows are coming up short. At Venice (which carries on till Nov. 21), the large, haunting installations Felix Gonzales Torres produced for the United States Pavilion are widely admired. So are the oversized photo theatricals of German artist Thomas Demand, like "Embassy", which reproduces the Niger Embassy room in Rome where the now infamous forged Iraqi "yellowcake uranium" document was purloined. But a 3-D video "Last Riot", by the Russian artist team AES+F, purporting to show the cutthroat chaos of our cybernetic video-game-like future, is more creepy than apocalyptic. And a series of wiseacre sketches and a neon installation by British bad-girl artist Tracey Emin—who shot to fame in 1999 when she installed her own unmade bed in the Tate Modern—have been panned as banal. Similarly, if there were enough good new art, a deeply affecting picture of a child warrior in fatigues by Congolese artist Cheri Samba, might find itself flanked by more where that came from, instead of familiar abstracts by established artists Ellsworth Kelly and Gerhard Richter.Obviously, the fairs have a powerful impact on the hot—some say overheated—modern and contemporary art market. At ArtBasel, which unlike the "curated" Biennale and Dokumenta is an openly commercial fair, the Marlborough Gallery sold a Francis Bacon, "Orange Male Nude before Mirror," for $20 million. Jeff Wall light-boxes went for $672,000. And it became clear that "signature-value" rather than any original quality was at play when Roy Lichtenstein silk-screens—in an edition of 50—drew $47,000 each. At those prices, younger artists were certainly bound to benefit. A leading Berlin gallery, Eigen +Art, which discovered the Leipzig School, sold a large work by young German sculptress Stella Hamberg for $114,000, while another by young Italian sculptor Arcangelo Sassolino was sold by Gallery von Senger for $45,000. Dokumenta exhibited some dazzling showpieces. Visitors stopped in their tracks at the sight of Brazilian artist Iole de Freitas's untitled 30-meter length of curving steel and silver plexiglas that glides over itself like a highway to heaven. They marveled, too, at famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's "Template", an 8-meter-high installation composed of interlocked wooden doors and windows from the Ming and Qing dynasties. And they strived to fathom meaning from big, darkly symbolic canvases by German painter Monika Baer, the Chilean-Australian Juan Davila and African-American Kelly James Marshall. But they also noted that a number of them were not new at all, but dated back even to the '50s and '60s. Where was the rest of the new, truly contemporary material? Clearly, if there had been enough strong art to go around, viewers wouldn't have had to doze off in front of politically correct, excruciatingly prolonged videos such as one about Barcelona prostitution, a child rolling around on an Iraqi prayer rug, or "This Is How We Walk on the Moon." That one should more aptly have been titled "My Perfectly Ordinary Home Movie About Sailing in Scotland".

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Most people have seen bullies in action, making life miserable for others. Their targets often escape the intimidation relatively unharmed, but sometimes it is too much to bear. That can be true whether the victim is a 12-year-old girl or a 136-kilogram American football player. A member of the Miami Dolphins left the National Football League team recently because he was repeatedly insulted and threatened by a teammate, Richie Incognito. Many fans were disgusted by details of Incognito's expletive-filled voice mail and text messages, while others defended his behavior as a natural part of a rough-and-tumble sport. Some people are astonished that Jonathan Martin, who is 1. 95 meters tall, "could actually be emotionally damaged by taunts from a teammate," the columnist Timothy Egan wrote recently in The Times. "Can you possibly hurt a hulk with words?" Based on his own experience playing football in high school, Mr. Egan argues that you can. He was smaller than the other guys and had a big, unruly head of hair that made him stand out. His teammates taunted him. "Did it hurt? Yes it did," he wrote. "I knew very well what it felt like to give so much to a game and have people who were part of it, his teammates, hurt him. " Bullies aren't all men. The Times reported recently that scientists had made big strides in understanding aggression by young women. "The existence of female competition may seem obvious to anyone who has been in a high school cafeteria or singles bar," John Tierney wrote, "but analyzing it has been difficult because it tends to be more subtle and indirect(and a lot less violent)than the male variety. " Researchers found that women were more likely to make mean comments about other women if they saw them as competition for male attention. In an experiment, a group of female college students reacted negatively when a woman wearing a low-cut blouse and a short skirt entered the room, while they barely noticed the same woman dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. But in perhaps one difference between the sexes, instead of confronting the woman directly, the others made fun of her once she left the room. "Women are indeed very capable of aggressing against others, especially women they perceive as rivals," said Dr. Tracy Vaillancourt, a psychologist at the University of Ottawa. For those on the receiving end who are young or otherwise vulnerable, the damage can be tragic. In September, a 12-year-old girl in Florida named Rebecca Ann Sedwick killed herself after other girls bullied her online. She went to an abandoned cement plant, climbed to a platform and jumped. "Rebecca became one of the youngest members of a growing list of children and teenagers apparently driven to suicide, at least in part, after being maligned, threatened and taunted online," The Times reported. And teenagers aren't just using Facebook or Instagram to pick on one another. New applications appear constantly, making it difficult for parents to keep tabs on their children's activity. Rebecca's mother, Tricia Norman, didn't know her daughter was receiving messages that said: "You're ugly" and "Can u die please?" "You hear about this all the time," Ms. Norman said of cyberbullying. "I never, ever thought it would happen to me or my daughter. "

In the near future, professors will run their courses over digital platforms capable of collecting data on each student's progress. These platforms were initially developed for massive open online courses. However, universities are now folding these platforms back into their traditional classes because they make it easier to share content, host discussions and keep track of student work. Soon, these platforms will be able to monitor which students are spending 15 minutes on a calculus problem and which ones slog away for an hour. This can raise red flags for professors about who might need extra help. As more classes move partially or entirely online, the requirements of having a uniform start and end date diminish. It means some students could sail through a semester's worth of classes in a few weeks and then start again with new courses. It used to be that getting accepted to a prestigious university was how you accessed the best professors and could hang out with the smartest students. That's because universities were, for the most part, closed information systems that distributed out their content among a select few. That's changing.

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{{B}}Part A Spot DictationDirections: In this part of the test, you will hear a passage and read the same passage with blanks in it. Fill in each of the blanks with the word or words you have heard on the tape. Write your answer in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET. Remember you will hear the passage ONLY ONCE.{{/B}}

{{B}}SECTION 6 TRANSLATION TESTDirections: Translate the following passage into English and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.{{/B}}

{{B}}SECTION 2 READING TESTDirections: In this section you will read several passages. Each one is followed by several questions about it. You are to choose ONE best answer, A, B, C or D, to each question. Answer all the questions following each passage on the basis of what is stated or implied in that passage and write tile letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.{{/B}}

On October 14, 2015 tracker dogs led game scouts to a group of armed poachers who were on the run after shooting and killing a well-known old elephant bull just outside Tarangire National Park, Tanzania. This was the latest in a string of successes by Tanzania's tracker dogs, which are proving to be an effective weapon in the bloody war on elephant poaching in East Africa. "Apart from their incredible tracking abilities, dogs are wonderful to work with because they don't have any political agenda—they can't be compromised," said Damien Bell, director of Big Life Tanzania, the conservation organization that manages the Big Life Tracker Dog Unit. "Our dogs have tracked elephant poachers for up to eight hours at a time or more, through extreme conditions—heat, rain, wetlands, mountains—and still turned up results," he said. "They love their handlers, and they do a job until the job is done. " The Big Life Foundation first began using dogs for anti-poaching efforts in 2011, after adopting four Alsatians(German shepherds)from kennels in the Netherlands and honing their skills with the help of Canine Specialist Services International, a dog training facility based in northern Tanzania. Alsatians were picked over bloodhounds as they have more stamina and can better handle the African heat. Two of the dogs, Max and Jazz, were stationed in southern Kenya. The other two, Rocky and Jerry, were sent to Tanzania to help out in the Amboseli/Kilimanjaro ecosystem, important elephant habitat that straddles the two countries. Since their arrival, Rocky and Jerry have helped with countless anti-poaching operations, leading to numerous arrests. In fact, the dog teams have become so popular that Tanzania National Parks , the Wildlife Division, the police, and even the military have requested their assistance. Canine sleuths aren't limited to the plains of East Africa, either. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, bloodhounds are assisting in the fight against poaching in forested Virunga National Park, where the world's last remaining mountain gorillas live. In South Africa, Weimaraner and Malinois dogs are helping to find wounded animals and track poachers on foot through the reserves around Kruger National Park. Anatolian shepherd dogs are also used in Africa to mitigate human-wildlife conflict on farms, where the instinctively protective dogs defend livestock from predators. Rocky arrived with his handlers, and soon he was pacing and sniffing up and down beside the dead elephant, about to explode with excitement. He quickly picked up the human scents from footprints near the carcass. It seemed that multiple people had been at the crime scene the night before. Now the dogs were on their dusty trail. The hunters had become the hunted. Rocky led the chase through the foothills and scrublands of the Lesimingori, frantically tugging his handler at the end of the lead. But after five hours of relentless progress, the heat wore even him down, and his protege, Rosdus, took over. Rosdus is a new dog on the team—fresh from extensive training at Canine Specialist Services International, at Usa River. Rosdus didn't disappoint his mentor. He took the team all the way to the main highway, where the unit followed a hot trail through the town and to a particular home. There,seven suspects were arrested. Six of the suspects have been charged and are now in custody in Arusha, without bail.

When Dana Hale adopted her son four years ago, she says she had to "play hardball" with her boss to get the same paid leave granted colleagues who give birth. The Washington employment lawyer knew then that if she and her self-employed husband adopted again, it would be under new management. So Hale began researching adoption-friendly workplaces, and soon focused on Capital One. The big financial-services company, headquartered in McLean, Va., offers $5,000 in assistance per adopted child, plus six weeks of paid leave. More important to Hale, the company fosters a supportive culture for adoptive parents, who network through a corporate intranet site. "I specifically chose Capital One so I could adopt more children," says Hale, 44, on the eve of a trip to Ukraine to bring home two teenage sisters. Adoption has become an employment issue. Because more women delay parenthood to pursue careers during their prime childbearing years, some seek alternative avenues to build their families. With each adoption costing up to $30,000 and often demanding mounds of paperwork and weeks of travel, workers are asking their employers for help. They're getting it, mainly from companies in competitive industries hungry to attract and keep talent. Google, JPMorgan Chase, Abbott Laboratories, Avon and Motorola have all added adoption assistance to their buffet of benefits. In 1990, only 12% of 1,000 companies surveyed by Hewitt Associates offered financial assistance for adoption. By 2006, 45% of companies did. Rita Sorensen, executive director of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, estimates that in 2007 fully half of employers provide adoption benefits and that within five years those offerings will be considered standard. Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's, may have kicked off the trend 15 years ago when he began urging other CEOs to assist employees with adoption. Himself an adoptee, Thomas started his foundation to help find permanent homes for children in the US foster-care system. (More than 140,000 currently await adoption, according to Sorensen.) This year the foundation began tracking corporations and ranking them according to the generosity of their benefits. f companies that provide adoption assistance, it found that $4,700 is offered on average per adoption and about double that if a child has special needs or is from foster care. Companies are also giving workers an average of five weeks of paid parental leave. Even as employers retreat from providing expensive benefits like lifetime health coverage, they are finding that adoption assistance is relatively inexpensive—and yields disproportionately high rewards in employee loyalty, community goodwill and solid-gold p.r. Unlike maternity benefits, adoption assistance isn't covered by medical or disability insurance, meaning the entire cost must come directly from an employer's pocket. Still, only 0.5% of employees tap adoption benefits, but the assistance is so appreciated that workers gush about it to colleagues, spreading the warm, fuzzy corporate feelings. "Not to cheapen it, but it's cost-effective goodwill," says Sorensen, "one that doesn't hit the bottom line very hard." Greg Rasin, a partner with Proskauer Rose who advises employers on benefits, points out that at the very least, the Families and Medical Leave Act compels employers with more than 50 workers to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Legal bonus: offering adoption benefits might shield them from lawsuits by workers seeking parity with those who receive maternity leave. Offering adoption assistance was an easy call for Steve Steinour, CEO of Citizens Financial Group and the father of two adopted children. "We knew from experience that for most Americans, adoption is an unaffordable option," he says. Citizens—a bank based in Providence, R.I., with 25,000 employees—provides up to $21,000 in aid, a sum that helped put it at the top of the Dave Thomas Foundation's list of adoption-friendly workplaces. Though Steinour says retention is much greater among the 100 or so workers who have used the benefits, he admits that this impact is hard to quantify for shareholders. "You can't translate everything into a direct payback," he says. Payback comes in the form of loyalty and gratitude from employees like Paula Cavallaro, a Citizens trust administrator. Already the parents of Amanda, 12, Cavallaro and her husband had "talked and talked" about adopting another child. The Cavallaros received $10,000 from Citizens to adopt Anny, 13, from Colombia last summer (employees receive more for special-needs adoptions). "We would still have done it, but having the benefit just made it so much easier," says Cavallaro, 48. "I will always, always, always be grateful for the help."

Marjorie McMillan, head of radiology at a veterinary hospital, found out by reading a letter to the editor in her local newspaper. Pamela Goodwin, a labor-relations expert at General Motors, happened to see a computer printout. Stephanie Odle, an assistant manager at a Sam's Club store, was slipped a co-worker's tax form. Purely by accident, these women learned they were making less than their male or, in Goodwin's case, white colleagues at work. Each sued for pay discrimination under federal law, lucky enough to discover what typically stays a secret. "People don't just stand around the watercooler to talk about how much they make," says McMillan. This, as they say, is the real world, one in which people would rather discuss their sex lives than salaries. And about a third of private employers actually prohibit employees from sharing pay information. It is also a world that the US Supreme Court seems unfamiliar with. The Justices recently decided 5 to 4 that workers are out of luck if they file a complaint under Title VII—the main federal antidiscrimination law—more than 180 days after their salary is set. That's six measly months to find out what your co-workers are making so that you can tell whether you're getting chiseled because of your sex, race, religion or national origin. How many of the roughly 2,800 such complaints pending before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will fizzle because of this new rule is hard to say. Less of a mystery, though just as troubling, is how the court reached its decision. Lilly Ledbetter filed the case against Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. because at the end of a 19-year career, she was making far less than any of 15 men at her level. She argued that Goodyear violated Title VII every time it gave her a smaller paycheck. Her complaint was timely, she said, because she filed it within 180 days of her last check. But the court majority read the statute to mean that only an actual decision to pay Ledbetter less could be illegal, and that happened well outside the 180-day period. A statute's ambiguous wording is fair game, but why read it to frustrate Title VII's purpose: to ease pay discrimination in a nation where women make only 770￠ on average for every $1 that men earn? And while employers might like this decision, they could end up choking on the torrent of lawsuits that might now come their way. "The real message is that if you have any inkling that you are being paid differently, you need to file now, before the 180 days are up," says Michael Foreman of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights. All this sounds familiar. In June 1989, the Supreme Court issued three decisions that sharply limited the right to sue over employment discrimination. A day after the most prominent ruling, in Wards Cove v. Atonio, Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D., Ohio) declared that he would introduce a bill to overturn the decisions. It took civil rights advocates and their congressional allies eight months to introduce legislation. President George H.W. Bush vetoed the first version, arguing that it would encourage hiring quotas. Finally, in late 1991, the Democratic Congress and the Republican President reached a compromise fashioned by Senators John Danforth (R., Mo.) and Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.). It became the Civil Rights Act of 1991 and overturned parts of eight high-court decisions. Now, Foreman and others are working on a bill to overturn the Ledbetter case, and Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, among others, have expressed interest. A Democratic Congress may well cooperate, though with a Republican again in the White House, final legislation before next year's elections isn't guaranteed. In any event, we probably won't see the kind of groundswell that shifted the law toward workers in 1991 because civil rights advocates aren't sure these Justices are a threat to workers' rights. Last June, for example, they made it harder for employers to retaliate against employees who complain of discrimination. That left the Ledbetter ruling looking particularly clueless. "I heard the decision and thought, What is wrong with this court?" says McMillan. "It just doesn't live in the real world."

Despite the row over Russian missiles that preceded it and the mob of angry protestors outside, the G8 meeting probably helped in the quest for global stability. The top industrial countries ended their summit in Heiligendamm on Friday June 8th with a handful of agreements aimed at just that goal. The most positive outcome of the three-day summit was America's apparent shift closer to the G8 mainstream. The most important agreement was on climate change: a commitment at least to "consider seriously" the goal of halving global greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050. There was also a pledge of $60 billion to combat HIV and AIDS, with the aim of giving all victims access to treatment by 2010. The G8, without surrendering their status as the world's most powerful countries, also invited leaders of the strongest developing economies—Brazil, Mexico, India, China and South Africa—to join them in four initiatives: on climate change, safeguarding intellectual property, encouraging cross-border investment, and developing Africa. Africa was in the spotlight at the final day of meetings. The German hosts coined the term "Heiligendamm Process" to describe the inclusion of the big developing countries, in some of the G8's endeavours. The intention is to bind these countries, particularly China, more closely to policies of the G8, and to avoid "China-bashing", according to German officials. It was not clear, after meetings of this quasi G13, whether the Heiligendamm Process would catch on. The summit, held at a wedding-cake hotel on the Baltic coast, brought a surprise offer from Russia's president, Vladimir Putin. Russia's threat to target Europe if America put its planned missile-defence stations there had looked as if it might overshadow proceedings. But in bilateral talks with America's president, George Bush, Mr. Putin proposed joint use of radar stations in Azerbaijan, as an answer to American defence concerns east of Europe. Mr. Bush said he would consider the offer. The agreement on climate change is a modest triumph for Angela Merkel, the German chancellor and the summit's host. Although there was no firm commitment on numbers, the agreement accepts the need to develop a global framework, under UN auspices, by the end of next year, ready to replace the Kyoto Protocol on climate change when it expires in 2012. There had been fears that Mr. Bush would reject a UN-sponsored programme just as America has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol whereby leading countries pledge to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions at least 5% below 1990 levels. Another German initiative, to introduce a code of conduct for hedge funds in the interests of financial stability, got no further. American and British financial regulators, and the financial firms they oversee, believe that improving best practice and their own vigilance are enough to prevent a problem in the $1.6 trillion hedge-fund industry from triggering a wider financial crisis. Beyond the smooth lawns and swish setting of Heiligendamm, well-organised bands of anti-G8 protesters kept a 16,000-strong police force busy. Several times they evaded the police and occupied areas near a specially built perimeter fence. The protests were mainly peaceful, though they had been heralded at the weekend in nearby Rostock by violent clashes between police and black-clad radical protesters known as Autonomen. The main message of the protesters was rejection of policy-making that kow-tows to "global capitalism". As helicopters roared overhead, and water cannon readied for action, they pleaded for more debt forgiveness for the world's poorest countries, as did a rock concert against poverty in Rostock, led by the combined vocal talents Bob Geldof, Bono and Herbert Gronemeyer. Non-governmental organisations said the G8 pledges fell short. Oxfam, an aid group, argued that the $60 billion proffered to combat disease added only $3 billion a year to what had already been promised up to 2010. Greenpeace, an environmental group, said that despite the inclusion of America in work to reduce emissions, the Bush administration was "as far away as ever" from agreeing such reductions itself. For Ms. Merkel, at any rate, such objections are swept away. The headline in Bild, a popular daily newspaper, hailed her as "Miss World" for achieving three goals: on climate change, more money for Africa, and detente between Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin. And, given the inauspicious lead up to the meeting, she may well have earned the title.

College rankings are dead! Long live college rankings! At a meeting of the country's leading liberal arts schools this week in Annapolis, Md., a majority of the 80 or so college presidents in attendance said they would no longer participate in the popular annual rankings conducted by US News and World Report. Instead, the Annapolis Group announced it will help develop an alternative set of data to aid students and their families in the bewildering quest to figure out how one school differs from the next. College presidents have long been critical of the US News rankings, in part because 25% of a school's score is based on a survey filled in by roughly half of college presidents and other top administrators, who rate schools based on reputation but often only selectively, leaving most of the list blank and unjudged. The peer survey strikes many in higher education as silly. But they believe the rankings have an additional and more nefarious component. Several college presidents have publicly complained that the rankings' emphasis on the average SAT scores of incoming freshmen has led colleges to fight over high-achieving (and often wealthy) students by offering them merit scholarships and thus leaving fewer financial-aid dollars available to low-income students. But now the Annapolis Group, whose 124 members take up most of the slots in U.S News's list of the top 100 liberal arts schools, is putting its collective weight behind a web-based alternative to the rankings that is being spearheaded by the 900-member National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU). NAICU's easy-to-read template, which is expected to be rolled out by hundreds of schools in September, allows students and their families to pull up extensive information organized in an objective format that includes such data as what percentage of students graduate in four years compared to those who graduate in five or six years. It plans to provide a level of detail that is not included in the US News rankings, but that could be very important to parents' checkbooks. The NAICU template also lists the four most common majors at each school and gives a complete breakdown on class sizes, revealing how many classes have fewer than 20 students, fewer than 40, fewer than 100 or more than 100. NAICU is trying to provide a more complete picture than US News, and the new format doesn't gloss over unpleasant details. For example, it will list a school's current tuition alongside the sticker price from each of the previous four years (Parents, get ready to watch those bar charts keep climbing upwards over time!). It will also include the percentage of students who receive financial aid as well as what the average net tuition is for financial aid recipients. The new set of ratings also contains links to such sought-after details as a school's campus safety report, internship and career-placement services and information about how many of its graduates go on to grad school or are employed in the field of their choice within a certain amount of time after graduation. However, NAICU stops short of ranking schools in numerical order and although the association will serve as a central repository for all the new data, which can also be accessed through an individual school's site, students and their families will have to print out the two-page profiles if they want to see how one institution stacks up against another. "We're letting consumers rank the institutions based on their needs," says NAICU spokesman Tony Pals. Of course, there's nothing to keep US News or anyone else from plugging all this new data into a rankings formula. And more than a few college presidents think that isn't such a bad thing. "Some of my colleagues are ethical purists, and I applaud them," Millsaps College President Dr. Frances Lucas says of the US News rankings' most strident critics at the Annapolis meeting. "But many of us live in the real world." And since the US News rankings are likely here to stay, Lucas and other presidents are hoping that if schools provide more data in a more meaningful, transparent manner, the rankings will become more meaningful, too.

BSECTION 4: TRANSLATION TEST(2)Directions: Translate the following passage into English and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET./B

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BSECTION 2: STUDA SKILLSDirections: In this section, you will read several passages. Each passage is followed by several questions based on its content. You are to choose one best answer, (A), (B), (C) or (D), to each question. Answer all the questions following each passage on the basis of what is stated or implied in that passage, and write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET./B

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