Quipus are the mysterious bundles of colored and knotted threads that served as the Inca empire's means of recording information. The code of the quipus has long since been forgotten, and the only major advance in understanding them was the insight, made in 1923, that the knots were used to represent numbers. The quantity and positioning of the knots, at least in certain quipus, is agreed to represent a decimal system. A new and possibly significant advance in deciphering the quipu system may now have been gained by two Harvard researchers, Gary Urton and Carrie J. Brezine. They believe they may have decoded the first word—a place name—to be found in a quipu (pronounced KWEE-poo), and have also identified what some of the many numbers in the quipu records may be referring to. Though a single word would be just the first step in a very long road, it would open the possibility of discovering a whole new level of meaning in the quipus. It could also resolve a longstanding controversy by establishing that quipus included a writing system and were not just personal mnemonic devices understood only by the person who made them, as some scholars have maintained. That in turn would help explain the "Inca paradox," that among states of large size and administrative complexity the Inca empire stands out as the only one that apparently did not invent writing. The paradox would be resolved if indeed the quipu encodes a writing system as well as numbers. The Harvard researchers also have ideas about the nature of the item being so carefully tallied in the quipus under study: units of labor, like an ancient time log. The Inca empire, which lasted from about 1450 to 1532, depended on tribute levied in the form of a labor tax. Because of the importance of the tax for building the imperial roads and other public works, both the requisition and delivery of the labor days owed in tax were likely to have been carefully recorded by the Inca bureaucrats. Quipus were used both by high officials to issue instructions and by lower officials to report what they had done. It is easy to imagine a diligent accountant wanting to compare the outgoing quipu, or a copy of it, with the incoming response quipu. Since the quipu could represent instructions sent to the ruler of Puruchuco from the provincial governor, or accounting records sent from Puruchuco to the governor, it would have been useful for the records to carry a tag identifying the place they referred to. As it happens, all the quipu in the two top summarizing layers carry an initial set of knots designating three ones, as if 1-1-1 designated the place name for Puruchuco. The lowest level quipus do not carry this ZIP code, perhaps because they never left Puruchuco and so didn't need one. If this interpretation is accepted by other scholars, it would be the first meaning beyond the number system to be identified in quipus, Dr. Urton said. Galen Brokaw, a quipu expert at the State University of New York at Buffalo, said it was plausible to suggest the numbers being tallied in many quipu referred to the labor tax. Dr. Urton's identification of 1-1-1 as a place name would, if confirmed, be "a substantive contribution to understanding how quipu worked," Dr. Brokaw said. The proposal is fascinating, he said, but hard to verify because the provenance of most quipu is unknown. Only 700 or so quipus have been preserved, since the Spanish destroyed them as a matter of policy. About two-thirds are clearly numerical records, with knots placed in a series of levels, each corresponding to a power of 10. But scholars have been baffled by the nature of the remaining third, which embody some different meaning. Those who believe the nonnumerical quipus were just personal mnemonic devices cite a 17th-century Jesuit chronicler who reported that each quipu maker could understand only his own quipu, not those of others. But the chronicler may have been misinformed, Dr. Urton wrote in his book Signs of the Inka Khipu, because his report was made 70 years after the Spanish authorities in Lima had condemned quipu as idolatrous in a decree of 1583 and had ordered them burned. Dr. Urton believes that the Puruchuco hierarchy of quipus would have been made by different people and hence show information passing between them via quipu. This would be a significant finding, if true, since it points to the quipu encoding generally understood signs, not a personal set of signs.

Luanda was built by the【B1】______ on a sweeping bay over the【B2】______. It is certainly not "【B3】______" today. In the city centre the piles of【B4】______ have gone-public squares【B5】______clean, trees【B6】______, there's even the odd【B7】______. Its economy grew by more than【B8】______last year and it's been【B9】______ years of peace now. So people are【B10】______ into Luanda. For【B11】______ years it has been too dangerous for Angolans to travel around their own country but now they relish the【B12】______ to do so. The rest of the railway, all the way to the【B13】______, will be【B14】______, and【B15】______ within three【B16】______.People believed that if the trains ran there, they could send their【B17】______ to school and their【B18】______ to market. In theory Angola is a【B19】______ ruled by【B20】______.

Our feverish planet badly needs a cure. It was probably always too much to believe that human beings would be responsible stewards of the planet. Yet make a mess we have. If droughts and wildfires, floods and crop failures, collapsing climate-sensitive species and the images of drowning polar bears didn't quiet most of the remaining global-warming doubters, the hurricane-driven destruction of New Orleans did. This past year was the hottest on record in the US. The deceptively normal average temperature this winter masked record-breaking highs in December and record-breaking lows in February. That's the sign not of a planet keeping an even strain but of one thrashing through the alternating chills and night sweats of a serious illness. A crisis of this magnitude clearly calls for action that is both bottom-up and top-down. Though there is some debate about how much difference individuals can make, there is little question that the most powerful players— government and industry—have to take the lead. Still, individuals too can move the carbon needle. Cleaning up the wreckage left by our 250-year industrial bacchanal will require fundamental changes in a society hooked on its fossil fuels. Beneath the grass-roots action, larger tectonic plates are shifting. Science is attacking the problem more aggressively than ever. So is industry. So are architects and lawmakers and urban planners. The world is awakened to the problem in a way it never has been before.

Radio's got a problem. Although some 200 million people tune in each week to hear their favorite overcaffeinated DJ or catch those crucial rush-hour traffic updates, it's getting tougher to hold listeners' attention. Facing flat revenues and competition ranging from iPods to music phones, the 87-year-old industry is scrambling to reinvent itself. But not even satellite radio or the new HD format addresses this analog medium's fundamental flaw: it doesn't give people any say in which songs they hear. If you don't like a track or a DJ, your only option is to turn the dial—or turn it off. That could change if the pioneers behind personalized radio continue to win over music lovers who are burned out on regular radio but can't be bothered to constantly refresh their iPods with 99￠ iTunes. On websites such as Last.fm, Pandora.com and the new Slacker.com personalized radio lets you train it to understand your tastes. You can, of course, just listen to the music passively as it plays on your computer. But it's even better when you make it your own, by marking each song as a favorite, skipping past it or banishing it from the station's playlist altogether. And despite growing concern about how proposed new royalty fees for Internet radio stations could hamper the industry's growth, on May 23 Sprint became the first wireless carrier to offer personalized radio on its phones. Each customizable radio service has its own way of assessing what you like. Pandora refers to its database of more than 600,000 major-label songs—all of which have been categorized by musical attributes such as voice, tonality and chromatic harmony—then serves up similar-sounding tracks. That can get a little monotonous, so Slacker, which launched in March, uses professional DJs to dream up constantly changing playlists that give you more variety while still adhering to your basic tastes. If you ask for Gwen Stefani, for example, you'll also get the Cars, Talking Heads and Bjork in addition to more obvious matches such as Blondie and Madonna. And Last.fm, which is based in London, taps into the collective wisdom of its 20 million users worldwide. For example, if you like Beyonce, and other Last.fm members who like Beyonce also listen to Mary J. Blige, then the service will put Mary on your playlist as well. Personalized radio isn't just a quirky idea for tech geeks to fawn over and venture capitalists to gamble their millions on. Although its revenues are minuscule compared with the $21 billion of the terrestrial-radio industry, more than 4 million people in the US visit Pandora and Last.fm each month, according to comScore Media Metrix. That makes them the fifth and sixth most popular Web radio stations in the country. "It's the ideal middle ground between having an intact experience and being in control of what you receive," says Last.fm co-founder Martin Stiksel. Making personalized radio portable could be the key to its long-term success. "The biggest problem with Internet radio is that it's stuck on the PC," says Slacker CEO Dennis Mudd. "What you really want is this device you can play in your living room, in your car or in the desert walking around." In addition to Sprint's move to put Pandora on phones, SanDisk recently demonstrated a prototype portable player that could run Pandora, and Slacker plans to sell a $150 iPod-like player this summer that can get wireless music downloads from its website. Unlike iTunes, music from Slacker is free. "Most people don't want to pay for radio," says Mudd, who hopes to bring in revenue through audio advertising spots. That model is showing some promise. The overall Internet-radio market brought in more than $400 million in ad revenue last year, according to JPMorgan Chase. About half of that came from online ads on websites owned by conventional radio broadcasters like CBS Radio and Clear Channel. "Internet radio, when you tie it in with our business model, I think it works," says Clear Channel CEO Mark Mays, who is beefing up his stations' Web presence with online videos and promotions. Even old-school DJs see the appeal of personalized radio. Elvis Duran, who hosts a popular morning show on New York City's Z100, says he could imagine a future in which listeners wake up to some comedy and conversation from the show followed by three songs tailored to their tastes. But he doesn't expect live DJs to become obsolete: "When people wake up in the morning, it's good to hear some people who are talking about interesting topics and who let you know, hey, the world's still spinning and I can go out there." Good idea. No wonder Apple never built a radio tuner in the iPod: it's scared of the competition.

Suicide bombers in Iraq have staged a deadly surge of their own, striking three targets on Mondays— including the highly fortified Mansour Hotel in central Baghdad. Early reports put the combined death toll at 50, and climbing. But how are militant groups sneaking their bombs and bombers past the giant security dragnet around Baghdad? There are over 70,000 US and Iraqi soldiers and Iraqi policemen spread across the city, conducting house-to-house searches and street patrols, walling off entire neighborhoods and setting up hundreds of checkpoints. An ongoing TIME investigation has turned up several tactics insurgents use to evade detection and get past the security arrangements. Most of the tactics are designed to exploit the ineptitude of Iraqi security forces—the 30,000 soldiers and 21,000 police who are meant to support US troops. Lacking in training, equipment and motivation, the Iraqis are the soft underbelly of the surge. A US military internal assessment of the surge in late May showed that they are often unable to perform the simplest tasks, like manning checkpoints. And insurgent groups take full advantage, easily slipping men and munitions in and out of neighborhoods guarded by Iraqi soldiers and police. The simplest ruses work best, as the field commander of one insurgent group told me: "They never check cars with families, or children, or old people. If you have a woman passenger, you can drive past 50 checkpoints with a trunk full of C4, and you won't be stopped once." Even so, some insurgent groups are taking precautions, giving their fighters new ID cards and papers with government markings that look remarkably authentic. Some don't need to: another insurgent commander told me his group has recruited many government officials and even soldiers. "I'm bringing weapons into the city in official cars," he said. In the Abu Ghraib area west of Baghdad, some fighters in the Brigades of the 1920 Revolution say they have been ordered to sign up for the Iraqi Army in order to get official papers that would allow them to move freely in the city. Perhaps the most telling indication of the ineffectiveness of Iraq checkpoints is that the black market prices of weapons and ammunition have remained unchanged since the start of the surge. A Chinese-made AK-47, the cheapest on the market, goes for $200, the same price as in January; the Russian model is similarly unchanged at $700. A crate of 750 bullets is now cheaper at $325; the January price was $400. The incompetence of Iraqi forces helps to explain why, after a sharp drop in the early weeks of the surge, the civilian death toll from sectarian violence has begun to climb. Nearly 2,000 Iraqis were killed in May, the highest since the start of the security crackdown. The familiar signs of Shi'ite militia activity have returned: grossly mutilated bodies of Sunnis are turning up in the streets and Sunni residents in mixed neighborhoods are again being forced out of their homes. Sunni suicide bombings have multiplied, too. At least one Sunni group has adapted its "martyrdom operations" to eliminate the risk to its own fighters. The al-Qaeda-linked Ayesha Brigade plants bombs in cars owned by Shi'ites and, when the unwitting owners drive them into a crowded area, detonate them by remote control. The videotape of one such operation, bearing the date stamp March 26, was showed to TIME by an insurgent who said he had participated in at least six such operations. (We were not allowed to make a copy since the video had not been edited and the faces of several of the Ayesha Brigade fighters were clearly visible.) In the video, a Shi'ite man named Hassan is "kidnapped" by fighters claiming to represent the Mahdi Army, a well-known Shi'ite militia. When he claims to have connections in the militia, they let him go and follow his car at a discreet distance. The man operating the camera intones, "He doesn't know that while he was being interrogated, we put a bomb in the boot." Hassan's car is waved through two police checkpoints before it arrives at a crowded square named after the 19th century Iraqi poet al-Rusafi. When he stops, the cameraman begins to shout, "God is great! God is great!" A man sitting next to him is shown dialing a cellphone, evidently to set off the bomb. A huge explosion is heard, and the video ends with scenes of people fleeing from the scene. Iraqi authorities have confirmed that two men were killed and seven injured in a March 26 bombing in Rusafi Square, but would not say if the Ayesha Brigade was involved.

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

There may be nothing more American than the home-mortgage deduction which came into being in 1913— two years before the New York Yankees wore pinstripes. This deduction has helped make the American Dream affordable and has contributed to a run-up in the homeownership rate to 69% from 44% during World War II. In recent years, the mortgage deduction hasn't just helped folks get into a house, it has given them the most valuable tool for managing their finances since the piggy bank: tax-deductible home-equity loans and lines of credit. Just try to find a rate on a credit card or construction loan that, after adjusting for taxes, comes to around 4%, as it does with home-equity borrowing. People have been tapping into this low-cost source of funds for college tuition, vacations and other spending that bailed us out of the last recession. Now they want to take it away. A presidential panel last week suggested eliminating the interest deduction on all types of home-equity borrowing and replacing it with a 15% tax credit for a principal residence. Is this lunacy? From the homeowner's perspective, it sure seems like it. Lawmakers have toyed with curbing the mortgage deduction for 30 years, both for utilitarian reasons (to boost tax revenue) and philosophical ones (to make the tax code less favorable to the wealthy). Yet each time the idea has surfaced it has been swatted away amid public outrage and the battle cries of every real estate lobbyist not sunning at his second home on Fiji. This time the outrage may be even more shrill, given the fears of a real estate bubble about to burst. "We are raising the loudest possible alarms," said Tom Stevens, president of the National Association of Realtor, which along with the Mortgage Bankers Association and other industry players concludes that losing the deduction would drive home prices as much as 15% lower, sap consumer confidence and imperil the economy. "You could not pick a worse time to bring this up," says Edward Yingling, president of the American Bankers Association. "The housing market is already testy." Indeed, mortgage rates rose last week to 6.31% for the average 30-year, fixed-rate deal—the highest level in 16 months. With higher borrowing costs, mortgage applications have been falling and home prices have been leveling off in many markets. Taking away the mortgage deduction would further boost the cost of buying even proponents of scrapping the deduction concede that home prices would take a hit, though they say the brunt would be taken at the high end of the market-homes at $1 million and up. Yet from a broader economic perspective, dropping mortgage interest deductions has a certain appeal. For starters, it's only one part of a program that would reform the tax code without changing the burden on the average American. It would raise some taxes only as much as it cuts others. The real target is the alternative minimum tax (AMT), designed years ago to prevent millionaires from avoiding tax, but now increasingly encroaching upon the middle class. Next year the AMT will raise the burden of 21 million taxpayers earning as little as $75,000. But to replace the $12 trillion that the tax would bring in over the next 10 years, something sacred had to go, and that's where mortgage deductions come in. Of course, not extending the recent tax cut due to expire by 2010 (capital gains, estate, child credit) would do the same trick, economists say. But under the President's orders, that option was off-limits. On some levels the mortgage deduction has outlived its usefulness, anyway. Homeownership in the US is among the highest in the world. Deductible mortgage interest appears to be subsidizing vacation homes and McMansions now, not entry-level housing. As a nation we are throwing so many resources at real estate that we may be under investing in other critical parts of the economy. While spending on homes in at a record 18% of GDP, our savings rate is nil and the stock market is going nowhere. But don't worry: the proposal won't get past the blueprints soon. "We all realize the home mortgage deduction is near and dear to the taxpayer," says James Poterba, an economist at MIT. who was on the panel. "But whenever we get to the moment of truth, Congress and the President are going to have to look at it. We believe we've provided important guidelines." In fact, the debate may have another, hidden benefit. If it stirs concern, maybe we'll start to rethink our move-up plans, put our money someplace more productive—and gently let air out of the housing bubble before it's too late.

The British public's vote to leave the EU has set off political and scientific shock waves that could roil Europe and the world for years to come. The decision has dismayed scientists in the UK and across Europe, as it stands to disrupt scientific funding and the UK's stature in the European and international research communities. The UK could spend two years or more negotiating the terms of its divorce from the 28-member economic and political bloc. In that time, the country will have to work through many difficult questions about what the separation means for scientists and for global science policy. The breakup engenders concerns that the UK could suffer a brain drain, either because their funding suffers or because the loss of the EU guarantee of free movement across member states causes scientists to lose their status in the UK, or to not feel welcome. The Brexit might possibly cause potential damage to the UK's reputation as a destination for top-flight researchers. Also at stake is European funding for the UK's research universities, which totals more than a billion pounds per year. The UK's departure from the EU may also diminish the country's role in influencing the union's research plans. "In almost every area of science now, you can't be a lone wolf and do it on your own," says Philip Jones, research director of the University of East Anglia. "You have to work with others. And the EU provides that potential. "

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Since a gigantic Sainsbury is my local corner shop, I have a purseful of those coupons: "Here's ￡l. 45 off your next visit", etc. But lately I've felt 1 deserve another voucher: "Here's a tax rebate on the cash you pay our low-paid workers so they can subsist. " The chances are they couldn't get by without you. A survey of Sainsbury employees by Unite last year found that 60% relied upon government working tax credits to top up their salaries. Even so, in the previous six months, a third had resorted to borrowing money to settle their bills. Low pay is always seen as a leftie, bleeding-heart issue. Poor oppressed workers. Aux barricades! Rather it should raise the blood pressure of every taxpayer. The constant conniptions of supermarkets competing for market share, discounting their rivals, fighting off the German upstarts Aldi and Lidl, distract from the fact that they are vastly wealthy. Sainsbury's underlying profits for 2012-13 were ￡758 million: these have trebled in a decade. Who could begrudge Sainsbury's new CEO Mike Coupe his ￡900,000 basic salary, if only he paid all his 157,000 retail staff enough to live on without you and me chipping in? But he doesn't and, bizarrely, no one is inclined to make him. Voters abhor a high welfare bill or the notion that benefits arc rising faster than wages. But if the chancellor wanted to take ￡300 a year from every low-paid household, ￡490 from families with children, could he not at least have added: "I call upon our friends in business to make up the difference: to help cut the welfare bill, by paying all their employees a living wage. " Because the problem is not just soaring welfare but stagnating wages. For the first time in British history, the majority of those classified in poverty already have jobs. In the last decade, food bills have increased by 44% , energy costs more than doubled, but even now that the economy has rallied, wages have barely picked up. Now 5. 2 million of the workforce are paid below a rate at which decent life is sustainable. And since, without government support, families on minimum wage would barely be able to feed their children, in-work benefits cost taxpayers ￡28 billion a year. During the Tory and Labour conferences, much was said about "political disconnect" —the angry distrust voters feel towards the major Westminster parties. It was ascribed to ideological differences on Europe. But deep down, it's about money, stupid. Life is a trudge and people see no one capable of lightening their step. The idea that prosperity should be shared, increased productivity linked to wages, fell apart in the 1980s. As Warren Buffett said recently, the class war was won "by my class, the rich class". Employees know that even low-paid jobs are precious, that if they contemplate something as audaciously retro as striking, a pool of labour could rush to take their place. Companies relish their upper hand, play the austerity card during pay rounds even now times are better. When the retailer Next was asked why, despite record profits, its wages were still below the living wage, it replied that since 30 people applied for every job advertised, how could it be paying too little? While the executive googles ski-breaks in Verbier, the cleaner emptying his bin walks to work to save on bus fares. The low-paid don't merely have less stuff: they have less stable relationships and weaker health. Are their struggles invisible to those who pay their terrible salaries, or do they not care? I was encouraged to read in the report by the Living Wage Commission that not all lack heart. Sir John Bond, then chairman of HSBC, was moved by a speech from a Canary Wharf cleaner. Both then introduced the living wage. Indeed Guy Stallard of KPMG, whose company has paid it since 2006, says staff turnover is lower and morale up. Give people the means to be fully human and they will be loyal. Now eight companies on the FTSE 100 index pay the living wage. But in retail, which has the biggest proportion of low-paid workers, not a single high street name has signed up. These days our only political muscle is as consumers, choosing Fairtrade, making ethical investments. And there would be great kudos for the first of the big four supermarkets who stopped sitting on its mega-profits while adding staff wage bills to the welfare tab.

While summer tourists floated through Venice's timeless splendor this week, the city was also hosting some visitors with little time to waste. Among them was the bishop from Jerusalem warning of the "hemorrhaging" of Christians from the Holy Land. Another prelate told of a letter sent last month by pro-Taliban elements to 50 Pakistani Christian families in the Afghan border town of Charsadda, offering them the choice between converting to Islam or being killed. And, amidst the mass exodus of Iraqi Christians and the recent killing of two priests by Muslim radicals, the Archbishop of Kirkuk had to cancel his trip to Venice, although his RSVP email was read aloud: "We don't have Christian militias to defend ourselves," wrote Archbishop Louis Sako. "The situation is getting worse, and I must stay with the faithful during these bad times." It was the challenge of Christian coexistence with Muslims that formed the focus of this week's gathering of 15 Catholic leaders and scholars from Islamic-majority countries who made it to Venice this week. And nowhere is that challenge more acute than among Christians living in Muslim countries. Says Fouad Twal, Coadjutor Archbishop of Jerusalem: "We ask that when Western leaders make decisions concerning the Middle East, they also consider the presence of Christians there. Rarely does anyone ask our opinion, for we can be of great help," says Twal. "We are rooted in the region. The Muslim world is our world." One Western leader who has made a point of listening to the concerns of the Christians of the Muslim world is Venice's Cardinal Angelo Scola, host of the two-day encounter at the 17th century Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute. Scola is rapidly becoming Catholicism's most influential voice—beyond the Pope himself—on matters related to the Muslim world. From Venice, which for centuries has served as a bridge between civilizations, the Cardinal founded Oasis, a cultural and study center and twice-annual journal that gathers perspectives from Catholics in Muslim countries. The initiative is both as a way to safeguard the rights of Christian minorities, and to promote mutual understanding between the Church and Islam. "We gain knowledge about the different forms of Islam by starting with what the Christians living in these various realities suggest to us," Scola said. In the past, many in the Vatican hierarchy believed it was too risky to raise the issues of religious liberty and violence in Islamic countries. "Sometimes we have been too timid," Scola said. "We can't stay quiet. We want the encounter. It is vital to distinguish fundamentalism not just from the so-called 'moderate' Muslims, which can be an ambiguous term, but from the masses in the Islamic world." Scola hopes that working with Christians in Islamic countries will also help Europe better face the challenges post by its growing Muslim immigrant population. Focused on what he calls the "hybridization" of cultures that comes with mass migration, Scola says the challenge is finding a balance between integrating new populations and maintaining the identity of the native culture. The current level of political tension in a number of different Muslim countries placed much of the event's attention on issues of security and violence. Several of the prelates asked not to be identified by name or country, fearing reprisal. One bishop said: "Extremists are very much still in the minority, but the situation is deteriorating, and there is more and more intolerance. Being here and listening to others, a similar picture emerges. The fundamentalists are networking." Though controversial, Pope Benedict XVFs speech last September in Regensberg about faith, reason and violence continues to be cited as a turning point in the Muslim-Christian debate. Scola, who has known the Pope since 1971, expands on the ideas in the Regensberg address. "Violence is not in itself a sign of the absence of religion. It occurs when the worst poisons of the surrounding culture have infested religion," says Scola. "You need a strong link between faith and reason in order to purify religion." Cairo-born, Beirut-based Professor Samir Khalil Samir, a Jesuit expert on Islam, says that Benedict is "going farther?(and) deeper" in his approach toward the Muslim world than Pope John Paul II. "He does not want to reduce or to chill the dialogue," Samir says of Benedict. "But he is looking for a dialogue that is real, rather than diplomatic. We are not looking for conflict, but we're also not going to avoid the hot points."

Sexual allure is often hinted as being the prize for buying this or that. Yet advertising wares during commercial breaks in programmes with an erotic theme can be tricky: the minds of viewers tend to be preoccupied with what they have just seen and the advertisement is ignored. New research now suggests that even if the commercial is made sexually enticing, people still fail to remember it. Ellie Parker and Adrian Furnham of University College London devised an experiment to test three ideas. The first was to confirm that men and women alike would struggle to remember the brand of a product that was advertised during a break in a programme that contained sex. The second was that commercials that had an erotic element would be recalled more readily than those that did not. Finally they wanted to know whether people would remember the advertisement more easily if its theme contrasted with the programme into which it had been inserted. They recruited 60 young adults and divided them into four groups. The first and third groups were treated to an episode of Sex and the City called "Was it good for you?" in which the four female characters try to ascertain whether they are good in bed. It includes kissing, foreplay, nudity and sex scenes, and a discussion of the merits of sex, sexual failings and homosexuality. The second and fourth groups were shown an episode of Malcolm in the Middle, about the second-eldest of three boys raised at home in a dysfunctional family. It contained no such titillating material. During a commercial break in the screenings, the researchers showed the first and second groups a series of six advertisements for products including shampoo, perfume and beer, all of which played on sex. The third and fourth groups were also shown a series of six advertisements for the same type of products that did not employ eroticism. They then asked their subjects about what they had seen. The results are published in the March issue of Applied Cognitive Psychology. Those who had watched Sex and the City could remember little other than the programme. They were less able to name which brands had been advertised than were the groups that had watched Malcolm in the Middle, whether or not the advertisement tried to be sexy. Even when the researchers prompted their recall, by naming the type of product that had been advertised, the viewers of Sex and the City failed to remember what they had seen, compared with the groups that had seen more mundane scenes. To test the second hypothesis, the researchers compared the recollections of those who had seen the advertisements that used the promise of sexual allure with those of the people who saw advertisements that did not titillate. They found no significant difference between the two groups. There was, however, a difference between the sexes: men were more likely to remember sexual advertisements (albeit not the brand advertised) whereas women were more likely to remember non-sexual advertisements. Finally the researchers tested to see whether the people who had watched Sex and the City combined with non-sexual commercials and those who had watched Malcolm in the Middle combined with sexual commercials remembered what was being advertised better than those shown more homogenous fare. Again, they found no significant difference between the two groups; this time, men and women reacted in the same way. Earlier work has suggested that sex and violence in television programmes deter people from paying attention to advertisements, but speculated that this may be overcome by using sex in the commercials as well. The new work suggests that this view is mistaken. It would appear that sex does not sell anything other than itself.

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This is what Africa has in abundance, space, almost 12 million square miles of desert, savanna, coastline, and people, 700 million in sub-Saharan Africa, 11% of the planets population, more than half of them children, and almost all of them poor. This too is what Africa has in abundance, poverty. Sub-Saharan Africa is【C1】______, almost half the people here live on less than 65 cents a day, not enough money, not enough food. One in three Africans is undernourished, malnutrition is a【C2】______ here, one in five children die before reaching the age of five. So many lives are short,【C3】______ is just over 45 years, often less for women, who die bearing children, die of AIDS. Sub-Saharan Africa has just【C4】______, but close to 70% of all people living with HIV, more than 29 million people. 58% of them, women. More than 16 million Africans【C5】______, that's the population of Hong Kong, Denmark and Ireland combined. 12 million children have【C6】______, many of them like these in Uganda HIV positive. HIV, AIDS is only one disease plaguing Africa. Malaria kills almost 【C7】______. Measles kills more than a thousand children every day. That's one child nearly every minute. Measles can【C8】______, but in sub-Saharan Africa only about a half of all children are immunized during the first year of life.【C9】______ in Nigeria let polio, which was nearly eradicated in the world, takes route again, spread to 17 previously polio-free countries. There is no vaccine【C10】______; the best prevention is clean water, which more than 300 million Africans don't have. Water of any kind 【C11】______, or so distant, that the working years of many lives are spent hauling water. Work for most is hard.【C12】______, labour as farmers, grow what they can, where they can, and get it to market however they can. Across sub-Saharan Africa economic growth is low, slow, and【C13】______. Corruption is another kind of plague here. And so is war. One in every five Africans lives in a society【C14】______, armed conflict has ruptured nearly half of all the countries in sub-Saharan Africa in the past 5 years. Most horribly in Liberia, Congo, Darfur, and Sudan. Uncounted millions have【C15】______. Without stability and good government progress is limited, so is the willingness of donors to give and investors to invest to bring【C16】______ into the modern world. To improve education, 41% of Africans cannot read or write, as many as half of all African children【C17】______. Even those who complete high school are ill-equipped to be part of a 21st-century work force, or the technological age. Less than one percent of the African population has a computer; only one in forty owns a telephone. Yet Africa【C18】______ beneath the surface, literally in minerals, gold, cobalt, copper, diamonds and in oil. Sub-Saharan African countries will earn more than 200 billion dollars in oil revenues【C19】______. And Africa has incalculable wealth in its people, who are among the most perseverant and resilient on Earth, who want and have【C20】______, and in a growing number of African countries free elections.

{{B}}Part A Directions: In this part of the test, you will hear 2 passages in English. After you have heard each paragraph, interpret it into Chinese. Start interpreting at the signal.., and stop it at the signal...You may take notes while you are listening. Remember you will hear the passages ONLY ONCE. Now let us begin Part A with the first passage.{{/B}}

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From its birth, three powerful images have coloured ideas of what the United States was and what it stood for. One was "a city on a hill", a model commonwealth for the rest of humankind. Another, in Walt Whitman's phrase, was a "teeming nation of nations": a near-empty continent of immigration and fresh starts. A third, given currency by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831, was of a new and exceptional kind of society not bound by prevailing rules of history. Each picture stresses what makes America different from other countries. Thomas Bender, a professor of history and humanities at New York University, wants us to focus instead on what makes the United States the same. More exactly, he is urging us to re-think key episodes in America's past by relating them to what was happening elsewhere in the world. The United States, he suggests, is less of a nation apart than super-patriots or America-haters might want to believe. His aim is not to belittle the American achievement but to break the habit of treating it as a virtually isolated feat of self-creation. National histories, he argues, are always local responses to broader trends, and to that rule the United States is no exception. Five episodes form the core of this challenging essay. "The Ocean World" contrasts the conventional account of American beginnings, which stresses political ideals, religious freedom and economic opportunity, with a wider view that brings in sea-borne trade and slavery. Next, Mr. Bender treats the American Revolution as a by-product of the "great war" mat France and Britain fought off and on throughout the 18th century until the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. The American civil war (1861-1865) becomes part of the democratic era of nation building that began with the European revolutions of 1848. The United States did not join Europe's scramble for empire at the end of the 19th century as a colonising power. But it fought a terrible war to control the Philippines, set a pattern of intervention in its own hemisphere and in Asia, and established a doctrine of untrammeled sea power that survives to this day. For his fifth episode, Mr. Bender likens the progressive social reforms of the 1890s onwards to changes Europeans also made to temper the free market. The breadth of view is exhilarating, and the reading daunting in scope. Mr. Bender dots his essay with awkward reminders that the American past was not a smooth, inevitable rise to superpowerdom and moral beaconhood. Yet "A Nation Among Nations" suffers from an ambiguity of aim. At several points Mr. Bender talks of a global story in which the United States has a local part. What is that story? He does not say. This is not his fault. Only the rashest of historians would nowadays dream of telling us, Hegel-wise, where the spirit of world history had come from and where it was headed. Nor is gesturing towards "global trends" much help: ocean trade, nationalism and democracy, for example, are such broad categories they explain little of the local variation that puzzles us, especially when the locale is the United States, with its oddities—a high birth rate and strong religions, for example—that modern states are supposed not to have. For the rest, Mr. Bender is more modest, and more successful. American failures and successes are usually so large it is easy to forget that they are seldom unique or insulated from events elsewhere. The simple-sounding truth that the United States never was, and never could be, isolated from the world is worth repeating, and Mr. Bender repeats it well.