SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS PASSAGE ONE Richard Satava, program manager for advanced medical technologies, has been a driving force in bringing virtual reality to medicine, where computers create a "virtual" or simulated environment for surgeons and other medical practitioners. "With virtual reality we"ll be able to put a surgeon in every trench," said Satava. He envisaged a time when soldiers who are wounded fighting overseas are put in mobile surgical units equipped with computers. The computers would transmit images of the soldiers to surgeons back in the U.S. The surgeons would look at the soldier through virtual reality helmets that contain a small screen displaying the image of the wound. The doctors would guide robotic instruments in the battlefield mobile surgical unit that operate on the soldier. Although Satava"s vision may be years away from standard operating procedure, scientists are progressing toward virtual reality surgery. Engineers at an international organization in California are developing a tele-operating device. As surgeons watch a three-dimensional image of the surgery, they move instruments that are connected to a computer, which passes their movements to robotic instruments that perform the surgery. The computer provides feedback to the surgeon on force, textures, and sound. These technological wonders may not yet be part of the community hospital setting but increasingly some of the machinery is finding its way into civilian medicine. At Wayne State University Medical School, surgeon Lucia Zamorano takes images of the brain from computerized scans and uses a computer program to produce a 3-D image. She can then maneuver the 3-D image on the computer screen to map the shortest, least invasive surgical path to the tumor. Zamorano is also using technology that attaches a probe to surgical instruments so that she can track their positions. While cutting away a tumor deep in the brain, she watches the movement of her surgical tools in a computer graphics image of the patient"s brain taken before surgery. During these procedures—operations that are done through small cuts in the body in which a miniature camera and surgical tools are maneuvered—surgeons are wearing 3-D glasses for a better view. And they are commanding robot surgeons to cut away tissue more accurately than human surgeons can. Satava says, "We are in the midst of a fundamental change in the field of medicine." PASSAGE TWO Tourism develops culture. It broadens the thinking of the traveler and leads to culture contact between the hosts and guests from far-off places. This can benefit the locals, since tourists bring culture with them. Tourism may help to preserve indigenous customs, as when traditional shows, parades, celebrations and festivals are put on for tourists. The musicals, plays and serious drama of London theatres and other kinds of nightlife are largely supported by tourists. Such events might disappear without the stimulus of tourism to maintain them. On the other hand, tourism often contributes to the disappearance of local radiations and folklore. Churches, temples and similar places of worship are treated as tourist attractions. This can be at the expense of their original function: how many believers want to worship in the middle of a flow of atheist invaders? Who would want to pray while curious onlookers shuffle to and fro with guide books, rather than prayer books, in their hands? Tourism may bring other indirect cultural consequences in its wake. Tensions which already exist between ancient and more modem ways may be deepened by tourists" ignorance of local customs and beliefs. Tourists, if not actually richer, often seem more well-off than natives. The former may therefore feel superior, leaving the latter embarrassed about their lifestyles. The result maybe an inferior feeling which hardly helps the sense of identity which is so important to regional culture. The poverty of a locality can look even worse when contrasted with the comfortable hotel environment where the average life expectancy is 75 years, may well generate resentment in Sierra Leone, where the local population can expect to live to no more than 41 years. The relative prosperity of tourists may encourage crime. In Gambia, unemployed young people offer to act as "professional friend"—guides, companions or sexual partners in return for money. When the tourism season is over they can no longer get wages that way so they turn to petty stealing from the local populace. All this affects the local social life and culture adversely. Culture erosion can also take place at more subtle levels. Greek villagers traditionally prided themselves on their hospitality. They would put up travelers for free, feeding them and listening to their stories. To take money would have been a disgrace. That has changed now. Tourists exist to be exploited. Perhaps this is hardly surprising if the earnings from one room rented to a tourist can exceed a teacher"s monthly salary. PASSAGE THREE During the holiday I received no letter from Myrtle and when I returned to the town she had gone away. I telephoned each day until she came back, and then she said she was going to a party. I put up with her new tactics patiently. The next time we spent an evening together there was no quarrel. To avoid it I took Myrtle to the cinema. We did not mention Haxby. On the other hand it was impossible to pretend that either of us was happy. Myrtle"s expression of unhappiness was deepening. Day by day I watched her sink into a bout of despair, and I concluded it was my fault— had I not concluded it was my fault, the looks Myrtle gave me would rapidly have concluded it for me. The topic of conversation we avoided above all others was the project of going to America. I cursed the tactlessness of Robert and Tom in talking about it in front of her before I had had time to prepare her for it. I felt aggrieved, as one does after doing wrong and being found out. I did not know what to do. When you go to the theatre you see a number of characters caught in a dramatic situation. What happens next? They usually do something and then everything is changed. My life is different. I never have scenes, and if I do, they are discouragingly not dramatic. Practically no action arises. And nothing whatsoever is changed. My life is not as good as a play. Nothing like it. All I did with my present situation was try and tide it over. When Myrtle emerged from the deepest blackness of despair—nobody after all, could remain there definitely—I tried to comfort her. I gradually unfolded all my plan, including those for her. She could come to America, too. She was a commercial artist. She could get a job and our relationship could continue as it was. And I will not swear that I did not think: "And in America she might even succeed in marrying me." It produced no effect. She began to drink more. She began to go to parties very frequently; it was very soon clear that she had decided to see less of me. I do not blame Myrtle. Had I been in her place I would have tried to do the same thing. Being in my place I tried to prevent her. I knew what sort of parties she was going to: they were parties at which Haxby was present. We began to wrangle over going out with each other. She was never free at the times I suggested. Sometimes, usually on a Saturday night, she first arranged to meet me and then changed her mind. I called that rubbing it in a little too far. But her behavior, I repeat, perfectly sensible. By seeing less of me she stood a chance of finding somebody else, or of making me jealous, or of both. Either way she could not lose. PASSAGE FOUR It was the spring of 1985, and President Reagan had just given Mother Teresa the Medal of Freedom in a Rose Garden ceremony. As she left, she walked down the corridor between the Oval Office and the West Wing drive, and there she was, turning my way. What a sight: a saint in a sari coming down the White House hall. As she came nearer, I could not help it: I bowed. "Mother", I said, "I just want to touch your hand." She looked up at me—it may have been one of Gods subtle jokes that his exalted child spent her life looking up to everyone else—and said only two words. Later I would realize that they were the message of her mission. "Lull Gott," she said. Love God. She pressed into my hand a poem she had written, as she glided away in a swoosh of habit. I took the poem from its frame the day she died. It is free verse, 79 lines, and is called "Mothers Meditation (in the Hospital)." In it she reflects on Christ"s question to his apostles: "Who do you say I am?" She notes that he was the boy born in Bethlehem, "put in the manager full of straw...kept warm by the breath of the donkey," who grew up to be "an ordinary man without much learning." Donkeys are not noble; straw is common; and it was among the ordinary and ignoble, the poor and sick, that she chose to labor. Her mission was for them and among them, and you have to be a pretty tough character to organize a little universe that exists to help people others aren"t interested in helping. That"s how she struck me when I met her as I watched her life. She was tough. There was the worn and weathered face, the abrupt and definite speech. We think saints are great organizers, great operators, and great combatants in the world. Once I saw her in a breathtaking act of courage. She was the speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington in 1995. All the Washington Establishment was there, plus a few thousand born-again Christians, orthodox Catholics and Jews, and searchers looking for a faith. Mother Teresa was introduced, and she spoke of God, of love, of families. She said we must love one another and care for one another. There were great purrs of agreement. But as the speech continued it became more pointed. She asked, "Do you do enough to make sure your parents, in the old people"s homes, feel your love? Do you bring them each day your joy and caring?" The baby boomers in the audience began to shift in their seats. And she continued. "I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion," she said, and then she told them why, in uncompromising term. For about 1.3 seconds there was complete silence, then applause built and swept across the room. But not everyone: the President and the First Lady, the Vice President and Mrs. Gore, looked like seated statues at Madame Tussauds, glistening in the lights and moving not a muscle. She didn"t stop there either, but went on to explain why artificial birth control is bad and why protestants who separate faith from works are making a mistake. When she was finished, there was almost no one she hadn"t offended. A US senator turned to his wife and said, "Is my jaw up yet?" Talk about speaking truth to power! But Mother Teresa didn"t care, and she wasn"t afraid. The poem she gave me included her personal answers to Christ"s questions. She said he is "the Truth to be told... the Way to be walked... the Light to be lit." She took her own advice and lived a whole life that showed it.

Why do many people criticize train travel?

SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS PASSAGE ONE People have been painting pictures for at least 30,000 years. The earliest pictures were painted by people who hunted animals. They used to paint pictures of the animals they wanted to catch and kill. Pictures of this kind have been found on the walls of caves in France and Spain. No one knows why they were painted there. Perhaps the painters thought that their pictures would help them to catch these animals. Or perhaps human beings have always wanted to tell stories in pictures. About 5,000 years ago the Egyptians and other people in the Near East began to use pictures as a kind of writing. They drew simple pictures or signs to represent things and ideas, and also to represent the sounds of their language. The signs these people used became a kind of alphabet. The Egyptians used to record information and to tell stories by putting picture-writing and pictures together. When an important person died, scenes and stories from his life were painted and carved on the walls of the place where he was buffed. Some of these pictures are like modem comic strip stories. It has been said that Egypt is the home of the comic strip. But, for the Egyptians, pictures still had magic power. So they did not try to make their way of writing simple. The ordinary people could not understand it. By the year 1,000 B.C., people who lived in the area around the Mediterranean Sea had developed a simpler system of writing. The signs they used were very easy to write, and there were fewer of them than in the Egyptian system. This was because each sign, or letter, represented only one sound in their language. The Greeks developed this system and formed the letters of the Greek alphabet. The Romans copied the idea, and the Roman alphabet is now used all over the world. These days we can write down a story, or record information, without using pictures. But we still need pictures of all kinds: drawing, photographs, signs and diagrams. We find them everywhere: in books and newspapers, in the streets, and on the walls of the places where we live and work. Pictures help us to understand and remember things more easily, and they can make a story much more interesting. PASSAGE TWO With its common interest in lawbreaking but its immense range of subject-matter and widely-varying methods of treatment, the crime novel could make a legitimate claim to be regarded as a separate branch of the traditional novel. The detective story is probably the most respectful (at any rate in the narrow sense of the word) of the crime species. Its creation is often the relaxation of university dons, literary economists, scientists or even poets. Fatalities may occur more frequently and mysteriously than might be expected in polite society, which is familiar to us, if not from our own experience, at least in the newspaper or the lives of friends. The characters, though normally realized superficially, are as recognizably human and consistent as our less intimate associates. Such story set in a more remote environment, African jungle or Australian bush, ancient China or gas-lit London, appeals to our interest in geography or history, and most detective story writers are conscientious in providing a reasonably authentic background. The elaborate, carefully-assembled plot, despised by the modem intellectual critics and creators of significant novels, has found refuge in the murder mystery, with its sprinkling of clues, its spicing with apparent impossibilities, all with appropriate solutions and explanations at the end. With the guilt of escapism from real life nagging gently, we secretly revel in the unmasking of evil by a vaguely super-human sleuth, who sees through and dispels the cloud of suspicion which has hovered so unjustly over the innocent. Though its villain also receives his rightful deserts, the thriller presents a less comfortable and credible world. The sequence of fist fights, revolver duels, car crashes and escapes from gas-filled cellars exhausts the reader far more than the hero, who, suffering from at least two broken ribs, one black eye, uncountable bruises and a hangover, can still chase and overpower an armed villain with the physique of a wrestler. He moves dangerously through a world of ruthless gangs, brutality, a vicious lust for power and money and, in contrast to the detective tale, with a near-omniscient arch-criminal whose defeat seems almost accidental. Perhaps we miss in the thriller the security of being safely led by our imperturbable investigator past a score of red herrings and blind avenues to a final gathering of suspects when an unchallengeable elucidation of all that has bewildered us is given and justice and goodness prevail. All that we vainly hope for from life is granted vicariously. PASSAGE THREE It is now June 1567. Two months previously the explosion to Kirk O"Field, which awakened Edinburgh, startled courts as far away as Rome. In the flash of gunpowder, England, France, and the Holy See received a pin-sharp picture of Scotland which shook even the hardened nerves of the sixteenth century. The Queen"s consort was murdered. The Queen was implicated. The Earl of Bothwell was more than implicated. Talk of love between them. No one minded murder in the sixteenth century; it was a good old Scottish custom, and elsewhere it was recognized as a political expedient. No one regretted the end of the miserable Darnley, a poor drunken coward; but what stirred the conscience of the age was the news that the Queen of Scotland was ready to bring her husband"s murderer not to the gallows but to her bed. Even Elizabeth, who was not Mary"s best friend, became human and wrote to her "dear cousin" imploring her to see justice done. But no: Mary Queen of Scots was fated to drink the cup of sorrow to the very end. Has any woman lived more violently, yet more mysteriously—for we shall never know her heart—than Mary in the last six months before Carberry Hill? There is the amazing evening in Edinburgh, when, surrounded by armed men, the lords of Scotland sign Bothwell"s document naming himself the Queen"s suitor (求婚者). There is the astonishing holdup outside Edinburgh with the Queen. What can we make of it? Was she his victim or did he fly to his brutality as to a stronghold? There is the silent ten-day honeymoon at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh with the angry murmur of the common people. Then, as if the drama had not been exhausted, we see Mary in flight, riding through the night disguised as a boy. She and her strong man ride out to meet her nobles at Carberry Hill. There is no battle; Bothwell offers to fight any man of equal rank in the opposing army. Mary will not hear of Bothwell"s fighting. Why? Surely because she loves him. She learns that the nobles are resolved on his death. Her heart is set on securing his escape. They say farewell, in great pain and anguish and with many long kisses. The lords escort her to Edinburgh, where a man cries out for her death. There is a terrible glimpse of her at a window, her hair about her shoulders, crying and appealing to the crowds to save her. The next day she is taken to Loch Leven, to a castle on an island. Mary"s long captivity had begun. PASSAGE FOUR All R&D (research and development) executives have two major responsibilities: (1) they must ensure that the company is supplied with technically successful projects, and (2) they must select the most promising schemes and ideas for the expenditure of R&D resources. This work is complicated by numerous uncertainties, inasmuch as commercial research and development must be based on market forecasts. If R&D management can provide a regular flow of new and updated products, the company will benefit in a number of ways. First of all, it will be able to make full use of expensive departmental resources, development engineering and available marketing capacity. In addition to that, a flow of new market winners will provide the business with steady growth income and profits. This can also be important psychologically, for it is often on this basis that those outside the company assess the quality of its management. The R&D department"s job is made more difficult because of the length of time required to complete its research. In the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, for example, it may take five to ten years before a product is a technical success and a further six to eight years before it reaches full commercial potential. To achieve results, R&D must define both the areas that should be investigated and the objectives that should be achieved in each area. For this reason, the R&D department must take an interest in all aspects of design, application, efficiency, and use of appropriate materials. There is a difference, however, between the development of new consumer products and the development of new industrial ones. For specific need, the development of consumer products is tailored to meet it. In many industrial markets, product development is the result of work down in the research laboratory, This work is often aimed at a general need, such as a new kind of medicine or higher operating speeds for machines. When the new industrial project has been developed, its performance can be analyzed in terms of customer needs.

Section A Multiple-Choice Questions Text A The many hours children spend indoors playing computer games or watching television may be to blame for a resurgence of rickets. Scientists say that rickets is becoming "disturbingly common" among British children. The disease is caused by chronic vitamin D deficiencies, which can be triggered by long periods out of natural sunlight and a poor diet. Writing in the British Medical Journal, Professor Simon Pearce and Tim Cheetham, of Newcastle University, called for milk and other food products to be supplemented with vitamin D in an attempt to counteract the problem. Vitamin D is produced naturally when the skin is exposed to sunlight, and is also found in a small number of foods, including oily fish, liver and egg yolks. Recent studies show that incidence of rickets, a disease previously linked with poverty in Victorian Britain or malnutrition in the developing world, is increasing. More than 20 new cases are discovered every year in Newcastle alone. Children with rickets do not grow properly and can develop bow legs. Professor Pearce said: "Kids tend to stay indoors more these days and play on their computers instead of enjoying the fresh air. This means their vitamin D levels are worse than in previous years." Dr. Cheetham, a senior lecturer in paediatric endocrinology, added: "I am dismayed by the increasing numbers of children we are treating with this entirely preventable condition. Fifty years ago many children would have been given regular doses of cod liver oil, but this practice has all but died out." Vitamin D deficiency has also been linked to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancers and the weakening of bones in adults. Half of all adults in Britain are estimated to suffer Vitamin D deficiency in the winter and spring—one in six severely so, with the problem worse in Scotland and the North of England. Asian populations and individuals who cover much of their skin for religious reasons are also at increased risk. Professor Pearce added: "We believe that a more robust approach to statutory food supplementation with vitamin D, for example in milk, is needed in the UK, as this measure has already been introduced successfully in many other countries in similar parts of the world." The Food Standards Agency has resisted calls for mandatory supplementation, insisting that "most people should be able to get all the vitamin D they need from their diet and by getting a little sun". It advises pregnant or breastfeeding women, and people over 60 to take 10 micrograms of vitamin D each day. "Taking 25 micrograms or less of vitamin D supplements a day is unlikely to cause any harm," it says. A study of 520,000 people from ten European countries, including Britain, has suggested that vitamin D supplements could also cut the risk of developing bowel cancer by 40 per cent. The research, led by Mazda Jenab, of the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France, confirmed the findings of earlier studies, which found that high blood levels of the vitamin were associated with a lower risk of colorectal cancer. However, the researchers said that it was unclear whether taking vitamin D supplements would provide better protection against developing cancer than the average levels that can be achieved with a balanced diet combined with regular exposure to sunlight. Text B What causes a sore throat? Many things can cause a sore throat. These causes include infections with viruses or bacteria and allergies. You should see your doctor right away if you have a sore throat with a high fever, if you have problems breathing or swallowing, or if you feel very faint. If you have a sore throat and a fever, but you just feel mildly ill, you should visit your doctor within the next day or two. How does the doctor decide if I need antibiotics? The decision to prescribe antibiotics might be based only on your history and physical exam. Antibiotics usually are prescribed only for patients who might have "strep throat," an infection caused by a bacteria called Streptococcus. A patient with strep throat might have a sore throat with fever that starts suddenly, without a cough or cold symptoms. Strep throat is very common in children from 5 to 12 years of age. The exam might show a red throat, with pus on the tonsils and swollen neck glands. If you have these signs, the doctor may do other tests to see if you need an antibiotic. Why not just give everyone antibiotics? Antibiotics have a small risk of causing an allergic reaction every time they are given. Some of these reactions are serious. Antibiotics can also cause other side effects, such as an upset stomach or diarrhea. An even more serious problem is that bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics if these medicines are used frequently in a lot of people. Then antibiotics wouldn"t be able to cure people"s illnesses. To prevent this from happening, doctors try to prescribe antibiotics only when they will help. Antibiotics only help when sore throat is caused by bacteria. Antibiotics don"t help when sore throat is due to viruses, which are the cause of the common cold. If my doctor doesn"t give me antibiotics, what can I do to feel better? It will take several days for you to feel better, no matter what kind of sore throat you have. You can do several things to help your symptoms. If you have a fever or muscle aches, you can take a pain reliever like acetaminophen (Tylenol), aspirin or ibuprofen (Advil). Your doctor can tell you which pain reliever will work best for you. Cough drops or throat sprays may help your sore throat. Sometimes gargling with warm salt water helps. Soft cold foods, such as ice cream and popsicles, often are easier to eat. Be sure to rest and to drink lots of water or other clear liquids , such as Sprite or 7-Up. Don"t drink drinks that have caffeine in them (coffee, tea, colas or other sodas). Should I be concerned about any other symptoms that occur after I visit my doctor? Sometimes symptoms change during the course of an illness. Visit your doctor again if you have any of the following problems: ● Fever that does not go away in five days ● Throat pain that gets so bad you can"t swallow ● Inability to open your mouth wide ● A fainting feeling when you stand up ● Any other signs or symptoms that concern you Text C Antonio Sanz might as well have won the lottery. In 1965, when the small, curly-haired Spaniard was 10, an American professor asked his parents if she might take the boy to the U.S. and enroll him in public school. They agreed. America seemed to offer a brighter future than the dairy farms where his father worked in the foothills north of Madrid. Sanz left, but came back to Spain every summer with stories from Philadelphia and boxes of New World artifacts: Super Balls, baseball cards, and Bob Dylan records. His real prize, though, was English. Sanz learned fast, and by senior year he outscored most of his classmates in the verbal section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test. In those days, back in his hometown of Colmenar Viejo, English seemed so exotic that kids would stop him on the street and ask him to say a few sentences. By the time he graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., and moved back to Spain, American companies there were nearly as excited. He landed in Procter & Gamble Co. Sanz, now 46 and a father of three, employs his Philadelphia English as an executive at Vodafone PLC in Madrid. But something funny has happened to his second language. These days, English is no longer special, or odd, or even foreign. In Paris, Düsseldorf, Madrid, and even in the streets of Colmenar Viejo, English has put down roots. "What else can we all speak?" Sanz asks. English is firmly entrenched nearly everywhere as the international language of business, finance, and technology. But in Europe, it"s spreading far beyond the elites. Indeed, English is becoming the binding agent of a continent, linking Finns to French and Portuguese as they move toward political and economic unification. "A common language is crucial," says Tito Boeri, a business professor at Bocconi University in Milan, "to take advantage of Europe"s integrated labor market." English, in short, is Europe"s language. And while some adults are slow to embrace this, it"s clear as day for European children. "If I want to speak to a French person, I have to speak in English," says Ivo Rowekamp, an 11-year-old in Heidelberg, Germany. The implications for business are enormous. It"s no longer just top executives who need to speak English. Everyone in the corporate food chain is feeling the pressure to learn a common tongue as companies globalize and democratize. These days in formerly national companies such as Renault and BMW, managers, engineers, even leading blue-collar workers are constantly calling and e-mailing colleagues and customers in Europe, the U.S., and Japan. The language usually is English, an industrial tool now as basic as the screwdriver. While English is fast becoming a Prereq for landing a good job in Europe, only 41% of the people on the Continent speak it—and only 29% speak it well enough to carry on a conversation, according to a European Commission report. The result is an English gap, one that divides Europe"s haves from its have-nots. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Europeans brought peasants into the workforce by teaching them to read and write the national language. These days, the equivalent challenge is to master Europe"s international language. Those that fail—countries, companies, and individuals alike—risk falling far behind.

SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS PASSAGE ONE A century ago in the United States, when an individual brought suit against a company, public opinion tended to protect that company. But perhaps this phenomenon was most striking in the case of the railroads. Nearly half of all negligence cases decided through 1896 involved railroads. And the railroads usually won. Most of the cases were decided in state courts, when the railroads had the climate of the times on their sides. Government supported the railroad industry; the progress railroads represented was not to be slowed down by requiring them often to pay damages to those unlucky enough to be hurt working for them. Court decisions always went against railroad workers. Mr. Farrell, an engineer, lost his right hand when a switchman"s negligence ran his engine off the track. The court reasoned, that since Farrell had taken the job of an engineer voluntarily at good pay, he had accepted the risk. Therefore the accident, though avoidable had the switchmen acted carefully, was a "pure accident." In effect a railroad could never be held responsible for injury to one employee caused by the mistake of another. In one case where a Pennsylvania Railroad worker had started a fire at a warehouse and the fire had spread several blocks, causing widespread damage, a jury found the company responsible for all the damage. But the court overturned the jury"s decision because it argued that the railroad"s negligence was the immediate cause of damage only to the nearest buildings. Beyond them the connection was too remote to consider. As the century wore on, public sentiment began to turn against the railroads—against their economic and political power and high fares as well as against their callousness toward individuals. PASSAGE TWO It was the worst tragedy in maritime history, six times more deadly than the Titanic. When the German cruise ship Wilhelm Gustloff was hit by torpedoes fired from a Russian submarine in the final winter of World War II, more than 10,000 people—mostly women, children and old people fleeing the final Red Army push into Nazi Germany—were packed aboard. An ice storm had turned the decks into frozen sheets that sent hundreds of families sliding into the sea as the ship tilted and began to go down. Others desperately tried to put lifeboats down. Some who succeeded fought off those in the water who had the strength to try to claw their way aboard. Most people froze immediately. "I"ll never forget the screams", says Christa Ntitzmann, 87, one of the 1,200 survivors. She recalls watching the ship, brightly lit, slipping into its dark grave—and into seeming nothingness, rarely mentioned for more than half a century. Now Germany"s Nobel Prize-winning author Gtinter Grass has revived the memory of the 9,000 dead, including more than 4,000 children—with his latest novel Crab Walk, published last month. The book, which will be out in English next year, doesn"t dwell on the sinking; its heroine is a pregnant young woman who survives the catastrophe only to say later: "Nobody wanted to hear about it, not here in the West (of Germany) and not at all in the East." The reason was obvious. As Grass put it in a recent interview with the weekly Die Woche: "Because the crimes we Germans are responsible for were and are so dominant, we didn"t have the energy left to tell of our own sufferings." The long silence about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff was probably unavoidable—and necessary. By unreservedly owning up to their country"s monstrous crimes in the Second World War, Germans have managed to win acceptance abroad, marginalize the neo-Nazis at home and make peace with their neighbors. Today"s unified Germany is more prosperous and stable than at any time in its long, troubled history. For that, a half century of willful forgetting about painful memories like the German Titanic was perhaps a reasonable price to pay. But even the most politically correct Germans believe that they"ve now earned the right to discuss the full historical record. Not to equate German suffering with that of its victims, but simply to acknowledge a terrible tragedy. PASSAGE THREE Three years ago, Joseph J. Ellis, one of the most widely read American historians, ran into a career crisis of his own strange devising. Just months after his book, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation won the Pulitzer Prize and planted itself for a long run on the best-seller list, it emerged that Ellis, who spent the Vietnam War years doing graduate work at Yale and teaching history at West Point, had been offering his students at Mount Holyoke College wholly invented accounts of his days as a platoon leader in Vietnam. After his tall tales were exposed in the Boston Globe, Ellis was suspended without pay for a year and compelled to relinquish his endowed chair. But even after the story broke, his book continued to sell briskly. And why not? No one ever accused him of falsifying his scholarship, and his probing biographies remain some of the most psychologically penetrating portraits of the Founding Fathers that we have. His supple new book, His Excellency: George Washington (Knopf; 320 pages), is another in that line, full of subtle inroads into the man Ellis calls the most notorious model of self-control in all of American history, the original marble man. The Washington Ellis gives us is not the customary figure operating serenely above the fray but a man constantly seeking to govern his own passions. Ironically, telling Washington"s story truthfully requires Ellis to occasionally cast doubt on the great man"s honesty. Washington could lie when he needed to—for instance, by misrepresenting for posterity his role in the disastrous engagement at Fort Necessity during the French and Indian War. And throughout his career, he feigned a lack of ambition as cover for a relentless impulse to move upward in the world. Washington had no more than a grade-school education, but he had an early grasp of issues that would be crucial to America"s future, such as westward expansion and the vexing matter of slavery. He eventually concluded that slavery must be abolished, though his own slaves were freed only after his death. He also understood precisely what his role in the new nation should be. Washington emerged from the War of Independence as a kind of god. Like Caesar before him and Napoleon after, he might easily have parlayed military glory into imperial power. But he performed his greatest service to his country by refusing to yield to that temptation. At the end of his second Administration, he turned down a third term, thereby establishing an enduring example of limited presidential tenure. Washington was willing to refuse a crown, but he was exasperated by Thomas Jefferson"s and James Madison"s aversion to federal power. His experience during the war with Britain, when a rudderless Continental Congress left his army chronically short of supplies, convinced him of the need for a government strong enough to pursue national purposes. But as Ellis sees it, Washington"s views were also "projections onto the national screen of the need for the same kind of controlling authority he had orchestrated within his own personality". The Father of His Country had first to prevail as master of himself. PASSAGE FOUR The tourist trade is booming. With all this coming and going, you"d expect greater understanding to develop between the nations of the world. Not a bit of it! Superb systems of communication by air, sea and land make it possible for us to visit each other"s countries at a moderate cost. What was once the "grand tour", reserved for only the very rich, is now within everybody"s grasp. The package tour and chartered flights are not to be sneered at. Modem travelers enjoy a level of comfort which the lords and ladies on grand tours in the old days couldn"t have dreamed of. But what"s the sense of this mass exchange of populations if the nations of the world remain basically ignorant of each other? Many tourist organizations are directly responsible for this state of affairs. They deliberately set out to protect their clients from too much contact with the local population. The modem tourist leads a cosseted, sheltered life. He lives at international hotels, where he eats his international food and sips his international drink while he gazes at the natives from a distance. Conducted tours to places of interest are carefully censored. The tourist is allowed to see only what the organizers want him to see and no more. A strict schedule makes it impossible for the tourist to wander off on his own; and anyway, language is always a barrier, so he is only too happy to be protected in this way. At its very worst, this leads to a new and hideous kind of colonization. The summer quarters of the inhabitants of the Cite Universitaire are temporarily reestablished on the island of Corfu. Blackpool is recreated at Torremolinos where the traveler goes not to eat paella, but fish and chips. The sad thing about this situation is that it leads to the persistence of national stereotypes. We don"t see the people of other nations as they really are, but as we have been brought up to believe they are. You can test this for yourself. Take five nationalities, say, French, German, English, American and Italian. Now in your mind, match them with these five adjectives: musical, amorous, cold, pedantic, native. Far from providing us with any insight into the national characteristics of the peoples just mentioned, these adjectives actually act as barriers. So when you set out on your travels, the only characteristics you notice are those which confirm your preconceptions. You come away with the highly unoriginal and inaccurate impression that, say, "Anglo-Saxons are hypocrites" and that "Latin peoples shout a lot". You only have to make a few foreign friends to understand how absurd and harmful national stereotypes are. But how can you make foreign friends when the tourist trade does its best to prevent you? Carried to an extreme, stereotypes can be positively dangerous. Wild generalizations stir up racial hatred and blind us to the basic fact—how trite it sounds—that all people are human. We are all similar to each other and at the same time all unique.

What is the net income of Microsoft for the year?

In this section, you will hear several news items. Listen to them carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Questions 21 to 23 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 15 seconds to answer the questions. Now, listen to the news.

Which of the following statements is CORRECT?

What evidence in the passage can show that Americans love museums?

The report issued by the Kaiser Family Foundation mainly shows that

{{B}}TEXT I{{/B}} {{B}}Rolling Stones{{/B}} The rock group, members Mick Jagger (1943 -) vocals, Keith Richards (1943 -) guitar, Bill Wyman (1936 -) bass, Charlie Watts (1941 -) drams, Ron Wood (1947 -) guitar, former member Brian Jones (1942 - 69) guitar, one of the longest-running and most successful popular music groups to emerge in the 1960s. They first performed together in 1962. At first, they were very much in the shadow of The Beatles, but their less boyish, more rebellious style together with their more aggressive music soon won them a large following. Although their uninhibited life styles and overtly sexual lyrics often hit the headlines, it was the excellence of their com- positions (usually by Jagger and Richard) that ensured their continuing success. Among their early hits were "The Last Time" and "Satisfaction". Later albums include Exile on Main Street (1972) and Tattoo You (1981).1964 The Rolling Stones1965 The Roiling Stones Now!1966 Big Hits (High Tide, Green Grass)1967 Between the Buttons1968 Beggars Banquet1969 Through the Past, Darkly (Big Hits, Vol. 2)1970 The Stones Detroit1971 Sticky Fingers1972 Exile On Main Street1973 Goat's Head Soup1974 It's Only Rock and Roll1975 Made in the Shade1975 Metamorphosis1976 Black and Blue1977 Love You Live1978 Some Girls1980 Emotional Rescue1981 Sucking in the Seventies1982 Still Life1983 Undercover1984 Rewind (1971-1984)1986 Dirty Work1989 Steel Wheels1991 Flashpoint1993 Jump Back: the Best of the Rolling Stones1994 Voodoo Lounge1995 Stripped1996 Rock and Roll Circus1997 Bridges to Babylon1998 No Security

Section A Multiple-Choice Questions Text A Apple Inc. wants to take back control of how users consume media on its devices. The company pioneered the move to digital music with iTunes downloads, only to see upstarts like Spotify popularize a new way of listening to music on demand. It built Newsstand into its mobile software as a one-stop shop for news apps on Apple devices, but users rarely see it that way—with services such as Flipboard offering a more seamless way to read aggregated news. Apple struck back on Monday in the keynote speech of its Worldwide Developers Conference. It unveiled Apple Music, which combines a subscription-based, on-demand streaming-music service, a 24-hour global Internet radio station, and a service for artists to connect with listeners. It also introduced an app called News, which will be included in a forthcoming update to its iOS mobile software that launches this fall. News combines articles from news organizations including ESPN, the New York Times and Condé Nast, presenting them in a single format in the style of a digital magazine. Apple has at least one other content service in the works—a streaming TV service that wasn"t announced on Monday, but could arrive before the end of the year. "It"s interesting to see Apple trying to retake control of content," said technology analyst Jan Dawson, who runs Jackdaw Research. "It feels like Apple has been in limbo, adrift in the last few years. Music went to streaming. Video went to subscriptions and Apple sat back and watched that happen." Together, the initiatives highlight Apple"s role at the intersection of media and technology. Once a pioneer, Apple now risked falling behind, as with music. Apple is moving to reassert itself amid changes in how consumers watch television, read news and listen to music, while seeking to leverage its hundreds of millions of iTunes accounts and hundreds of millions of smartphones and tablets in consumers" hands. "There is this idea of appealing to a new generation with music," said Horace Dediu, founder of research firm Asymco. "And this generation doesn"t buy music, they stream it." Apple said its streaming-music subscription service will cost $9.99 a month after a three-month trial period, similar to Spotify"s ad-free tier. Families will be able to share a single account for up to six members for $14.99 a month. Eddy Cue, Apple"s senior vice president who oversees Internet services and software, said it reached an agreement with the three major music labels before the announcement. In a second music move, Apple said it plans to launch a live radio station, Beats 1. It will broadcast 24 hours a day with DJs in Los Angeles, New York and London, and be available in more than 100 countries. Apple will also offer genre-specific stations, ranging from Indic rock to classical, created by other DJs. "The vast majority of people in the world don"t subscribe to music, so we think there is a real opportunity," said Mr. Cue in an interview. "We"re trying to do something that"s bigger than streaming, that"s bigger than radio." Apple said its Music service, which will be available on Apple devices on June 30, will be offered on devices running Google Inc."s Android operating system later this year. With news, Apple aims to give users a single spot to find news from a variety of publishers instead of sifting through individual apps. Mr. Cue said Apple aims to help news organizations—many which are financially strapped—to publish articles in appealing layouts that work well for mobile devices. The Apple initiative comes on the heels of Facebook Inc."s launch last month of a news partnership called Instant Articles in which publishers post their stories directly in Facebook"s newsfeed. Apple also introduced a feature called proactive assistant in iOS 9, the next version of its mobile-operating system aimed at making its devices smarter. Apple said the feature will suggest apps to launch or people to contact based on past usage. In addition, it will learn things over time such as a user"s music preferences. The feature is somewhat similar to Google now, which aims to give users relevant information at the moment it is most useful. Apple sought to distinguish its service from Google by saying the information will be processed on the user"s device, won"t be shared with advertisers and isn"t linked to other Apple services. Beyond media, Apple also used the two-hour-plus keynote presentation to announce expansions of its Apple Pay mobile-payments service and enhancements for its newest device, the Apple Watch. The company said it is expanding Apple Pay to accept cards from Discover Financial Services Inc., as well as branded cards from certain retail stores. For Apple Watch, the company announced a major software update—less than two months after the first Watches went on sale. The biggest change is the ability for apps to run natively on the Watch. Until now, Watch apps have had to run on an iPhone, which slowed performance of some apps. Text B BERLIN—Chancellor Angela Merkel held fast in her call for Greece to overhaul its economy and finances in exchange for international bailout funds, the clearest sign yet in the escalating standoff that Europe"s most powerful politician is prepared to see Greece leave the euro. Reinforcing the on-message on Monday, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said a vote in Greece against the terms of the bailout on Sunday would mean that Greeks had decided to give up the single currency. Ms. Merkel, whose country is Greece"s largest creditor, indicated Europe was now well equipped to manage the financial shock of a Greek euro exit. The bigger issue, she said, was that principles underpinning the currency union were at stake: that countries such as Greece undertake "own efforts" to improve their economies in exchange for support from other euro-zone governments. "If these principles are not upheld, then, I am convinced, the euro will fail," Ms. Merkel said, appearing tense after an emergency meeting on Greece with party heads and parliamentary leaders in her chancellery. "It is important—and in this position there will be no change—that own efforts and solidarity continue to belong together." The standoff with the radical government of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, which took office in January, has thrust Ms. Merkel into one of the most high-stakes crises of her career. The European Union"s financial system is now much better protected from the shock of a Greek default than it was a few years ago, German officials say. But people who have spoken with Ms. Merkel say she fears a Greek-exit could lead eventually to the political fragmentation of Europe that is already struggling with the legacy of its long economic crisis, geopolitical rivalry with Russia and tensions over migration. Mr. Tsipras had bet that Ms. Merkel, forced to decide between allowing a "Grexit" or giving him easier terms than what international bailout inspectors wanted, would choose the latter, people close to him say. But her latest comments showed that Mr. Tsipras may have bet wrong. Holding fast to her negotiating position is likely to shore up her support at home, where Ms. Merkel has increasingly come under pressure from conservative media and politicians to take a harder line on Greece. But it may also complicate her legacy in Europe, where critics of the euro-zone"s bailout policies see her as the chief architect of the creditors" push for painful government budget cuts in Greece and elsewhere. It was Greece, not the international creditors, that is refusing to compromise, Ms. Merkel said. Earlier Monday, she delivered a speech at the 70th anniversary celebration of her conservative Christian Democratic Union in which she tried to make clear that she was fighting for the EU"s survival. "If the ability to find compromise is lost, Europe is lost," Ms. Merkel said. She then repeated a mantra of hers from previous flare-ups of the euro-zone crisis: "If the euro fails, then Europe fails." Mr. Gabriel, the economics minister and vice chancellor who heads Ms. Merkel"s left-of-center governing partner, the Social Democrats, backed up his boss with even tougher language. "That Greek citizens will decide in a referendum is absolutely legitimate," Mr. Gabriel said. "But it must be crystal clear what is being decided. It is, at the core, yes or no to remaining in the euro-zone." Standing by his side at the news conference, Ms. Merkel didn"t repeat that warning, saying she didn"t want to be seen as trying to influence a decision of the Greek people. But Mr. Gabriel"s comment was the most direct public warning yet of a possible Greek euro exit from a German leader, and it echoed signals from German officials over the weekend that they would see the referendum as a vote on Greece"s euro-zone membership. Despite the unpopularity of the creditors" terms, opinion polls show Greeks overwhelmingly want to stay in the euro-zone—even if it means further economic sacrifices—because national bankruptcy and exit from the euro would probably be far more disruptive to Greece"s economy, politics and society. Polls in Germany in recent months, on the other hand, have shown that a slim majority of Germans think Greece should leave the euro-zone. Germany is willing to talk about a third bailout package for Greece, but the conditions will remain, German party leaders said on Monday. "A referendum doesn"t change this," Volker Kauder, parliamentary floor leader of Ms. Merkel"s conservative parties, said. "We want to keep Greece in the euro-zone, but the decision is solely up to Greece." Text C If your child is overweight or obese, this means that they are carrying excess body fat. Doctors and nurses can check to see whether or not your child is overweight or obese by calculating their body mass index (BMI). BMI is a measurement of your child"s weight in relation to their height. BMI is calculated by dividing your child"s weight in kilograms by their height in meters squared. It is important to note that a child"s BMI is not interpreted in the same way as an adult"s BMI. Children who are overweight or obese can develop health problems such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, fatty liver disease and gallstones. They are also at increased risk for developing heart disease. A child who is overweight or obese also has an increased risk of: - Joint problems such as osteoarthritis as well as a condition known as slipped femoral epiphysis, which involves separation of the ball of the hip joint from the upper end of the thigh bone. - Going through puberty early. - Breathing problems, including worsening of asthma, difficulties with your child"s breathing whilst they are asleep (obstructive sleep apnoea) and feeling out of breath easily when exercising. - Developing iron deficiency and vitamin D deficiency. - Being overweight or obese as an adult (more than half of children who are obese will grow up to be obese as adults). HOW COMMON IS IT? The statistics are truly frightening. 20-25% of children are currently overweight according to most studies. The Growing Up in Ireland longitudinal study showed that one in four 9-year-old children were overweight (19% overweight, 7% obese). CAUSES For anyone (including children), your weight depends on how much energy you take in (the calories in food and drink) and how much energy your body uses or burns up. The reasons why energy taken in may not balance energy used up and may lead to weight gain in children, include the following: - How much a child eats and drinks. Many children are overweight or obese simply because they eat and drink more than their body needs. Having too many foods that are sugary or fatty is a common problem. Sugary drinks also are often part of the problem. - A lack of physical activity. A child may be eating the right type and the right amount of food but, if they are not doing enough physical activity, they may put on weight. Long periods without exercise also contribute—for example, spending many hours watching television or playing video games. Having parents who are inactive can also increase a child"s risk of being overweight or obese. - Your parents. Being overweight or obese does run in families. It is thought that 5 out of 10 children who have one parent who is obese will become obese themselves, whereas 8 out of 10 children who have two parents who are obese will also become obese themselves. - Lack of sleep. Not getting enough sleep has been suggested as another possible risk factor for obesity in children. There seems to be a trend of children going to bed later but, also, too little physical exercise can lead to poor sleep. TREATMENT The main way to treat a child who is overweight or obese is to look at changes that can be made to their lifestyle. - Eating more healthily. Overweight children should be encouraged to eat more healthily and to reduce the total number of calories that they eat per day. - Doing plenty of physical activity. It is recommended that all children do at least 60 minutes of moderate physical activity every day. Some suggest that children who are overweight or obese should even do more than this. - Psychological support. Being overweight or obese as a child may lead to psychological problems for some children. As a parent or carer, you may feel able to discuss with your child how they are feeling, or you may wish to involve your child"s healthcare professional for support and guidance.

The nurse was arrested because police believed that

Section A Multiple-Choice Questions Text A a.Aside from perpetuating itself, the sole purpose of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters is to "foster, assist and sustain an interest" in literature, music, and art. This it does by enthusiastically handing out money. Annual cash awards are given to deserving artists in various categories of creativity: architecture, musical composition, theater, novels, serious poetry, light verse, painting, sculpture. One award subsidizes a promising American writer"s visit to Rome. There is even an award for a very good work of fiction that fallen commercially—once won by the young John Updike for The Poorhouse Fair and, more recently, by Alice Walker for In Love and Trouble. The awards and prizes total about $750,000 a year, but most of them range in size from $5,000 to $12,500, a welcome sum to many young practitioners whose work may not bring in that much in a year.b.One of the advantages of the awards is that many go to the struggling artists, rather than to those who are already successful. Members of the Academy and Institute are not eligible for any cash prizes. Another advantage is that, unlike the National Endowment for the Arts or similar institutions throughout the world, there is no government money involved. Awards are made by committee. Each of the three departments—Literature (120 members), Art (83), Music (47)—has a committee dealing with its own field.c.Committee membership rotates every year, so that new voices and opinions are constantly heard. The most financially rewarding of all the Academy-Institute awards are the Mildred and Harold Strauss Livings. Harold Strauss, a devoted editor at Alfred A. Knopf, the New York publishing house, and Mildred Strauss, his wife, were wealthy and childless.d.They left the Academy-Institute a unique bequest: for five consecutive years, two distinguished (and financially needy) writers would receive enough money so they could devote themselves entirely to "prose literature" (no plays, no poetry, and no paying job that might distract). In 1983, the first Strauss Livings of $35,000 a year went to short-story writer Raymond Carver and novelist-essayist Cynthia Ozick. By 1988, the fund had grown enough so that two winners, novelists Diane Johnson and Robert Stone, each got $50,000 a year for five years. Text B You"re busy filling out the application form for a position you really need; let"s assume you once actually completed a couple of years of college work or even that you completed your degree. Isn"t it tempting to lie just a little, to claim on the form that your diploma represents a Harvard degree? Or that you finished an extra couple of years back at State University? More and more people are turning to utter deception like this to land their job or to move ahead in their careers, for personnel officers, like most Americans, value degrees from famous schools. A job applicant may have a good education anyway, but he or she assumes that chances of being hired are better with a diploma from a well-known university. Registrars at most well-known colleges say they deal with deceitful claims like these at the rate of about one per week. Personnel officers do check up on degrees listed on application forms, then. If it turns out that an applicants lying, most colleges are reluctant to accuse the applicant directly. One Ivy League school calls them impostors; another refers to them as special cases. One well-known West Coast school, in perhaps the most delicate phrase of all, says that these claims are made by no such people. To avoid outright (彻底的) lies, some job-seekers claim that they attended or were associated with a college or university. After carefully checking, a personnel officer may discover that attending means being dismissed after one semester. It may be that being associated with a college means that the job-seeker visited his younger brother for a football weekend. One school that keeps records of false claims says that the practice dates back at least to the turn of the century—that"s when they began keeping records, anyhow. If you don"t want to lie or even stretch the truth, there are companies that will sell you a phony diploma. One company, with offices in New York and on the West Coast, will put your name on a diploma from any number of non-existent colleges. The price begins at around twenty dollars for a diploma from Smoot State University. The prices increase rapidly for a degree from the University of Purdue. As there is no Smoot State and the real school in Indiana properly called Purdue University, the prices seem rather high for one sheet of paper. Text C In spite of "endless talk of difference," American society is an amazing machine for homogenizing people. There is "the democratizing uniformity of dress and discourse, and the casualness and absence of deference" characteristic of popular culture. People are absorbed into "a culture of consumption" launched by the 19th-century department stores that offered vast arrays of goods in an elegant atmosphere. Instead of intimate shops catering to a knowledgeable elite, these were stores anyone could enter, regardless of class or background. This turned shopping into a public and democratic act. The mass media, advertising and sports are other forces for homogenization. Immigrants are quickly fitting into this common culture, which may not be altogether elevating but is hardly poisonous. Writing for the National Immigration Forum, Gregory Rodriguez reports that today"s immigration is neither at unprecedented levels nor resistant to assimilation. In 1998 immigrants were 9.8 percent of population; in 1900, 13.6 percent. In the 10 years prior to 1990, 3.1 immigrants arrived for every 1,000 residents; in the 10 years prior to 1890, 9.2 for every 1,000. Now, consider three indices of assimilation—language, home ownership and intermarriage. The 1990 Census revealed that "a majority of immigrants from each of the fifteen most common countries of origin spoke English "well" or "very well" after ten years of residence." The children of immigrants tend to be bilingual and proficient in English. "By the third generation, the original language is lost in the majority of immigrant families." Hence the description of America as a "graveyard" for language. By 1996 foreign-born immigrants who had arrived before 1970 had a home ownership rate of 75.6 percent, higher than the 69.8 percent rate among native-born Americans. Foreign-born Asians and Hispanics "have higher rates of intermarriage than do US-born whites and blacks." By the third generation, one third of Hispanic women are married to non-Hispanics, and 41 percent of Asian-American women are married to non-Asians. Rodriguez notes that children in remote villages around the world are fans of superstars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Garth Brooks, yet "some Americans fear that immigrants living within the United States remain somehow immune to the nation"s assimilative power." Are there divisive issues and pockets of seething anger in America? Indeed. It is big enough to have a bit of everything. But particularly when viewed against America"s turbulent past, today"s social indices hardly suggest a dark and deteriorating social environment.

According to the passage, which of the following causes Alzheimer's disease?

Questions 25 and 26 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the questions. Now, listen to the news.

There appears to be a great variation as to the treatment that older adults receive, ranging from extreme reverence and respect to abandonment and deprivation with a broad range of studies dealing with perceptions of old agc. Most investigators report findings which support the view that attitudes toward the elderly were most favorable in primitive societies and decrease with increasing modernization to the point of generally negative view in industrialized Western nations. In other words, the more "civilized" the society is, the more likely they are to be ageist and maintain negative attitudes about the aged. Some examples may be helpful. Men in the Middle East view old age as life's summit. Older men are viewed as having attained high status and prestige. In fact, the word "sheik" originally meant "old man". No mention is, however, made of women's status in old age in the Middle East. Women's status and power does increase in many cultures following menopause. It is stated that the old widow has great power in the Japanese family. Women in many small-scale traditional societies also enjoy an increase in status. Post-menopausal women in these societies usually experience greater sexual freedom, the right to participate in ritual, the right to participate in the political realm of the society, and a decrease in the amount of work required in the home. With regard to work, the older woman is expected to be leisured. The cross-cultural differences in attitudes towards the aged may in part be due to different societal perspectives. Three of the factors hypothesized to contribute to the development of ageism are of relevance here. First, death is not viewed in Western society as a natural part of the life cycle. Those societies, which view life and death as a continuous process, exhibit fewer ageist attitudes. For example, fewer ageist attitudes are exhibited in Japan and the Middle East. Second, older individuals are viewed as productive in many small-scale traditional societies. In fact, they are often the power brokers within those societies. This can be compared with Western society where older adults are thought of as unproductive and therefore, negatively. Last, not all societies are youth oriented. Therefore, a higher value is placed on the later stages of adulthood.

{{B}}TEXT B{{/B}} American hopes that pressure from the US will force Japan to suddenly dismantle its trade barriers are almost certain to evaporate in disappointment①. The fact is that Washington faces an obstacle far more formidable than a few power brokers in Tokyo's government offices. It's not in line with the centuries-old, deep-ingrained Japanese customs. To move the Japanese government, Washington government must move an entire nation. So far the US has had only limited success despite congressional threats to retaliate. In an April 9 nationwide broadcast, Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone urged the Japanese to buy more imported goods and unveiled a long-awaited three-year plan to ease import restrictions. But this program was far short of what Washington hoped to see. White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan said the Japanese offered "few new or immediate measures." While the plan did promise fewer shackles on imports of telecommunications gear, medicine and medical equipment, it offered no relief for American forest products—which are among the most contentious trade issues. Nakasone gives every sign of being secure in his desire to reduce a Japanese surplus in trade with the US that hit 36.8 billion dollars in 1984 and could soon top billion. Yet to rely on any Japanese political leader, no matter how popular he is at home, to reverse trade policies is to underestimate the culture and traditions that weigh heavily against a breakthrough②. Big business and dozens of anonymous bureaucrats have as much power as Japan's top elected leaders. "The whole concept that we can turn this around right now is obviously ridiculous," says an American trader who has lived and worked here since 1952. "The vested interests are being shaken and slowly moved, but at a pace too slow for the eye to follow." That view is echoed by a US diplomat closely involved in the efforts to open the Japanese market to American goods, Washington's main solution to the ballooning trade ambulance. "Japan is a relationship society rather than a transactional one," he says. "You cannot alter that kind of a system with a television speech or a few general proposals, no matter how well-intended they are." Beyond specific tariffs or other official barriers to imports, experts here say that the US faces these obstacles. Nearly total domination of the Japanese market by a few dozen giant conglomerates that strongly op pose even token competition—be it from abroad or emerging domestic firms. An elite, thickly layered bureaucracy that historically has drafted laws and regulations as well as enforced them, and both of these powers would be threatened by trade reforms. A longtime relationship between business and government that critics say fosters collusion and hinders foreign entry into domestic markets③.

{{I}}Questions 22 and 23 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the questions. Now, listen to the news.{{/I}}

The Haiti kid in Judy's class