【T1】Fathers exposed to poisonous substances are probably just as likely to be the cause of defects in their unborn infants as mothers. Yet it is women who are told to stop drinking and smoking and to look after their health when they are pregnant. And it is women who find that they are banned from jobs where they are exposed to harmful chemicals or radiation. 【T2】Despite a growing body of scientific evidence that a man' s exposure to damaging substances can affect his offspring, pregnant women are still charged with the responsibility of keeping their infants healthy, said Gladys Friedler, of the Boston University School of Medicine. "This is puzzling" , she said. "Most of the workforce is still male, so why do we still spend so much time looking at women? The health of men as well as women should be of concern. In the US, 2, 500,000 children are born with birth defects each year. In 60 percent of cases the origin of the defect is not known. 【T3】These figures do not include less obvious problems that appear later in development, such as biochemical malfunctions and behavioral problems. Many researchers still seem reluctant to contemplate that a man' s environment can influence the health of children. " If the effects had not been so obvious, we might still be reluctant to acknowledge the effect of environmental agents on women. "Despite this, there is a reluctance to accept the accumulated evidence of men' s effects on development, she said. 【T4】Some companies have already taken steps to "protect the unborn child" by excluding women from jobs where they might be exposed to dangerous substances. This has led to some bitter disputes between the women and their employers in the US. The most famous case, now before the Supreme Court, pits a group of women and their union against Johnson Controls, a company which makes batteries. 【T5】The company transferred women from higher-paying jobs where they were exposed to lead on the grounds that it had to protect unborn children. The irony is that children born to men working in the factory are probably just as much at risk.

Read the following text(s) and write an essay to 1) summarize the main points of the text(s), 2) make clear your own viewpoints, and 3) justify your stand. In your essay, make full use of the information provided in the text(s). If you use more than three consecutive words from the text(s), use quotation marks(" "). You should write 160 -200 words on the ANSWER SHEET. An invisible border divides those arguing for computers in the classroom on the behalf of students' career prospects and those arguing for computers in the classroom for broader reasons of radical educational reform. There are some good arguments for a technical education given the right kind of student. Many European schools introduce the concept of professional training early on in order to make sure children are properly equipped for the professions they want to join. It is, however, presumptuous to insist that there will only be so many jobs for so many scientists, so many businessmen, so many accountants. Besides, this is unlikely to produce the needed number of every kind of professional in a country as large as ours and where the economy is spread over so many states and involves so many international corporations. But, for a small group of students, professional training might be the way to go since well-developed skills, all other factors being equal, can be the difference between having a job and not. Of course, the basics of using any computer these days are very simple. It does not take a lifelong acquaintance to pick up various software programs. If one wanted to become a computer engineer, that is, of course, an entirely different story. Basic computer skills take—at the very longest—a couple of months to learn. In any case, basic computer skills are only complementary to the host of real skills that are necessary to becoming any kind of professional. It should be observed, of course, that no school, vocational or not, is helped by a confusion over its purpose.

Pay and productivity, it is generally assumed, should be related. But the relationship seems to weaken【C1】______people get older. Mental ability declines with age. That is the same for the brainy and the dim—and not 【C2】______for humans: it is measurable even for fruit flies.【C3】______minds that keep lively will suffer less than the lazy. In general, the more education you have, the more productive your old【C4】______will be. Some【C5】______decline faster than others. According to most studies, people' s numerical and reasoning abilities are at their best in their 20 s and early 30 s.【C6】______abilities—those that depend on knowledge—may improve with age. For most workers, decreased abilities will【C7】______to lower productivity; only a minority will find know-how and knowledge outweighs their failing powers. Even those employees who remain highly productive will be likely to shine only in a narrow【C8】______. Academics notice this. It is less clear that employers do. Studies of supervisors-ratings show no clear correlation【C9】______age and perceived productivity. When other employees-views are【C10】______into account though, the picture changes: these ratings suggest that workers in their 30s are the【C11】______productive and hardworking, with scores falling thereafter. That is【C12】______up by studies of work samples, which find lower productivity among the oldest employees. A study for America' s Department of Labor showed job performance peaking at 35, and【C13】______declining. It varied by industry: the fall was slower in footwear, but faster in furniture. Intellectual occupations are harder to measure, but the picture is the same. Academics seem to publish【C14】______ as they age. Painters, musicians and writers show the same tendency. Their output peaks in their 30s and 40s. The only【C15】______is female writers, who are most productive in their 50 s.

No company likes to be told it is contributing to the moral decline of a nation. " Is this what you like to accomplish with your careers?" an American senator asked Time Warner executives recently. " You have sold your souls, but must you corrupt our nation and threaten our children as well?" At Time Warner, however, such questions are simply the latest manifestation of the soul-searching that has involved the company ever since the company was born in 1990. It's a self-examination that has, at different times, involved issues of responsibility, creative freedom and the corporate bottom line. At the core of this debate is chairman Gerald Levin, 56, who took over from the late Steve Ross in the early 1990s. On the financial front, Levin is under pressure to raise the stock price and reduce the company's mountainous debt, which will increase to $ 17.3 billion after two new cable deals close. He has promised to sell off some of the property and restructure the company, but investors are waiting impatiently. The flap over rap is not making life any easier for him. Levin has consistently defended the company's rap music on the grounds of expression. In 1992, when Time Warner was under fire for releasing Ice-T's violent rap song Cop Killer, Levin described rap as a lawful expression of street culture, which deserves an outlet. " The test of any democratic society, " he wrote in a Wall Street Journal column, " lies not in how well it can control expression but in whether it gives freedom of thought and expression the widest possible latitude, however disputable or irritating the results may sometimes be. We won't retreat when we face any threats. Levin would not comment on the debate last week, but there were signs that the chairman was backing off his hard-line stand, at least to some extent. During the discussion of rock singing verses at last month's stockholders' meeting, Levin asserted that "music is not the cause of society's ills "and even cited his son, a teacher in the Bronx, New York, who uses rap to communicate with students. But he talked as well about the "balanced struggle"between creative freedom and social responsibility, and he proclaimed that the company would launch a drive to develop standards for distribution and labeling of potentially objectionable music. The 15-member Time Warner board is generally supportive of Levin and his corporate strategy. But insiders say some of them have shown their concerns in this matter. "Some of us have known for many, many years that the freedoms under the First Amendment are not totally unlimited, "says Luce. "I think it is perhaps the case that some people associated with the company have only recently come to realize this.

Read the following text(s) and write an essay to 1) summarize the main points of the text(s), 2) make clear your own viewpoints, and 3) justify your stand. In your essay, make full use of the information provided in the text(s). If you use more than three consecutive words from the text(s), use quotation marks (" "). You should write 160 -200 words on the ANSWER SHEET. It is natural for young people to be critical of their parents at times and to blame them for most of the misunderstandings between them. They have always complained, more or less justly, that their parents are out of touch with modern ways; that they are possessive and dominant that they do not trust their children to deal with crises; that they talk too much about certain problems and that they have no sense of humor, at least in parent-child relationships. I think it is true that parents often underestimate their teenage children and also forget how they themselves felt when young. Young people often irritate their parents with their choices in clothes and hairstyles, in entertainers and music. This is not their motive. They feel cut off from the adult world into which they have not yet been accepted. So they create a culture and society of then-own. Then, if it turns out that their music or entertainers or vocabulary or clothes or hairstyles irritate their parents, this gives them additional enjoyment. They feel they are superior, at least in a small way, and that they are leaders in style and taste. This is a passive way of looking at things. It is natural enough after long years of childhood, when you were completely under your parents' control. But it ignores the fact that you are now beginning to be responsible for yourself. If you plan to control your life, co-operation can be part of that plan. You can charm others, especially parents, into doing things the ways you want. You can impress others with your sense of responsibility and initiative, so that they will give you the authority to do what you want to do.

Every country with a monetary system of its own has to have some kind of market in which dealers in bills, notes, and other forms of short term credit can buy and sell. The"money market" is a set of institutions or arrangements for handling what might be called wholesale transactions in money and short term credit. The need for such facilities arises in much the same way that a similar need does in connection with the distribution of any of the products of a diversified economy to their final users at the retail level. If the retailer is to provide reasonably adequate service to his customers , he must have active contacts with others who specialize in making or handling bulk quantities of whatever is his stock in trade. The money market is made up of specialized facilities of exactly this kind. It exists for the purpose of improving the ability of the retailers of financial services—commercial banks, savings institutions, investment houses, lending agencies, and even governments—to do their jobs. It has little if any contact with the individuals or firms who maintain accounts with these various retailers or purchase their securities or borrow from them. The elemental functions of a money market must be performed in any kind of modern economy, even one that is largely planned or socialist, but the arrangements in socialist countries do not ordinarily take the form of a market. Money markets exist in countries that use market processes rather than planned allocations to distribute most of their primary resources among alternative uses. The general distinguishing feature of a money market is that it relies upon open competition among those who are bulk suppliers of funds at any particular time and among those seeking bulk funds, to work out the best practicable distribution of the existing total volume of such funds. In their market transactions, those with bulk supplies of funds or demands for them, rely on groups of intermediaries who act as brokers or dealers. The characteristics of these middlemen, the services they perform, and their relationship to other parts of the financial vary widely from country to country. In many countries there is no single meeting place where the middlemen get together, yet in most countries the contacts among all participants are sufficiently open and free to assure each supplier or user of funds that he will get or pay a price that fairly reflects all of the influences(including his own)that are currently affecting the whole supply and the whole demand. In nearly all cases, moreover, the unifying force of competition is reflected at any given moment in a common price(that is, rate of interest)for similar transactions. Continuous fluctuations in the money market rates of interest result from changes in the pressure of available supplies of funds upon the market and in the pull of current demands upon the market.

Pollution is a "dirty" word. To pollute means to contaminate—topsoil or something by introducing impurities which make【C1】______unfit or unclean to use. Pollution comes in many forms. We see it, smell it,【C2】______it, drink it, and stumble through it. We literally lived in and breathe pollution, and not surprisingly, it is beginning to【C3】______our health, our happiness, and our civilization. Once we thought of pollution【C4】______meaning simply the smog—the choking, stinging, dirty air that hovers over cities. But air pollution, while it is【C5】______the most dangerous, is only one type of contamination among several【C6】______attack the most basic life functions. Through the uncontrolled use of insecticides, man has polluted the land, killing the wildlife. By【C7】______sewage and chemicals into rivers and lakes, we have contaminated our 【C8】______water. We are polluting the oceans, too, killing the fish and【C9】______depriving ourselves of an invaluable food supply. Part of the problem is our exploding【C10】______. More and more people are producing more wastes. But this problem is intensified by our "throw-away"technology. Each year Americans【C11】______of 7 million autos, 20 million tons of waste paper, 25 million pounds of toothpaste tubes and 48 million cans. We throw away gum wrappers, newspapers, and paper plates. It is no longer wise to【C12】______anything. Today almost everything is disposable. Instead of repairing a toaster or a radio, it is easier and cheaper to buy another one and discard the old, even 【C13】______95 percent of its parts may still be functioning. Baby diapers, which used to be made of reusable cloth, are now paper throw-aways. Soon we will wear clothing made of【C14】______:"Wear it once and throw it away" will be the slogan of the fashionable-consciousness. Where is this all to end? Are we turning the world into a gigantic dump, or is there hope that we can solve the pollution problem?【C15】______, solutions are in sight. A few of them are positively ingenious.

How many children did Susan and Michael interview? How many children did Susan and Michael interview?

What are the two speakers talking about? What are the two speakers talking about?

Some years ago, Pioneer Hi-bred International, where I was employed, purchased Norand Corporation. Pioneer' s sales representatives used Norand hand-held terminals to upload daily sales information and download new price and sales incentive information. Pioneer bought so many of these hand-held terminals, the economics made the purchase of Norand look interesting. 【T1】Owning Norand also allowed Pioneer to explore high-technology markets outside agriculture. But after several years, the emerging laptop PC technology made the hand-held units out-of-date. Pioneer sold Norand at a loss. 【T2】Pioneer always took a given percent of the annual profits to divide equally among all employees, so our profit-sharing checks were lower than if Pioneer had not purchased Norand. Additionally, my Pioneer stock was lower than it had been before the purchase of Norand. I was not pleased. 【T3】The CEO of Pioneer, Tom Urban, made annual formal visits to each of the Pioneer divisions to talk about the state of the business and to listen to employees' concerns. When he went into the meeting room for his first visit after the sale of Norand, he acknowledged the group, removed his jacket and neatly folded it across the back of the chair. He loosened his tie, undid his collar and rolled up his sleeves. What he said next was the last thing I ever expected to hear a CEO say. He said, "I made a mistake buying Norand and I am sorry. I am sorry your profit-sharing was lower because of the purchase, and I am sorry your stock was hurt by the purchase. I will continue to take risks, but I am a bit smarter now, and I will work harder for you. "The room was quiet for a moment before he asked for questions. A great man and leader stood before us that day. 【T4】As I sat listening to him, I knew I could trust him, and that he deserved every bit of loyalty I could give to him and to Pioneer. I also knew I could take risks in my own job. 【T5】In the brief moment of silence before the questions started, I recalled thinking that I would follow him into any battle.

Bill Gates, the billionaire Microsoft chairman without a single earned university degree, is by his success raising new doubts about the worth of the business world' s favorite academic title: the MBA(Master of Business Administration). The MBA, a 20th century product, always has borne the mark of lowly commerce and greed on the tree-lined campuses ruled by purer disciplines such as philosophy and literature. But even with the recession apparently cutting into the hiring of business school graduates, about 79,000 people were expected to receive MBAs in 1993. This is nearly 16 times the number of business graduates in 1960, a testimony to the widespread assumption that the MBA is vital for young men and women who want to run companies some day. " If you are going into the corporate world it is still a disadvantage not to have one, " said Donald Morrison, professor of marketing and management science. "But in the last five years or so, when someone asks, ' Should I attempt to get an MBA?' The answer a lot more is: ' It depends. ' " The success of Bill Gates and other non-MBAs, such as the late Sam Walton of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. , has helped inspire self-conscious debates on business school campuses over the worth of a business degree and whether management skills can be taught. The Harvard Business Review printed a lively, fictional exchange of letters to dramatize complaints about business degree holders. The article called MBA hires "extremely disappointing" and said " MB As want to move up too fast, they don' t understand politics and people, and they aren' t able to function as part of a team until their third year. But by then, they' re out looking for other jobs. " The problem, most participants in the debate acknowledge, is that the MBA has acquired an image of future riches and power far beyond its actual importance and usefulness. Enrollment in business schools exploded in the 1970s and 1980s and created the assumption that no one who pursued a business career could do without one. The growth was fueled by a drive against the anti-business values of the 1960s and by the women' s movement. Business people who have hired or worked with MB As say those with the degrees often know how to analyze systems but are not so skillful at motivating people. " They don' t get a lot of grounding in the people side of the business", said James Shaffer, vice-president and principal of the Towers Perrin Management Consulting Firm.

What is Einstein' s greatest contribution to human beings? What is Einstein' s greatest contribution to human beings?

[A] The first and more important is the consumer' s growing preference for eating out: the consumption of food and drink in places other than homes has risen from about 32 percent of total consumption in 1995 to 35 percent in 2000 and is expected to approach 38 percent by 2005. This development is boosting wholesale demand from the food service segment by 4 to 5 percent a year across Europe, compared with growth in retail demand of 1 to 2 percent. Meanwhile, as the recession is looming large, people are getting anxious. They tend to keep a tighter hold on their purse and consider eating at home a realistic alternative. [B] Retail sales of food and drink in Europe' s largest markets are at a standstill, leaving European grocery retailers hungry for opportunities to grow. Most leading retailers have already tried e-commerce, with limited success, and expansion abroad. But almost all have ignored the big, profitable opportunity in their own backyard: the wholesale food and drink trade, which ap-pears to be just the kind of market retailers need. [C] Will such variations bring about a change in the overall structure of the food and drink market? Definitely not. The functioning of the market is based, on flexible trends dominated by potential buyers. In other words, it is up to the buyer, rather than the seller, to decide what to buy. At any rate, this change will ultimately be acclaimed by an ever-growing number of both domestic and international consumers, regardless of how long the current consumer pattern will take hold. [D] All in all, this clearly seems to be a market in which big retailers could profitably apply their gigantic scale, existing infrastructure, and proven skills in the management of product ranges, logistics, and marketing intelligence. Retailers that master the intricacies of wholesaling in Europe may well expect to rake in substantial profits thereby. At least, that is how it looks as a whole. Closer inspection reveals important differences among the biggest national markets, especially in their customer segments and wholesale structures, as well as the competitive dynamics of individual food and drink categories. Big retailers must understand these differences before they can identify the segments of European wholesaling in which their particular abilities might unseat smaller but entrenched competitors. New skills and unfamiliar business models are needed too. [E] Despite variations in detail, wholesale markets in the countries that have been closely examined—France, Germany, Italy and Spain—are made out of the same building blocks. Demand comes mainly from two sources; independent mom-and-pop grocery stores which, unlike large retail chains, are too small to buy straight from producers, and food service operators that cater to consumers when they don' t eat at home. Such food service operators range from snack machines to large institutional catering ventures, but most of these businesses are known in the trade as "horeca" : hotels, restaurants, and cafes. Overall, Europe' s wholesale market for food and drink is growing at the same sluggish pace as the retail market, but the figures, when added together, mask two opposing trends. [F] For example, wholesale food and drink sales came to $268 billion in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom in 2000—more than 40 percent of retail sales. Moreover, average overall margins are higher in wholesale than in retail; wholesale demand from the food service sector is growing quickly as more Europeans eat out more often; and changes in the competitive dynamics of this fragmented industry are at last making it feasible for wholesalers to considerate. [G] However, none of these requirements should deter large retails (and even some large food producers and existing wholesalers) from trying their hand, for those that master the intricacies of wholesaling in Europe stand to reap considerable gains. Order:

What hasn' t Devorah Day involved in? What hasn' t Devorah Day involved in?

U. S. health officials are increasing surveillance measures at doctors' offices and international borders to guard against the spread of swine flu. Washington also has begun dispersing medicine from a federal stockpile. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there have been only mild cases of swine flu in the United States, but experts remain on guard. Acting agency director, Richard Besser, says the epidemic in Mexico prompted U. S. doctors to begin monitoring actively for possible infections. "We are asking doctors when they see someone who has flu-like illness who has traveled to an affected region, to do a culture, take a swab in the nose and send it to the lab so we can see: is it influenza, is it this type?" he said. Speaking Sunday at the White House, Besser said the extra detection efforts have enabled officials to find more infections than under normal circumstances. He also says he expects the number of infections will rise and the illness will spread to other U. S. regions, as doctors continue to monitor the problem. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it does not recommend people travel to Mexico, where the outbreak of swine flu is centered and more than 100 deaths have been reported. But officials have not ordered a travel ban to the country. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says, instead, airlines have the option of screening passengers on flights from Mexico. "We are letting air carriers and our employees at the gates on those flights make sure that they are asking people if they are sick; and if they are sick, that they should not board the plane, " she said. Denise Korniewiez, an infectious disease expert at the University of Miami, says officials should take bolder steps to screen passengers at international borders, as Japan and other Asian nations are doing. "We have a very transient population here. And Japan has taken a lot of precautions. What Japan is doing is they are making everyone take a temperature when they get off the airplane, " she said. "As far as I am concerned, I think that is a good idea. U. S. officials say they are holding off on more aggressive actions because the outbreak has been limited in the United States and they do not want to cause a health scare. Korniewicz says around the country health centers are putting in place emergency response measures aimed at limiting disease outbreaks.