问答题The prospect of war with Iran is beginning to look real. The hardening of positions in both Tehran and Washington over the past week has brought relations to their lowest point since the Iran hostage crisis that began in 1979.
问答题The importance of agriculture cannot be overstated. More than 50 percent of the world's labor force is employed in agriculture. The distribution in the early 1980s ranged from 67 percent of those employed in Africa to less than 5 percent in North America. In Western Europe, the figure was about 16 percent; in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, about 32 percent; and in Asia, about 68 percent.
Farm size varies widely from region to region. Recently the average for Canadian farms was about 186 ha (about 460 acres) per farm, and for U.S. farms, about 175 ha (about 432 acres). The average size of a single landholding in the Philippines, however, may be somewhat less than 3.6 ha (less than 9 acres), and in Indonesia, a little less than 1.2 ha (less than 3 acres).
Size also depends on the purpose of the farm. Commercial fanning, or production for cash, is usually done on large holdings. The plantations of Latin America are large, privately owned estates worked by tenant labor. Single-crop plantations produce tea, robber, cocoa. Wheat farms are most efficient when they comprise some thousands of hectares and can be worked by teams of people and machines. Australian sheep stations and other livestock farms must be large to provide grazing for thousands of animals.
Individual subsistence farms or small-family mixed-farm operations are decreasing in number in developed countries but are still numerous in the developing countries of Africa and Asia. A "back-to-the-land" movement in the U.S. reversed the decline of small farms in New England and Alaska in the decade from 1970 to 1980.
The conditions that determine what will be raised in an area include climate, water supply, and terrain.
Over the 10,000 years since agriculture began to be developed, peoples everywhere have discovered the food value of wild plants and animals and domesticated and bred them. The most important are cereals such as wheat, rice, barley, com and rye.
Agricultural income is also derived from non-food crops such as robber, fiber plants, tobacco, and oilseeds used in synthetic chemical compounds. Money is also derived from raising animals for pelt.
Much of the foreign exchange earned by a country may be derived from a single commodity; for example. Sri Lanka depends on tea. Denmark specializes in dairy products. Australia in wool. and New Zealand and Argentina in meat products. In the U.S., wheat has become a major foreign exchange commodity in recent years.
The importance of an individual country as an exporter of agricultural products depends on many variables. Among them is the possibility that the country is too little developed industrially to produce manufactured goods in sufficient quantity or technical sophistication. Such agricultural exporters include Ghana with cocoa, and Myanmar with rice. On the other hand. an excep-tionally well-developed country may produce surpluses not needed by its own population; this has been true of the U.S., Canada, and some of the West European countries.
问答题1．每个人都沉浸在他或她自己的音乐世界里，他们伴随着自己音乐广播中的音带和明星前行，几乎忘却了周围的世界。
2．他们沉浸在自己的MP3世界中沿街走着，会撞到其他人，对一些小的社会标记充耳不闻，把所有和他们幻想不一样的人都拒之门外。
3．时不时地一些人开始无意识地发出不和谐的、奇怪的叫声，就像一台未调好的广播。他们的手指会发出噼啪声，或者他们的胳膊会随着一些奇怪的、无声的节奏而扭动。
4．就像所有上瘾的信徒，这种局势还在蔓延。上了地铁你会被一群凝视着中间空地的通勤者包围着，他们仿佛被科技麻痹了。
5．科技为我们创造了一个自我世界，在这一自我世界中，结识陌生人或听见一首我们永远不会自己选择的音乐的新发现，或者一个导致我们改变对某些事物看法的观点都被有效地排除了。
问答题美国公司常常谈论他们在培训员工上所花费的大量资金，事实上与日本或德国的公司相比，他们在员工技能上的投入却少得多。他们所投入的资金更多地集中在专业和管理层员工身上。用于培训工人的有限投入也更加局限于进行下一项工作所必须的具体技能，而不是用于可能吸收新技术的一些基础的背景技术。
问答题我们学校师资力量不足。
问答题Red-light running has always been regarded as a minor wrong, and so it has never been taken seriously. When the violation becomes habitual, however, a great deal more than a traffic problem is involved.
问答题1．当你设法弄清消费信息技术将向何处发展以及这对社会意味着什么时，要记住这个重要的核心事实：人们只是想看更多的电视节目。
2．就像其他每个消费电子产品公司做的那样，索尼公司在最近的消费类电子产品展会上推出大量产品，这些产品是用来把网络视频放到电视上。在同时举行的Macworld展会上，苹果公司总裁史蒂夫·乔布斯推出具有同样功能的苹果电视。
3．从那时到现在，基本而明显的事实是处理器的功能不断提高和带宽的不断增大，而预言家们已经自信地预测了这一天。正如他们自信地预言它的含义：传统的电视节目会被替代。
4．实际情况却正好相反。尽管网络时代有其他多种选择，我们美国人如今看的无聊电视却比以往任何时候都多，这就说明了问题。
5．关于电视，没有人比著名的《纽约客》杂志评论家E.B. 怀特的评价更恰当。他在1938年写道：“我们的好坏将取决于电视，这一点我敢肯定。”
问答题国际金融危机给中国带来了前所未有的困难和挑战。主要表现在：经济下行压力明显加大，进出口继续下滑，工业生产明显放缓，部分企业生产经营困难，就业难度加大。这场国际金融危机与中国发展方式转变、经济结构调整的关键时期不期而遇，新的挑战与既有矛盾相互交织，加大了我们解决问题的难度。
为应对国际金融危机冲击、保持经济平稳较快发展，中国及时调整宏观经济政策，果断实施积极的财政政策和适度宽松的货币政策，形成了进一步扩大内需、促进经济增长的一揽子计划。我们大规模增加政府支出，实施总额4万亿元人民币的两年投资计划，实行结构性减税政策，多次降息和增加银行体系流动性，大范围实施产业调整振兴规划，大力推进科技创新和技术改造，大力加强节能减排和生态环境保护，继续调整国民收入分配格局，大力拓展国内市场特别是农村市场，大幅度提高社会保障水平。
现在，这些措施已取得初步成效、呈现出积极迹象，国内消费需求比较旺盛，投资需求稳步提高，社会大局保持稳定。这表明中国的应对思路是符合实际的，政策是积极有效的。中国为应对国际金融危机冲击采取的一系列举措不仅对本国经济、而且对区域经济乃至世界经济都将产生积极影响。
问答题There is a combination of enthusiasm and excitement that is felt while travelling. New foods, different faces, foreign languages, and interesting customers all fascinate the travellers.
问答题Jefferson believed that governments are, at best, necessary evil.
问答题1．因此，如果在某些教科书里你碰到某些词组是你从未见过的，你不必惊讶。如果下次听到有人用一个你以前从未听到过的新词，你可以这样安慰自己说，很可能在什么地方有一个讲英语的本地人也不认识这个字呢!
2．“自然法则”这一术语之所以模糊不清，部分原因在于人们企图把这个术语仅用于指对这些法则中的某种法则。正如有人认为科学仅研究因果关系，但实际上它对三种都同样适用。
3．有一名记者近日指责该公司在美容产品的测试上缺乏整体性，该公司公开利用其公司品牌求助于公众，而该品牌在公众的心目中已同关系到动物权利的道德标准息息相关。
4．虽然在某处已经开始的生命中可能仅有百分之一会发展成高度复杂、有智慧的样式，但是行星的数目如此之多，以致有智慧的生命一定是宇宙的一个天然组成部分。
5．它(广告)能够直接帮助货物以比较合理的价格被迅速分销出去，因此可以(使公司)建立一个坚固的国内市场，同时也使以具有竞争力的价格提供出口变得可能。
问答题The tolerance they are talking about does not in fact exist but is invented as a justification for present intolerance.
问答题1．“技术转让”的基本设想是：发达国家利用新发现开发技术会给发展中国家带来适用的成果。
2．问题在于：这种结果是不是转让过程中不可避免的、固有的；是不是仅仅反映了资源的缺乏和管理不当。
3．这种殖民主义方式不考虑其发展过程是否能被“技术转让”接受国的人们执行。“技术转让”始于培训，终于应用，其哲学基础是由制度化的科学结构内的一整套社会文化和经济所决定的价值观所构成的。这些价值观选择那些被认为有意义的问题，决定优先的研究计划，评估所取得的成果的意义。
4．这种情况必须用一种新的方法予以取代，作为发展中国家前沿科学发展的一部分。这种方法即所谓的“基础知识转让”。
5．内部的“技术转让”要求每个国家或地区有一定数量的训练有素的科学家；每个国家和地区都需要创造方式，以保持带头人能始终胜任工作。
问答题这几年的变化极为显著，不容我们忽视；其教训也极为沉痛，不容我们忘怀。
问答题Because the aircraft industry needs ever-increasing quantities of aluminium plate, new equipment has been designed to automate the making of it. It includes a huge heat-treatment furnace, a crane that lifts hot metal plates without damaging them, and a computer system that can manage the complete flow of work.
Five years ago, Europe's aircraft industry needed only 8,000 tonnes of aluminium plate a year for its products. Last year the figure reached 21,800 tonnes. By 2004 it should total 30,000 tonnes. Each airliner contains 180 tonnes of it. That is why the plant is being rebuilt to increase both the quality and the amount of its product.
Aluminium is alloyed with other metals and cast into ingots, and the surface of the ingots is smoothed off. After pre-heating, it is rolled in a mill that can take 3.75-m-wide slabs. The new equipment can make the process more efficient and can produce a better product. For example, computers control the temperature of the hot plates, the rate at which they pass through the mill, the speed of cooling it with water, and so on.
The new plant can handle twice the throughput of the one that it is replacing, thanks to the completely automated and computerized process.
问答题There is an ever-widening gap between black male college enrollees and their female and white counterparts, says the American Council on Education (ACE).
Twenty years ago, according to ACE's "Annual Status Report on Minorities in Higher Education," 30 percent of African American male high school graduates (ages 18 to 24) were enrolled in college, compared with 28 percent of same-age black females and 41 percent of white males.
Now, some 37 percent of black men are enrolled, compared with 42 percent of African American women and 44.5 percent of white males. So while there are more black males enrolling in college today than 20 years ago, other groups have outstripped them in enrolling and, even more importantly, in retention rates.
The graduation rate of black men is lower than that of any group. Only 35 percent of black males enrollees graduated within six years from colleges in 1996, compared with 59 percent of white males, 46 percent of Hispanic men, 41 percent of American Indian males and 45 percent of the black women who entered the same year.
Surveys and reports are hinting that the country's educational apparatus is stacked against the black male. Fewer than one in five students of color have graduated from high school, have a set of college-prep courses on their high school transcripts and "demonstrate basic literacy" -- the necessities for being "college ready."
Another glaring problem is that black males are disproportionately labeled as discipline and behavioral problems and fast tracked out of high schools through expulsions and suspensions.
As if that's not enough, says ACE's William Harvey, there's a virtual drying up of federal aid-to-education grant money coupled with jacked-up tuitions, which make it necessary for low-income students to assume an average ＄ 20,000 debt to finish a four-year curriculum.
"For those in the lower economic category, the availability of financial aid determines who gets to go to college and who doesn't," observes Harvey.
Harvey points out that, over the years, federal funding has undergone a "complete reversal," from "a 70 percent to 30 percent grant-to-loan ratio 20 years ago" to the exact opposite today.
"An 18-year-old male will be more inclined to say, 'I want money in my pocket now' and attempt to get a job," adds Harvey. "But many take on the debt, become part-time students, work 20-plus hours a week and become five-year students at a four-year college."
The inequity of that educational apparatus is especially clear when you look at the black males who persevere -- those who go on to finish high school, earn a bachelor's degree and even finish grad school.
A recently released Census report shows that, whether they have a high school diploma or a master's degree, black men will earn roughly 25 percent less than Whites.
问答题Science, in practice, depends far less on the experiments it prepares than on the preparedness of the minds of the men who watch the experiments. Sir Isaac Newton supposedly discovered gravity through the fall of an apple. Apples had been falling in many places for centuries and thousands of people had seen them fall. But Newton for years had been curious about the cause of the orbital motion of the moon and planets. What kept them in place? Why didn"t they fall out of the sky? The fact that the apple fell down toward the earth and not up into the tree answered the question he had been asking himself about those larger fruits of the heavens, the moon and the planets.
How many men would have considered the possibility of an apple falling up into the tree? Newton did because he was not trying to predict anything. He was just wondering his mind was ready for the unpredictable. Unpredictability is part of the essential nature of research. If you don"t have unpredictable things, you don"t have research. Scientists tend to forget this when writing their cut and dried reports for the technical journals, but history is filled with examples of it.
In talking to some scientists, particularly younger ones, you might gather the impression that they find the "scientific method" a substitute for imaginative thought. I"ve attended research conferences where a scientist has been asked what he thinks about the advisability of continuing a certain experiment. The scientist has frowned, looked at the graphs, and said "The data are still inconclusive." "We know that," the men from the budget office have said, "but what do you think? Is it worthwhile going on? What do you think we might expect?" The scientist has been shocked at having even been asked to speculate.
What this amounts to, of course, is that the scientist has become the victim of his own writings. He has put forward unquestioned claims so consistently that he not only believes them himself, but has convinced industrial and business management that they are true. If experiments are planned and carried out according to plan as faithfully as the reports in the science journals indicate, then it is perfectly logical for management to expect research to produce results measurable in dollars and cents. It is entirely reasonable for auditors to believe that scientists who know exactly where they are going and how they will get there should not be distracted by the necessity of keeping one eye on the cash register while the other eye is on the microscope. Nor, if regularity and conformity to a standard pattern are as desirable to the scientist as the writing of his papers would appear to reflect, is management to be blamed for discriminating against the "odd balls" among researchers in favor of more conventional thinkers who "work well with the team".
问答题上周英国心理学家报道，英语中有句谚语说，诚实才是上策。不幸的是，当没有人监督时，诚实常常离开我们。
英国纽卡斯尔大学的研究者在他们的心理学系的咖啡室做了一项试验。他们在柜台上设置了一把壶，放置了茶叶，咖啡和牛奶同时在各种饮料上面标明了价格。只要在盒子旁边放上几美分，客人就可以自己动手做一杯饮料。科学家在装钱的盒子上方贴了一个海报，这张海报要么是一张比较形象的监视的眼睛要么就是花。研究者发现当张贴画有眼睛的海报时，人们为自己的饮料付费要多出2.76倍。其中的一位研究者吉尔伯特·罗伯特说：“坦白地说我们对此很震惊。”
眼睛是人类最有力的感官信号。一位行为生物行为学家和该项研究的学者——梅丽撒·巴特森说：“即使海报上的眼睛画像不是真的，但它们还是似乎能使人们表现得更诚实。”
研究者认为此效果就是使我们进化的过去清楚地显示出来。它可能起始于早期人类形成社会群体以增强他们生存机会时发展出来的行为特点。对于一个社会群体的工作，个人必须合作，而不是自私地行事。班纳森说：“现在有一种观点就是如果没有人监视我们，我就会为了自己的利益而自私地行事，但是当我们被监视的时候，我们做的会更好。所以人们觉得我们是可以合作的，他们也会以同样的合作方式对待我们。”
这项新的发现表明人们对眼睛有很强的反应。这可能是因为眼睛和脸可以给我们很强的我们已经进化到可以对之产生反应的生理信号。这项发现也可以用于实践。例如，形象的眼睛可以在公共交通中提高售票率，提高监督系统阻止不符合社会规则的行为。
问答题Aimlessness has hardly been typical of the postwar Japan whose productivity and social harmony are the envy of the United States and Europe. But increasingly the Japanese are seeing a decline of the traditional work-moral values. Ten years ago young people were hardworking and saw their jobs as their primary reason for being, but now Japan has largely fulfilled its economic needs, and young people don"t know where they should go next.
The coming of age of the postwar baby boom and an entry of women into the male-dominated job market have limited the opportunities of teenagers who are already questioning the heavy personal sacrifices involved in climbing Japan"s rigid social ladder to good schools and jobs. In a recent survey, it was found that only 24.5 percent of Japanese students were fully satisfied with school life, compared with 67.2 percent of students in the United States. In addition, far more Japanese workers expressed dissatisfaction with their jobs than did their counterparts in the 10 other countries surveyed.
While often praised by foreigners for its emphasis on the basics, Japanese education tends to stress test taking and mechanical learning over creativity and self-expression. "Those things that do not show up in the test scores personality, ability, courage or humanity are completely ignored," says Toshiki Kaifu, chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party"s education committee. "Frustration against this kind of thing leads kids to drop out and run wild." Last year Japan experienced 2,125 incidents of school violence, including 929 assaults on teachers. Amid the outcry, many conservative leaders are seeking a return to the prewar emphasis on moral education. Last year Mitsuo Setoyama, who was then education minister, raised eyebrows when he argued that liberal reforms introduced by the American occupation authorities after World War Ⅱ had weakened the "Japanese morality of respect for parents."
But that may have more to do with Japanese life-styles. "In Japan," says educator Yoko Muro, "it"s never a question of whether you enjoy your job and your life, but only how much you can endure." With economic growth has come centralization, fully 76 percent of Japan"s 119 million citizens live in cities where community and the extended family have been abandoned in favor of isolated, two generation households. Urban Japanese have long endured lengthy commutes (travels to and from work) and crowded living conditions, but as the old group and family values weaken, the discomfort is beginning to tell. In the past decade, the Japanese divorce rate, while still well below that of the United States, has increased by more than 50 percent, and suicides have increased by nearly one-quarter.
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