BSection III Writing/B

One of the most important results of research into ageing has been to pinpoint the significance of short-term memory. This faculty is easily (1)_____ as ageing advances. What seems to (2)_____ is that in formation is received by the brain, (3)_____ scans it for meaning in order to decode it at some future time. It looks as if the actual (4)_____ of the short-term memory itself may not change too much (5)_____ age. A young man and a man in his late fifties may (6)_____ be able to remember and repeat a(n) (7)_____ of eight numbers recited to them. But what (8)_____ change is that when the older man is asked to re member anything (9)_____ between the time he is first given the numbers to memorise and the time he is asked to (10)_____ them, he will be much less likely to remember the (11)_____ numbers than the young man. This is because the scanning stage is more easily (12)_____ by other activities in (13)_____ people. In (14)_____ living one experiences this as a fairly minor (15)_____—a telephone number forgotten while one looks (16)_____ an area code, or the first part of (17)_____ street directions confused with the fast because the last "turn lefts" and" turn rights" have interfered (18)_____ remembering the first directions. In more formal learning, however, the (19)_____ of short-term memory is more than just a mild social embarrassment. It can be a serious bar to further (20)_____ or indeed to any progress at all.

Psychotherapy for as long as nine months is significantly more effective than short-term treatment for alleviating depression associated with bipolar disease, new research suggests. The drugs used to treat depression are of limited use in treating the repeating depressive episodes of bipolar illness, according to background information in the article, published last week in The Archives of General Psychiatry. The researchers studied 293 patients with bipolar disease at 15 medical centers nationwide. They randomly assigned one group of 163 people to one of three kinds of psychotherapy consisting of up to 30—50-minute sessions over nine months. A second group of 130 patients was assigned to "collaborative care", three sessions over six weeks designed to offer a brief version of the most common psychological and behavioral strategies shown to be beneficial in bipolar illness. The participants, whose average age was 40, were followed for one year, and all were also being treated with mood-stabilizing medicines. Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on challenging and controlling negative thoughts. In interpersonal and social rhythm therapy, patients concentrate on stabilizing daily routines and resolving interpersonal problems. Family therapy engages family members to help solve problems related to the illness, like failing to take medication properly, and to reduce the number of negative family interactions. Therapists at each of the 15 medical centers received brief training in the therapies they administered. "The study included real-world patients experiencing the early phases of a depressive episode", said David J. Miklowitz, the study"s lead author. "And the therapists who delivered the treatment were trained by experts in the field with low-intensity training, which is typical of what"s available in real-life practice". Recovery rates after one year were a combined average of 64 percent for the intensive therapy groups, but only 52 percent for those who had brief therapy. In any given month, a patient undergoing longer-term therapy was more than one and a half times as likely to be well as one who had short-term treatment. Family therapy was slightly more effective than interpersonal or cognitive behavioral therapy, but the differences among the types of intensive treatment were not statistically significant. "This is a monumental study", said a professor of psychiatry who was not involved in the work. "There are no pharmaceutical companies willing to pay for research in psychotherapy, so we don"t have many clinical trials". But, she added: "Psychosocial treatment for bipolar illness is not an alternative to medication. It"s a supplement". The cost of long-term therapy is high, and insurance companies are reluctant to cover it. But according to the professor, the cost of not covering it could be higher. "It isn"t just the cost of the therapy. It"s the long-term cost. Bipolar illness has devastating effects on families as well as on the patients themselves".

Even the Saudis—or rather, the small number of men who actually rule their troubled country—are giving ground in the struggle for women"s rights. For sure, the recommendations (1)_____ this week to Crown Prince Abdullah at the end of an (2)_____ round of "national dialogue" concentrating on the role of women were fairly tame. In the reformers-versus-reactionaries (3)_____ test of whether women should be allowed to drive cars (at present they cannot do so in the kingdom, nor can they travel unaccompanied, by whatever (4)_____ of motion), the king was merely asked to" (5)_____ a body to study a public transport system for women to facilitate mobility". (6)_____ mention, of course, of the right to vote—but then that has been (7)_____ to men too, though local elections, on an apparently universal franchise, are supposed to be held in October. In sum, it is a tortoise"s progress. But the very fact of the debate happening at all is (8)_____—and hopeful. It is not just in Saudi Arabia that more rights for women are being demanded (9)_____ across the whole of the Arab and Muslim world. The pushy Americans have made women"s rights part of their appeal for greater democracy in (10)_____ they now officially call the "broader Middle East", to include non-Arab Muslim countries such as Iran, Turkey and even Afghanistan. Many Arabs have cautioned the Americans against seeking to (11)_____ their own values on societies with such different traditions and (12)_____ Many leading Muslims have (13)_____ the culturally imperious Americans of seeking to (14)_____ Is lam. The (15)_____ for more democracy in the Muslim world issued by leaders of the eight biggest industrial countries was watered down for fear of giving (16)_____ Yet, despite the Arabs" prickliness, the Americans have helped pep up a debate that is now bubbling fiercely in the Arab world, even (17)_____ many Arab leaders, none of whom is directly elected by the people, are understandably (18)_____ of reforms that could lead to their own toppling. Never before have women"s rights in the Arab world been so (19)_____ debated. That (20)_____ is cause to rejoice.

Two months ago, you got a job as an editor. But now you find that the work doesn't suit to your personal interest. Write a tetter to personnel manager: 1) telling him your decision, 2) stating your reason(s), 3) making an apology and expressing thanks. You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write your address. (10 points)

Every product on the market has a variety of costs built into it before it is ever put up for sale to a customer. There are costs of production, transportation, storage, advertising, and more. Each of these costs must bring in some profit at each stage: truckers must profit from transporting products, or they would not be in business. Thus, costs also include several layers of profits. The selling price of a product must take all of these costs(and built-in profits) into consideration. The selling price itself consists of a markup over the total of all costs, and it is normally based on a percentage of the total cost. The markup may be quite high 90 percent of cost or it may be low. Grocery items in a supermarket usually have a low markup, while mink cost have a very high one. High markups, however, do not in themselves guarantee big profits. Profits come from turnover. If an item has a 50 percent markup and does not sell, there is no profit. But if a cereal has an 8 percent markup and sells very well, there are reasonable profits. While most pricing is based on cost factors, there are some exceptions. Prestige pricing means setting prices artificially high in order to attract select clientele. Such pricing attempts to suggest that the quality or style of the product is exceptional or that the item cannot be found elsewhere. Stores can use prestige pricing to attract wealthy shoppers. Leader pricing and bait pricing are the opposites of prestige pricing. Leader pricing means setting low prices on certain items to get people to come into the stores. The products so priced are called loss leaders because little or no profit can be made on them. The profits are made from other products people buy while in the store. Bait pricing, now generally considered illegal, means setting artificially low prices to attract customers. The store, however, has no intention of selling goods at the bait prices. The point is to get people into the store and persuade them of the inferiority of the low-priced item. Then a higher priced item is presented as a better alternative. A common retail tactic is odd priced products. For some products of $300, the store will set the price at $295 or $299.95 to give the appearance of a lower price. Automobiles and other high-priced products are usually priced in this manner. For some reason $7995 has more appear to a potential car customer than $8000. Bid pricing is a special kind of price setting. It is often used in the awarding of government contracts. Several companies are asked to submit bids on a job, and normally the lowest bidder wins. A school system may want to buy a large number of computers. Several companies are asked to submit prices, and the school district will decide on the best bid based as well on considerations of quality and service.

The clue lies in the Japanese name that has been adopted for them around the world: tsunami. (46) Formed from the characters for harbour and wave, and commemorated in the 19th-century woodblock print by Hokusai that decorates so many books and articles about the subject, the word shows that these sudden, devastating waves have mainly in the past occurred in the Pacific Ocean, ringed as it is by volcanoes and earthquake zones. Thanks to one tsunami in 1946 that killed 165 people, mainly in Hawaii, the countries around the Pacific have shared a tsunami warning centre ever since. (47) Those around the Indian Ocean have no such centre, being lucky enough not to have suffered many big tsunamis before and unlucky enough not to count the world"s two biggest and most technologically advanced economies, the United States and Japan, among their number. So when, on December 26th, the world"s strongest earthquake in 40 years shook the region, with its epicenter under the sea near the northernmost tip of the Indonesian archipelago, there was no established mechanism to pass warnings to the countries around the ocean"s shores. There would have been between 90 and 150 minutes in which to broadcasts warnings by radio, television and loudspeaker in the areas most affected, the Indonesian province of Aceh, Sri Lanka and the Indian chain of the Andaman and Nicobar islands. (48) Had such warnings been broadcast then many of the tens of thousands of lives lost would have been saved. (49) How many, nobody can know, for the task of evacuation would have been far from easy in many of these crowded, poor and low-lying coastal communities. Equally, though, it will probably never be known exactly how many people have died. (50) Whereas in many disasters the initial estimates of fatalities prove too high, the opposite is occurring in this case.

You have been working for Aigo Computer Company for five months. However, now you find that the work is not what you expected. You decide to quit. Write a letter to your boss, Mr. Wang, telling him your decision, stating your reason(s) , and making an apology. 1. Write your letter with no less than 100 words. Write it on ANSWER SHEET 2. 2. Do not sign your name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. 3. You do not need to write the address.

Peacocks strut; bowerbirds build lovenests; spiders giftwrap flies in silk. 【F1】 Such courtship rituals play an important role in what Charles Darwin called sexual selection: when the female of a species bears most of the costs of reproduction, males use extravagant displays and gifts to demonstrate their "reproductive fitness" and females choose between them. For human males, shards of a crystalline form of carbon often feature. A diamond engagement ring signals a man's taste, wealth and commitment, all to persuade a woman that he is a good bet. Now, that promise is dimming. Though a growing Chinese middle class will probably prop up demand for a while, millennials in Western countries seem keener on memorable experiences than on bling. 【F2】 Diamonds' image has been blemished by some being mined in warzones and sold to pay for the fighting. Meanwhile, laboratory-grown "synthetic" diamonds, long fit only for industrial use, are becoming good enough to compete with gems from out of the ground. Greater equality for women might seem to render male-courtship displays redundant. But mating preferences evolved over millennia and will not change quickly. If diamonds were to cease being a way to signal a man's marriageability, what might take their place? A different gift, perhaps. In China skewed sex ratios mean that a prospective bridegroom must own an apartment and shower his future in-laws with cash. But a glittering stone goes to the woman, not her family. 【F3】 And it is more than a gift; it is a status symbol, demonstrating that even as a man approaches the expenses of married life, he can still splash out on a bauble. Or a man could rely on more generic forms of display, such as a fancy degree, good job or sharp suit. But these can impress one woman as easily as another, or several simultaneously. He must show commitment—a need not unique to courtship. Salvadoran gangsters get extravagant tattoos; Japanese yakuza cut off a fingertip. These visible signs of allegiance make it hard to defect, and impose heavy costs. But as marriage proposals they would fall short. Few women would feel proud to carry around their fiancé's severed pinkie. Love is a multifaceted thing. 【F4】 Many millennial women seek a mate who is creative, charitable and earns enough not to live with his parents. The millionaire founder of a startup that makes an app to teach yoga to orphans would be ideal. 【F5】 As a token of his commitment, a suitor might offer the object of his affections 51% of his shares—so much nicer than a joint bank account. Less eligible men could offer instead to link Uber accounts , thus entwining the couple's reputations: their joint five-star rating would be at risk if either misbehaved. Uber-linking would also allow each to keep track of the other's whereabouts, discouraging infidelity. Whatever ultimately replaces diamonds, it will surely be digital, not worn on a digit.

The Theory of Continental Drift has had a long and turbulent history since it was first proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1910. (46) Vigorously challenged yet widely ignored, the theory had languished for half a century, primarily due to its lack of a plausible mechanism to support the proposed drift. With the discovery of sea-floor spreading in the late 1950"s and early 60"s, the idea was reinvigorated. Plate tectonics is now almost universally accepted. Many details of the mechanism are to be worked out. The surface of the Earth is divided into approximately six large plates, plus a number of smaller ones. The plates are bounded by an interconnected network of ridges, transform faults, and trenches. Ridges, also called spreading centers, occur where two plates are moving away from each other. As the plates separate, hot molten mantle material flows up to fill the void. (47) The increased heat resulting from this flow reduces the density of the plates, causing them to float higher, thus elevating the boundaries by many thousands of feet above the colder surrounding sea floor. (48) Ridges on the ocean floor form the longest continuous ranges of mountains on the planet, but only in a very few places on the Earth do these mountains rise above the ocean surface. New sea floor is constantly being created along spreading centers. Obviously somewhere else old sea floor must be going away. This occurs in trenches, also called subduction zones. Trenches occur along the boundary between two plates that are moving towards each other. (49) Where this occurs, one plate is bent downwards at about a 40°angle and plunges under the other plate"s leading edge, eventually to melt back into the liquid mantle below. As the subducting plate is heated back up to mantle temperatures, certain minerals in the plate melt sooner than others. (50) Minerals that melt at lower temperatures and are lighter than the surrounding material tend to rise, melting their way up through the overriding plate to erupt as volcanoes on the ocean floor. As these volcanoes grow, they rise above the ocean surface to form lines of islands along the leading edge of the overriding plate. Numerous islands of Micronesia and Melanesia in the western Pacific were created in this way.

Imagine you are a student who wants to apply for the New Star scholarship offered by your university. Write a letter to the person concerned which should include (1) the purpose of writing the letter; (2) your qualifications for the scholarship; (3) your thanks: You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. You do not need to write the address.

BSection III Writing/B

Few people, except conspiracy theorists, would have expected so public a spat as the one this week between the two ringmasters of Formula One (F1) motor racing. Bernie Ecelestone, a very wealthy British motor sport entrepreneur, is at odds. It would seem with his longstanding associate, Max Mosley, president of F1"s governing body, the Federation International of Automobile (FIA). On the surface, the dispute has broken out over what looked like a done deal. Last June, the FIA voted unanimously to extend Mr. Ecelestone"s exclusive fights to stage and broadcast F1 racing, which expire in 2010. For these favorable rights, Mr. Ecelestone was to pay the FIA a mere $360 million in total, and only $60 million immediately. The FIA claims that Mr. Ecelestone has not made the payment of $60 million, a claim denied by Mr. Ecelestone, who insists the money has been placed in an escrow account. Mr. Mosley has asked Mr. Ecelestone to pay up or risk losing the deal for the F1 rights after 2010, perhaps in a group of car makers that own F1 teams. For his part, Mr. Ecelestone has, rather theatrically, accused Mr. Mosley of "trying to do some extortion". What is going on? Only three things can be stated with confidence. First, the idea that Mr. Ecelestone cannot find the 560 million is ridiculous: his family trust is not exactly short of cash. having raised around $2 billion in the past two years. Second. it would not be in Mr. Ecelestone"s long-term financial interest to discard a deal which could only enhance the value of his family"s remaining 50% stake in SLEC, the holding company for the group of companies that runs the commercial side of F1. Third, the timing of the dispute is very interesting. Why? Because the other 50% stake in SLEC owned by EM. TV. a debt-ridden German media company, is up for sale. EM. TV badly needs to sell this stake in the near future to keep its bankers at dead end. The uncertainty created by the dispute between Mr. Ecelestone and Mr. Mosley might depress the value of EM. TV"s holding. Could that work to Mr. Ecetestone"s advantage? Quite possibly. The lower the value of EM. TV"s stake, the higher the relative value of an option Mr. Ecelestone holds to sell a further 25% of SLEC m EM. TV for around $1 billion—and the better the deal Mr. Ecelestone might be able to extract for surrendering the option. Whoever buys EM. TV"s stake in SLEC will have to negotiate with Mr. Ecelestone over this instrument. The Economist understands that Mr. Ecelestone has the fight to veto a plan proposed last December by Kireh, a privately owned German media group, to buy half of EM. TV"s holding for $550 million. In the coming weeks, Mr. Ecelestone will doubtless be deploying his formidable negotiating skills to best advantage. It would be hasty to bet against his securing a good deal out of EM. TV"s difficulties. His dispute with the F1A may then be easily resolved. As usual, he holds all the cards.

"I think paying kids for test scores really undercuts the basics of what we preach in the classroom about why learning is an important thing—why it"s important for its own sake," says Liam Julian. Julian, like many, is worried about New York" s new plan to pay kids to learn. His idealism is understandable, but problematic in a city where about half of the black and Hispanic students don"t make it to graduation. If "learning for learning"s sake" is what the schools are selling, a lot of kids aren"t buying. Harvard economist Ronald Fryer designed the pay-to-learn plan. Under his plan, kids can earn cash for performance on 10 standardized tests—five mathematics and five English exams. Each student will be paid a small amount for simply completing the test; additional money is added for high scores. The idea is not new. In cities like Washington, D. C. , and Atlanta, some kids are already profiting from academic improvement. But the New York program has attracted its share of controversy. Barry Schwartz argues that the use of incentives could "make the learning problem worse in the long run unless we"re prepared to follow these children through life, giving them a pat on the head, or a check every time they learn something new". Schwartz and Julian argue that if students are paid for performance, their intrinsic love of learning will be corrupted. Both concede, however, that the students being targeted for this program already feel little or no love for school. Yet Ph. D. candidates—and professors of psychology, for that matter—get paid to learn as a matter of course, and they seem to be doing just fine. To completely separate the idea of money from schools is in some ways noble and ideal, but doesn"t reflect reality. Schools spend thousands of dollars per year per student; school systems spend millions to renovate buildings; and considerable money is spent on sports programs and academic teams. More directly, the schools already provide free or reduced-price meals to many students so that growling stomachs won"t prevent them from focusing enough to learn. Paying the students directly to enhance that focus is not going to warp the system or the students any more than free lunch and football already do. If anything, paying them will further prepare them for adulthood when they will be paid for their services, or- if they"re lucky—receive performance-based scholarships and stipends for college.

A.Studythefollowingpicturecarefullyandwriteanessayinnolessthan160—200words.B.Youressaymustbewrittenclearly.C.Youressayshouldmeettherequirementsbelow:1)Describethefollowingdrawings,2)interpretitsmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

In almost all cases the soft parts of fossils are gone for ever but they were fitted around or within the hard parts. Many of them also were attached to the hard parts and usually such attachments are visible as depressed or elevated areas, ridges or grooves, smooth or rough patches on the hard parts. The muscles most important for the activities of the animal and most evident in the appearance of the living animal are those attached to the hard parts and possible to reconstruct from their attachments. Much can be learned about a vanished brain from the inside of the skull in which it was lodged. Restoration of the external appearance of an extinct animal has little or no scientific value. It does not even help in inferring what the activities of the living animal were, how fast it could run, what its food was, or such other conclusions as are important for the history of life. However, what most people want to know about extinct animals is what they looked like when they were alive. Scientists also would like to know. Things like fossil shells present no great problem as a rule, because the hard parts are external when the animal is alive and the outer appearance is actually preserved in the fossils. Animals in which the skeleton is internal present great problems of restoration, and honest restorers admit that they often have to use considerable guessing. The general shape and contours of the body are fixed by the skeleton and by muscles attached to the skeleton, but surface features, which may give the animal its really characteristic look, are seldom restorable with any real probability of accuracy. The present often helps to interpret the past. An extinct animal presumably looked more or less like its living relatives, if it has any. This, however, may be quite equivocal. For example, extinct members of the horse family are usually restored to look somewhat like the most familiar living horses — domestic horses and their closest wild relatives. It is, however, possible and even probable that many extinct horses were striped like zebras. If lions and tigers were extinct they would be restored to look exactly alike. No living elephants have much hair and mammoths, which are extinct elephants, would doubtless be restored as hairless if we did not happen to know that they had thick, woolly coats. We know this only because mammoths are so recently extinct that prehistoric men drew pictures of them and that the hide and hair have actually been found in a few specimens. For older extinct animals we have no such clues.

Louis Armstrong sang, "When you"re smiling, the whole world smiles with you." Romantics everywhere may be surprised to learn that psychological research has proven this sentiment to be true—merely seeing a smile (or a frown, for that matter) will activate the muscles in our face that make that expression, even if we are unaware of it. Now, according to a new study inPsychological Science, simply reading certain words may also have the same effect. Psychologists Francesco Foroni from VU University Amsterdam and Gun R.Semin from the University of Utrecht conducted two experiments to see if emotion language has an influence on facial muscle activity. In the first experiment, a group of students read a series of emotion verbs (e.g., "to smile," "to cry") and adjectives (e.g., "funny," "frustrating") on a monitor, while the activity of their zygomatic major (the muscle responsible for smiles) and corrugator supercilii (which causes frowns) muscles were measured. The results showed that reading action verbs activated the corresponding muscles. For example, "to laugh" resulted in activation of the zygomatic major muscle, but did not cause any response in the muscles responsible for frowning. Interestingly, when presented with the emotion adjectives like "funny" or "frustrating" the volunteers demonstrated much lower muscle activation compared to their reactions to emotion verbs. The researchers note that muscle activity is "induced in the reader when reading verbs representing facial expressions of emotion." Can this natural bodily reaction affect our judgments? In another experiment, volunteers watched a series of cartoons and were unconsciously shown emotion verbs and adjectives after each one. They were then asked to rate how funny they thought the cartoons were. Half of the participants held a pen with their lips, to prevent them from smiling, while the remaining participants did not have their muscle movement blocked. The results reveal that even when emotion verbs are presented unconsciously, they are able to influence judgment—volunteers found cartoons to be funnier when they were preceded by smiling verbs than if they were preceded by frowning-related verbs. However, this effect only occurred in the volunteers who were able to smile—volunteers who had muscle movement blocked did not show this relationship between emotion verbs and how funny they judged the cartoons as being.The results of these experiments reveal that simply reading emotion verbs activates specific facial muscles and can influence judgments we make. The researchers note these findings suggest that "language is not merely symbolic, but also somatic," and they conclude that "these experiments provide an important bridge between research on the neurobiological basis of language and related behavioral research."

BPart BDirections: Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the following information./B

One of your close friends, Catherine, gave a piano solo at a concert last night and won the first prize. Now write her a letter of congratulation including the following details: 1) your heart-felt congratulations, 2) your strong impression, 3) and your encouragement. Write your letter in no less than 100 words. Write it neatly. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter, use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

The battle to prevent or at least slow global warming has intensified in the past year as scientists have learned more about the magnitude of the problem. One of the leading climate experts, Inez Y. Fung, director of the Atmospheric Sciences Center at the University of California, Berkeley, recently showed that the earth may soon lose its ability to absorb much of the greenhouse gas that is raising temperatures. The oceans and continents currently soak up about half the carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels. In the oceans, the gas combines with water to form carbonic acid; on land, plants take in more carbon dioxide and grow faster. But computer modeling done by Fung and her colleagues indicates that these carbon sinks will become less effective as the earth continues to warm. For example, as the tropics become hotter and drier in the summer, plants will reduce their respiration of carbon dioxide to avoid water loss. Atmospheric measurements over the past decade have confirmed this effect. If the oceans and land take in less carbon dioxide, more will remain in the atmosphere and global warming could accelerate catastrophically. Despite these warning signs, the government administration has opposed approval of the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty mandating reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. But nine states in the northeastern U.S. are attempting to sidestep the federal government"s opposition by taking action on their own. Last August the group reached a preliminary agreement to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 10 percent by 2020. The plan requires approval by the state legislatures, but environmentalists are already hoping that other regions of the U.S. will follow suit. If adopted nationwide, the proposal would lower greenhouse gas emissions by roughly as much as the Kyoto Protocol would have. Steve Howard, chief executive of the Climate Group, is tackling the global-warming problem from a different angle. Founded in 2004, the Climate Group is a coalition of corporations and local governments that have voluntarily committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. Members include oil giant BP(British Petroleum Co. PLC), drug-maker Johnson BP, for instance, slashed its energy bills by $650 million over 10 years. "We have seen important evidence about successful emission reduction scattered here and there in the most surprising places all over the globe," Howard says. "We are working to bring all of it together so that it forms a body of evidence."