ExpensiveKindergartenEducationWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

Why does cream go bad faster than butter? Some researchers think they have the answer, and it comes down to the structure of the food, not its chemical composition—a finding that could help rid some processed foods of chemical preservatives.

You are going to read an article which is followed by a list of examples or headings. Choose the most suitable one from the list A-F for each numbered position(41-45). There may be certain extra which you do not need to use. (10 points)You are going to read a list of headings and a text about unknown knowledge on AIDS.A. What route does HIV take after it enters the body to destroy the immune system?B. How and when did the long-standing belief concerning AIDS and HIV crop up?C. What is the most effective anti-HIV therapy?D. How does HIV subvert the immune system?E. In the absence of a vaccine, how can HIV be stopped?F. Why does AIDS predispose infected persons to certain types of cancer and infections? In the 20 years since the first cases of AIDS were detected, scientists say they have learned more about this viral disease than any other. Yet Peter Piot, who directs the United Nations AIDS program, and Stefano Vella of Rome, president of the International AIDS Society, and other experts say reviewing unanswered questions could prove useful as a measure of progress for AIDS and other diseases. Among the important broader scientific questions that remain: (41)______. A long-standing belief is that cancer cells constantly develop and are held in check by a healthy immune system. But AIDS has challenged that belief. People with AIDS are much more prone to certain cancers like non-Hodgkins lymphomas and Kaposi"s sarcoms, but not to breast, colon and lung, the most common cancers in the United States. This pattern suggests that an impaired immune system, at least the type that occurs in AIDS, does not allow common cancers to develop. (42)______. When HIV is transmitted sexually, the virus must cross a tissue barrier to enter the body. How that happens is still unclear. The virus might invade directly or be carried by a series of different kinds of cells. Eventually HIV travels through lymph vessels to lymph nodes and the rest of the lymph system. But what is not known is how the virus proceeds to destroy the body"s CD-4 cells that are needed to combat invading infectious agents. (43)______. Although HIV kills the immune ceils sent to kill the virus, there is widespread variation in the rate at which HIV infected people become ill with AIDS. So scientists ask: Can the elements of the immune system responsible for that variability be identified? If so, can they be used to stop progression to AIDS in infected individuals and possibly prevent infection in the first place? (44)______. In theory, early treatment should offer the best chance of preserving immune function. But the new drugs do not completely eliminate HIV from the body so the medicines, which can have dangerous side effects, will have to be taken for a lifetime and perhaps changed to combat resistance. The new policy is expected to recommend that treatment be deferred until there are signs the immune system is weakening. Is a vaccine possible? There is little question that an effective vaccine is crucial to controlling the epidemic. Yet only one has reached the stage of full testing, and there is wide controversy over the degree of protection it will provide. HIV strains that are transmitted in various areas of the world differ genetically. It is not known whether a vaccine derived from one type of HIV will confer protection against other types. (45)______. Without more incisive, focused behavioral research, prevention messages alone will not put an end to the global epidemic.

Any normal species would be delighted at the prospect of cloning. No more nasty surprises like sickle cell or Down syndrome—just batch after hatch of high-grade and, genetically speaking, immortal offspring! But representatives of the human species are responding as if someone had proposed adding Satanism to the grade-school Curriculum. Suddenly, perfectly secular folks are throwing around words like sanctity and retrieving medieval-era arguments against the pride of science. No one has proposed burning him at the stake, but the poor fellow who induced a human embryo to double itself has virtually recanted—proclaiming his reverence for human life in a voice, this magazine reported", choking with emotion". There is an element of hypocrisy to much of the anti-cloning furor, or if not hypocrisy, superstition. The fact is we axe already well down the path leading to genetic manipulation of the creepiest sort. Life-forms can be patented, which means they can be bought and sold and potentially traded on the commodities markets. Human embryos are life-forms, and there is nothing to stop anyone from marketing them now, on the same shelf with the Cabbage Patch dolls. In fact, any culture that encourages in vitro fertilization has no right to complain about a market in embryos. The assumption behind the in vitro industry is that some people"s genetic material is worth more than others" and deserves to be reproduced at any expense. Millions of low-income babies die every year from preventable ills like dysentery, while heroic efforts go into maintaining yuppie zygotes in test tubes at the unicellular stage. This is the dread "nightmare" of eugenics in familiar, marketplace form—which involves breeding the best-paid instead of the best. Cloning technology is an almost inevitable byproduct of in vitro fertilization. Once you decide to go to the trouble of in vitro, with its potentially hazardous megadoses of hormones for the female partner and various indignities for the male, you might as well make a few backup copies of any viable embryo that"s produced. And once you"ve got the backup organ copies, why not keep a few in the freezer, in case Junior ever needs a new kidney or cornea? The critics of cloning say we should know what we"re getting into, with all its Orwellian implications. But if we decide to outlaw cloning, we should understand the implications of that. We would be saying in effect that we prefer to leave genetic destiny to the crap shooting of nature, despite sickle-cell anemia and Tay-Sachs and all the rest, because ultimately we don"t trust the market to regulate life itself. And this may be the hardest thing of all to acknowledge, that it isn"t so much 21st century technology we fear, as what will happen to that technology in the hands of old-fashioned 20th century capitalism.

The mythology of a culture can provide some vital insights into the beliefs and values of that culture.【F1】 By using fantastic and sometimes incredible stories to create an oral tradition by which to explain the wonders of the natural world and teach lessons to younger generations, a society exposes those ideas and concepts held most important. 【F2】 Just as important as the final lesson to be gathered from the stories, however, are the characters and the roles they play in conveying that message. 【F3】 Perhaps the epitome of mythology and its use as a tool to pass on cultural values can be found in Aesop" s Fables, told and retold during the era of the Greek Empire. Aesop, a slave who won the favor of the court through his imaginative and descriptive tales, almost exclusively used animals to fill the roles in his short stories. Humans, when at all present, almost always played the part of bumbling fools struggling to learn the lesson being presented. This choice of characterization allows us to see that the Greeks placed wisdom on a level slightly beyond humans, implying that deep wisdom and understanding is a universal quality sought by, rather than steanning from, human beings. Aesop" s fables illustrated the central themes of humility and self-reliance, reflecting the importance of those traits in early Greek society. The folly of humans was used to contrast against the ultimate goal of attaining a higher level of understanding and awareness of truths about nature and humanity. For example,one notable fable features a fox repeatedly trying to reach a bunch of grapes on a very high vine. After failing at several attempts, the fox gives up, making up its mind that the grapes were probably sour anyway.【F4】 The fable"s lesson, that we often play down that which we can"t achieve so as to make ourselves feel better, teaches the reader or listener in an entertaining way about one of the weaknesses of the human psyche. 【F5】 The mythology of other cultures and societies reveal the underlying traits of their respective cultures just as Aesop" s fables did. The stories of Roman gods, Aztec ghosts and European elves all served to train ancient generations those lessons considered most important to their community, and today they offer a powerful looking glass by which to evaluate and consider the contextual environment in which those culture existed.

We are witnessing diminishing faith in institutions of all kinds. People don't trust the government. They don't trust banks and other corporations. At the same time, we are 【C1】______ a period of profound technological change. 【C2】______ the rise of bio-engineering, networked devices, space exploration, and machine learning, the mobile internet is recontextualizing how we 【C3】______ one another, dramatically changing the way people seek and share information, and 【C4】______ how we express our will as citizens in a democratic society. But trust is a 【C5】______ for democratic governance. And now, many are growing 【C6】______ with democracy itself. That's why we asked more than two dozen people 【C7】______ think deeply about the intersection of technology and civics to 【C8】______ two questions: Is technology hurting democracy? And can technology help save democracy? We received an(a) 【C9】______ response. They are 【C10】______ many aspects and put a spotlight 【C11】______ particular on correcting institutional failures that have contributed most to inequality of access 【C12】______ to ideological divisiveness and the spread of misinformation. They also offer concrete solutions for 【C13】______ citizens, corporations, and governmental bodies can improve the free flow of reliable information, pull one another 【C14】______ ever-deepening partisan echo chambers, and 【C15】______ the integrity of the voting process itself. 【C16】______ the unanimous sense of urgency, the authors of these essays are cautiously optimistic, too. Everyone who participated in this series believes there is hope yet—for democracy, and 【C17】______ the institutions that support it. They also believe that technology can help, 【C18】______ it will take time and money. Democracy can still 【C19】______ in this uncertain age, but not without 【C20】______ and immediate action from the people who believe it is worth protecting.

The longest bull run in a century of art-market history ended on a dramatic note with a sale of 56 works by Damien Hirst, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, at Sotheby's in London on September 15th 2008. All but two pieces sold, fetching more than ￡70m, a record for a sale by a single artist. It was a last victory. As the auctioneer called out bids, in New York one of the oldest banks on Wall Street, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy. The world art market had already been losing momentum for a while after rising bewilderingly since 2003. At its peak in 2007 it was worth some $65 billion, reckons Clare McAndrew, founder of Arts Economics , a research firm—double the figure five years earlier. Since then it may have come down to $50 billion. But the market generates interest far beyond its size because it brings together great wealth, enormous egos, greed, passion and controversy in a way matched by few other industries. In the weeks and months that followed Mr. Hirst' s sale, spending of any sort became deeply unfashionable . In the art world that meant collectors stayed away from galleries and salerooms. Sales of contemporary art fell by two-thirds, and in the most overheated sector, they were down by nearly 90% in the year to November 2008. Within weeks the world's two biggest auction houses, Sotheby's and Christie's, had to pay out nearly $200m in guarantees to clients who had placed works for sale with them. The current downturn in the art market is the worst since the Japanese stopped buying Impressionists at the end of 1989. This time experts reckon that prices are about 40% down on their peak on average, though some have been far more fluctuant. But Edward Dolman, Christie' s chief executive, says: "I'm pretty confident we' re at the bottom." What makes this slump different from the last, he says, is that there are still buyers in the market. Almost everyone who was interviewed for this special report said that the biggest problem at the moment is not a lack of demand but a lack of good work to sell. The three Ds—death, debt and divorce—still deliver works of art to the market. But anyone who does not have to sell is keeping away, waiting for confidence to return.

There are more wonders in heaven and earth than are dreamt of.

Is language, like food, a basic human need without which a child at a critical period of life can be starved and damaged? Judging from the drastic experiment of Frederick II in the thirteenth century, it may be. Hoping to discover what language a child would speak if he heard no mother tongue, he told the nurses to keep silent. All the infants died before the first year. But clearly there was more than lack of language here. What was missing was good mothering. Without good mothering, in the first year of life especially, the capacity to survive is seriously affected. Today no such severe lack exists as that ordered by Frederick. Nevertheless, some children are still backward in speaking. Most often the reason for this is that the mother is insensitive to, the signals of the infant, whose brain is programmed to learn language rapidly. If these sensitive periods are neglected, the ideal time for acquiring skills passes and they might never be learned so easily again. A bird learns to sing and to fly rapidly at the right time, but the process is slow and hard once the critical stage has passed. Experts suggest that speech stages are reached in a fixed sequence and at a constant age, but there are cases where speech has started late in a child who eventually turns out to be of high IQ. At twelve weeks a baby smiles and makes vowel-like sounds; at twelve months he can speak simple words and understand simple commands; at eighteen months he has a vocabulary of three to fifty words. At three he knows about 1,000 words which he can put into sentences, and at four he knows his language differs from that of his parents in style rather than grammar. Recent evidence suggests that an infant is born with the capacity of speaking. What is special about man"s brain, compared with that of the monkey, is the Complex system which enables a child to connect the sight and feel of, say, a toy-bear with the sound pattern "toy-bear". And even more incredible is young brain"s ability to pick out an order in language from the mixture of sound around him, to analyze, to combine and recombine the parts of a language in new ways. But speech has to be induced, and this depends on interaction between the mother and the child, where the mother recognizes the signals in the child"s babbling, grasping and smiling, and responds to them. Insensitivity of the mother to these signals dulls the interaction because the child gets discouraged and sends out only the obvious signals. Sensitivity to the child"s nonverbal signals is essential to the growth and development of language.

On 26 March, the Italian Senate approved a bill that would give physicians in the country the right to override the living wills of people who are in a persistent vegetative state, and to try to keep the patients alive through artificial nutrition. The measure has caused intense controversy. Many countries have laws, orestablished codes of medical practice, that protect the expressed wishes of an individual to decline treatment if they become severely incapacitated and incapable of communicating. In most US states, for example, a doctor must negotiate with relatives via an ethics committee if he or she believes that a patient incapacitated in this way could benefit from additional treatment. The Italian bill, however, explicitly allows physicians to overrule such living wills. It also declares that artificial nutrition is not a clinical intervention. Curiously, the proposed law applies only to patients in the type of prolonged, deep coma known as a persistent vegetative state, and not to those with other, similarly incapacitating illnesses. This is because the bill has been prompted by the recent and much-publicized death of Eluana Englaro, who spent 17 years in a vegetative state after a car accident at the age of 21.Her father, arguing that his daughter had voiced a desire to be allowed to die if incapacitated, had pressed her reluctant doctors to cease artificial feeding. He eventually took legal action, winning in one court after the next in fighting off all the doctors" appeals. In February, he finally had her moved to a hospital that was prepared to remove the feeding tube. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi issued an emergency decree to block the process, but the Italian president refused to sign it. The constitutional crisis was averted when Englaro died on 9 February. Surveys have indicated that a large majority of Italians do not support the idea that living wills could be ignored But most relevant scientific societies have been quiet The Federation of Italian Physicians published only a mild statement, after the Senate vote, suggesting that it should have been consulted. As tragic as Englaro"s situation was, media-fuelled emotion is not a good basis for lawmaking. The Italian constitution says that no one can be forced to undergo medical treatment without his or her approval. The Italian parliament must now ensure that the bill is imbued with a suitable level of scientific and legal sophistication, and that it meets this constitutional provision. Discussion needs to embrace the requested wider consultation with the medical community and provisions should be made for care-givers" conscientious objection. But a physician whose conscience precludes his or her personally removing a feeding tube should not have the last say in the life or death of a patient whose wishes are clearly stated.

Last week, Utah federal Judge Paul G. Cassell handed a 22-year sentence to a man who beat an elderly woman to death with a log. A few hours later, Judge Cassell sentenced a 25-year-old first-time drug offender to 55 years. If you think Judge Cassell liked sentencing a small-change drug dealer to more time than a violent killer, guess again. The judge had no choice. Federal law demanded the sentence, despite Judge Cassell"s pointed questioning if there was a "rational basis" for sentencing Weldon H. Angelos, the father of two young children, to more time than he could sentence a hijacker, murder or rapist. Blame federal mandatory minimum sentencing rules. A jury found Angelos guilty on three separate charges of possessing a firearm while he sold a half-pound of marijuana for $350. The first charge of possessing a gun during a drug transaction brought a five-year sentence—the second two charges brought 25 years each. That adds up to 55 years, so even if Angelos were found guilty of selling $1,050 of drugs, Judge Cassell had to follow the rules and sentence him to 55 years on the gun charges. (The judge did use a recent federal ruling in reducing the sentence for the drug-selling crimes to one day.) Judge Cassell was right to impose the draconian sentence. If he ignored federal law, he would place himself above it. Instead, Judge Cassell sentenced Angelus as the law directed, even as he righteously hectored Congress to rewrite federal drug laws so first-time offenders don"t serve more time than dangerous career criminals. The judge also urged Angelus" attorney, Jerome H. Mooney, to appeal the sentence and, if appeals fail, seek a presidential commutation. While civil-rights advocates across America protested the sentence, the Utah US Attorney"s office defended the system. To prosecutors, Angelus is no Buy Scout. Officials found some 26 empty duffel hags with marijuana residue. Local feds believed Angelus was a big drug dealer, Assistant US Attorney Robert Lund told me, and associated with a violent street gang. Let me say this: Angelus never was a good poster boy for the movement to humanize draconian federal drug laws. Angelus turned down a plea-bargain sentence of 16 years. He is considered a first-time offender only because a juvenile gun conviction was expunged from his record. And even if Angelos didn"t wave his gun in people"s faces, he nonetheless brought a gun with him during the transactions. But Angelos has become a national cause celebre because of Judge Cassell. There are more egregious examples of first-time offenders sentenced to decades for petty dealing, but they didn"t come before a judge vocally opposed to the heavy handed nature of federal drug sentencing. That said, it simply doesn"t make sense that federal sentences often are tougher on small-time drug offenders than on violent criminals. But it happens all the time.

Harvard thrilled middle-class parents last week by capping its tuition for families with incomes of up to $180,000 at 10 percent of their earnings. The move sparked hopes of a donation race that could ease the soaring costs of college. Earlier this month, Duke joined a group of schools including Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford that promise free rides to low-income students. But many point out that these gestures will affect only a few hundred lucky students. The outlays are so comparatively small that they are unlikely to divert pressure for reforms in the ways colleges spend their money—especially the estimated $380 billion of endowment funds stored in tax-free accounts. "It"s an important gesture," College Parents of America President James Boyle says of Harvard. But colleges should do more now with the money they"ve socked away for a rainy day, he says. The numbers are smaller, but the story is similar at other colleges. The average endowment has been reaping 10 percent a year on investments since 2004. But colleges spent an average of just 4.6 percent of their endowments last year while raising tuition faster than the rate of inflation. That troubles folks like Sen. Chuck Grassley, who"s pushing Congress to require wealthy colleges to spend at least 5 percent of their endowments every year. "Tax-exempt organizations are supposed to provide public benefit in exchange for their special status," he said. "Helping the next generation afford college is a public benefit. " Many college officials, of course, are battling such rule changes. While Harvard, Yale, and Princeton all have more than $1 million worth of endowment per student, half of all colleges have no more than $2,000 per student saved up. Even high-earning schools say they already are spending as much as they should. Chris Bittman, chief investment officer of the University of Colorado Foundation, racked up almost 23 percent in returns last fiscal year, bringing the school"s endowment to nearly $800 million. He supports the school"s policy of spending 4.5 percent. Recent big profits can"t last forever, he says. Instead, endowments should plan on earning the long-term average of 10 percent. Still, pressure appears to be forcing some changes. In June, Stanford announced it would increase its endowment spending to 5.5 percent, or $160 million a year. If every school followed suit, that would free up about $4 billion a year (or $200 per student) to increase aid or keep tuition prices down. Or as Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economist, says, "a small step for mankind."

You are supposed to put forward some rules for job-seekers and you may offer your suggestions in terms of the following points: 1) appearance, 2) ability and knowledge, and 3) confidence. You should write about100 words.

Title: Why do People Like to Try Their Luck on Lottery? 1. 现在不少人热衷于买彩票。 2. 试着分析产生这种现象大原因。 3. 你的看法。 You should write about 160-200 words neatly.

Studythefollowingdrawingcarefullyandwriteanessayinwhichyoushould1.describethedrawing,2.interpretitsmeaning,andthen3.giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteabout160-200wordsneadyontheANSWERSHEET.(20points)

Last year, America"s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, thought it would be a good idea to organize a robot race across the Nevada desert. The idea of the Grand Challenge, as DARPA dubbed it, was for autonomous robot vehicles to steer a 227 km(142 mile) course and claim a $1 m jackpot. This would be a first step towards DARPA"s ultimate goal of being able to build unmanned self-driving military vehicles and thus keep American troops out of harm"s way on the battlefield. This year"s crop of 23 entrants were offered an even greater incentive—a $2m prize for the winner. That, plus the intervening 18 months, seems to have done the trick. This time, five vehicles finished the 211 km course. The winner, a modified Volkswagen Touareg dubbed Stanley by its makers, a team from Stanford University, did it in a mere six hours and 54 minutes. Stanley was, of course, specially hardened by its designers for the rough terrain of the Nevada desert. The clever bit, however, was the vehicle"s brain. This was designed and built by the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL). Stanley"s brain consists of six top-of-the-range Pentium chips wired collaboratively together. It is programmed with special software that is able to learn from its mistakes. This software mastered the tricks of collision-avoidance in a series of desert test runs conducted before the race started. Like all brains, Stanley"s has a range of sensory inputs to process. A global positioning system (GPS) receiver tells it where on the Earth"s surface it is. Television cameras, radar and four laser based distance monitors tell it what its surroundings are like. By comparing its GPS location with its pre-programmed destination (announced only a few hours before the race began), it knew which way it wanted to go. And, by studying its surroundings, it could work out what looked like the safest route that was also in approximately the right direction. Although Stanley carried off the laurels, the other four finishers did respectably. Sandstorm managed a time just ten minutes behind the winner while her sister vehicle Highlander came in ten minutes after that. GrayBot and TerraMax, the other two course-completers, came in at seven hours 30 minutes and 12 hours 51 minutes, respectively. So smart, autonomous vehicles can, indeed, find their way across several hundred kilometres of desert. The question is, what next? DARPA"s answer, of course, will be to go down the military route. But this sort of technology has obvious civilian applications as well, as Sebastian Thrun, the head of both SAIL and the Stanford racing team, is keen to emphasize. Dr. Thrun thinks that it could lead to self-driving road vehicles within 30 years and—more immediately—to greatly improved collision-avoidance systems. Whether the freeways of California will prove as easy to navigate as the gulches of Nevada, though, remains to be seen.

Yesterday you were told that there was going to be a seminar sponsored by a newspaper. The discussion is centered upon juvenile psychology. You want to make your presentation during the seminar, and now write a letter to the editor-in-chief of the paper. Your writing should be based upon the following outline: 1) inquiry about relevant information, 2) a brief account of your expertise, 3) and expression of your interest. Write your letter in no less than 100 words and write it neatly. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter, use "Li Ming" instead; Do not write the address.

It has been vaguely asserted that "diversity is good. " If "diversity" is good, then homogeneity ought to be bad. It ought to be very bad in the eyes of the higher education establishment that has fought so vociferously in behalf of diversity. To gauge how uninterested many of America" s leading colleges and universities are in genuine diversity, consider how homogeneous they" ve become in recent years, in terms of the economic backgrounds of the students they recruit, admit, and enroll. Between 2004 and 2006, virtually all the richest and most highly ranked universities cut the percentage of undergraduates from lower-income families who received federal Pell Grants. These highly rated universities(at least as measured by U. S. News & World Report)were reducing their Pell Grant percentages even as their endowments—the profits of "nonprofit" corporate universities—were surging. For example, according to a new analysis by The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, the University of Pennsylvania"s endowment grew by a third, to $ 5. 3 billion, during that two-year period. And yet, the percentage of Penn students eligible for Pell Grants dropped from 12 percent, to just 8. 8 percent. But the "most troubling" aspect of this relentlessly inverse relationship between university wealth and the economic diversity of students is the longevity of the trend, the Journal"s report finds. Whether the time frame is 23 years, 13 years, or two years, America" s richest and most highly ranked universities—and often the most aggressive ones in their defense of diversity—have become homogeneous by social and economic class. How has this happened? As universities, particularly private ones, have become richer, they have paid more attention to building and maintaining costly empires driven by the desire to compete in the marketplace for prestige, where academic quality is measured by an annual fashion show called "America"s Best Colleges". A weekly newsmagazine that claims to know a good college from a mediocre one is at the helm of this charade. In playing the rankings game, universities spend their money lavishly on "stars". Star faculty members, star buildings, star stadiums, star coaches, and star students. The worst offenders in essence bribe students with high SAT scores to enroll at their institutions and call the aid "merit" scholarships, knowing full well that the money most often goes to affluent kids from the suburbs who have attended the best high schools. Merit has little to do with it. It"s all about the show.

Some international students are coming to your university. Write them an email in the name of the Students" Union to 1) extend your welcome and 2) provide some suggestions for their campus life here. You should write about 100 words on ANSWER SHEET 2. Do not sign your name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address. (10 points)

If you were to examine the birth certificates of every soccer player in 2006"s World Cup tournament, you would most likely find a noteworthy quirk: elite soccer players are more likely to have been born in the earlier months of the year than in the later months. If you then examined the European national youth teams that feed the World Cup and professional ranks, you would find this strange phenomenon to be even more pronounced. What might account for this strange phenomenon? Here are a few guesses: a)certain astrological signs confer superior soccer skills; b)winter-born babies tend to have higher oxygen capacity, which increases soccer stamina; c)soccer-mad parents are more likely to conceive children in springtime, at the annual peak of soccer mania ; d)none of the above. Anders Ericsson, a 58-year-old psychology professor at Florida State University, says he believes strongly in"none of the above." Ericsson grew up in Sweden, and studied nuclear engineering until he realized he would have more opportunity to conduct his own research if he switched to psychology. His first experiment, nearly 30 years ago, involved memory: training a person to hear and then repeat a random series of numbers. "With the first subject, after about 20 hours of training, his digit span had risen from 7 to 20," Ericsson recalls. "He kept improving, and after about 200 hours of training he had risen to over 80 numbers." This success, coupled with later research showing that memory itself is not genetically determined, led Ericsson to conclude that the act of memorizing is more of a cognitive exercise than an intuitive one. In other words, whatever inborn differences two people may exhibit in their abilities to memorize, those differences are swamped by how well each person "encodes" the information. And the best way to learn how to encode information meaningfully, Ericsson determined, was a process known as deliberate practice. Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task. Rather, it involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome. Ericsson and his colleagues have thus taken to studying expert performers in a wide range of pursuits, including soccer. They gather all the data they can, not just performance statistics and biographical details but also the results of their own laboratory experiments with high achievers. Their work makes a rather startling assertion: the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers—whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming—are nearly always made, not born.