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I will never forget the day when I was admitted into the university.

BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B

For a quarter of a century, surveys of reading habits by the National for the Arts(NEA), a federally-funded body, have been favorite material for anyone who thinks America is dumbing down . Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, for example, cites the 2007 NEA report that "the proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing(unless required to do so for school)more than doubled between 1984 and 2004." So it is a surprise that this trend seems to have taken a turn for the better. This week the NEA reported that, for the first time since 1982 when its survey began, the number of adults who said they had read a novel, short story, poem or play in the past 12 months had gone up, rising from 47% of the population in 2002 to over 50% in 2008. The increase, modest as it is, has thrown educationalists into excitement. "It"s just a blip," one professor told The New York Times. It is certainly a snapshot. But it is not statistically insignificant. As the NEA"s research director, Sunil Iyengar, points out, almost every demographic and ethnic group seems to be reading more. The increase has been most marked in groups whose reading had declined most in the past 25 years, African-Americans and Hispanics(up by 15% and 20% respectively since 2002). It has also been larger among people at lower levels of education: reading among college graduates was flat, but among those who dropped out of high school it rose from under a quarter to over a third. Most remarkable of all has been the rebound among young men. The numbers of men aged 18-24 who say they are reading books(not just online)rose 24% in 2002-08. Teachers sometimes despair of young men, whose educational performance has lagged behind that of young women almost across the board. But the reading gap at least may be narrowing. Dana Gioia, the NEA"s outgoing chairman, thinks the reason for the turnaround is the public reaction to earlier reports which had sounded the alarm. "There has been a measurable change in society"s commitment to literacy," he says. "Reading has become a higher priority." It may also be benefiting from the growing popularity of serious-minded leisure pursuits of many kinds. Museums, literary festivals and live opera transmissions into cinemas are all reporting larger audiences. Mr. Iyengar thinks the division between those who read a lot and those who don"t is eroding. What has not changed, though, is America"s "functional illiteracy" rate. Fully 21% of adult Americans did not read a book last year because they couldn"t, one of the worst rates in the rich world.

Imagine a world in which there was suddenly no emotion—a world in which human beings could feel no love or happiness, no terror or hate. Try to imagine the consequences of such a transformation. People might not be able to stay alive: knowing neither joy nor pleasure, neither anxiety nor fear, they would be as likely to repeat acts that hurt them as acts that were beneficial. They could not learn: they could not benefit from experience because this emotionless world would lack rewards and punishments. Society would soon disappear: people would be as likely to harm one another as to provide help and support. Human relationships would not exist: in a world without friends or enemies, there could be no marriage, affection among companions, or bonds among members of groups. Society"s economic underpinnings would be destroyed: since earning $10 million would be no more pleasant than earning $10, there would be no incentive to work. In fact, there would be no incentives of any kind. For as we will see, incentives imply a capacity to enjoy them. In such a world, the chances that the human species would survive are next to zero, because emotions are the basic instrument of our survival and adaptation. Emotions structure the world for us in important ways. As individuals, we categorize objects on the basis of our emotions. True we consider the length, shape, size, or texture, but an object"s physical aspects are less important than what it has done or can do to us—hurt us, surprise us, anger us or make us joyful. We also use categorizations coloured by emotions in our families, communities, and overall society. Out of our emotional experiences with objects and events comes a social feeling of agreement that certain things and actions are "good" and others are "bad", and we apply these categories to every aspect of our social life—from what foods we eat and what clothes we wear to how we keep promises and which people our group will accept. In fact, society exploits our emotional reactions and attitudes, such as loyalty, morality, pride, shame, guilt, fear and greed, in order to maintain itself. It gives high rewards to individuals when perform important tasks such as surgery, makes heroes out of individuals for unusual or dangerous achievements such flying fighter planes in a war, and Uses the legal and penal system to make people afraid to engage in antisocial acts.

Standard English is the variety of English which is usually used in print and which is normally taught in schools and to non-native speakers learning the language. It is also the variety which is normally (1)_____ by educated people and used in news broadcasts and other (2)_____ situations. The difference between standard and nonstandard, it should be noted, has (3)_____ in principle to do with differences between formal and colloquial (4)_____; standard English has colloquial as well as formal variants. (5)_____, the standard variety of English is based on the London (6)_____ of English that developed after the Norman Conquest resulted in the removal of the Court from Winchester to London. This dialect became the one (7)_____ by the educated, and it was developed and promoted (8)_____ a model, or norm, for wider and wider segments of society. It was also the (9)_____ that was carried overseas, but not one unaffected by such export. Today, (10)_____ English is arranged to the extent that the grammar and vocabulary of English are (11)_____ the same everywhere in the world where English is used; (12)_____ among local standards is really quite minor, (13)_____ the Singapore, South Africa, and Irish varieties are really very (14)_____ different from one another so far as grammar and vocabulary are (15)_____.Indeed, Standard English is so powerful that it exerts a tremendous (16)_____ on all local varieties, to the extent that many of long-established dialects of England have (17)_____ much of their vigor and there is considerable pressure on them to be (18)_____. This latter situation is not unique (19)_____ English: it is also true in other countries where processes of standardization are (20)_____.But it sometimes creates problems for speakers who try to strike some kind of compromise between local norms and national, even supranational ones.

The recent, apparently successful prediction by mathematical models of an appearance of El Nino—the warm ocean current that periodically develops along the Pacific coast of South America—has excited researchers. Jacob Blerkness pointed out over 20 years ago how winds might create either abnormally warm or abnormally cold water in the eastern equatorial Pacific. Nonetheless, until the development of the models no one could explain why conditions should regularly shift from one to the other, as happens in the periodic oscillations between appearance of the warm El Nino and the cold so-called anti-El Nino. The answer, al least if the current model that links the behavior of the ocean to that of the atmosphere is correct, is to be found in the ocean. It has long been known that during an El Nino, two conditions exist: (1) unusually warm water extends along the eastern Pacific, principally along the coasts of Ecuador and Peru, and (2) winds blow from the west into the warmer air rising over the warm water in the east. These winds tend to create a feedback mechanism by driving the warmer surface water into a "pile" that blocks the normal upwelling of deeper, cold water in the east and further warms the eastern water, thus strengthening the wind still more. The contribution of the model is to show that the winds of an El Nino, which raise sea level in the east, simultaneously send a signal to the west lowering sea level. According to the model, that signal is generated as a negative Rossby wave, a wave of depressed, or negative, sea level that moves westward parallel to the equator at 25 to 85 kilometers per day. Taking months to traverse the Pacific, Rossby waves march to the western boundary of the Pacific basin, which is modeled as a smooth wall but in reality consists of quite irregular island chains, such as the Philippines and Indonesia. When the waves meet the western boundary, they are reflected, and the model predicts that Rossby waves will be broken into numerous coastal Kelvin waves carrying the same negative sea-level signal. These eventually shoot toward the equator, and then head eastward along the equator propelled by the rotation of the Earth at a speed of about 250 kilometers per day. When enough Kelvin waves of sufficient amplitude arrive from the western Pacific, their negative sea-level signal overcomes the feedback mechanism tending to raise the sea level, and they begin to drive the system into the opposite cold mode. This produces a gradual shift in winds, one that will eventually send positive sea-level Rossby waves westward, waves that will eventually return as cold cycle-ending positive Kelvin waves beginning another warming cycle.

There is nothing like the joy of finding out that something sinful is actually good for you, whether it"s sex, chocolate or a glass of fine zed wine—or, for that matter, beer, whisky or a satisfying aperitif. We"ve long heard exciting hints that red wine has unique benefits for the heart. But the same sunny reputation for heart health is now starting to shine on all liquor. "No matter where you look, the dominant alcoholic beverage is beneficial—whether it"s red wine in France and Italy, sake in Japan or beer in Germany," says Dr. Walter Willett, chair of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. This has led researchers to an inescapable conclusion. As healthful as components of red wine may be, the primary benefit must come from ethanol itself. In short, it"s the alcohol, stupid. But don"t go overboard. Protection comes only with light to moderate intake—two drinks a day for men or a miserly one a day for women. The major benefit of alcohol seems to come from its ability to boost levels of HDL, the good cholesterol that helps keep arteries clear of plaque. Ethanol does that by signaling the liver to make more of a substance called Apo Al, the major protein in HDL. The effects can be striking. "Depending on the individual, you can get increases of 10 to 30 percent in HDL in a week," says Harvard epidemiologist Eric Rimm. Alcohol also makes blood less sticky and less likely to form clots that cause heart attacks and strokes. It also appears to have mild anti-inflammatory effects. And it enhances insulin sensitivity—which may explain why moderate alcohol consumption correlates with a lower incidence of type 2 diabetes. But alcohol is a dietary Jekyll and Hyde. Heavy intake can raise blood pressure, increase irregular heartbeat, and lead to heart failure. The most sobering news concerns cancer. A recent analysis of 156 studies found that as alcohol intake increases, so do risks of tumors in the mouth, and liver. Even moderate drinking can boost breast-cancer risk a small amount. Is moderate drinking worth the risks? For some people—pregnant women, people with liver disease or a history of alcoholism—the answer is no. But for most of us, the benefits will probably outweigh the hazards. Whether you sip wine, beer or spirits, your heart may thank you.

Genghis Khan was not one to agonize over gender roles. He was into sex and power, and he didn"t mind saying so. "The greatest joy a man can know is to conquer his enemies and drive them before him". The emperor once thundered. Genghis Khan conquered two thirds of the known world during the early 13th century and he may have set an all-time record for what biologists call reproductive success. An account written 33 years after his death credited him with 20,000 descendants. Men"s manners have improved markedly since Genghis Khan"s day. At heart, though, we"re the same animals we were 800 years ago, which is to say we are status seekers. We may talk of equality and fraternity. We may strive for classless societies. But we go right on building hierarchies, and jockeying for status within them. Can we abandon the tendency? Probably not. As scientists are now discovering, status seeking is not just a habit or a cultural tradition. It"s a design feature of the male psyche—a biological drive that is rooted in the nervous system and regulated by hormones and brain chemicals. How do we know this relentless one-upmanship is a biological endowment? Anthropologists find the same pattern virtually everywhere they look and so do zoologists. Male competition is fierce among crickets, crayfish and elephants, and it"s ubiquitous among higher primates, for example, male chimpanzees have an extraordinarily strong drive for dominance. Coincidence? Evolutionists don"t think so. From their perspective, life is essentially a race to repro-duke, and natural selection is bound to favor different strategies in different organisms. In reproductive terms, they have vastly more to gain from it. A female can"t flood the gene pool by commandeering extra mates; no matter how much sperm she attracts, she is unlikely to produce more than a dozen viable offspring. But as Genghis Khan"s exploits make clear, males can profit enormously by out mating their peers. It"s not hard to see how that dynamic, played out over millions of years, would leave modern men fretting over status. We"re built from the genes that the most determined competitors passed down. Fortunately, we don"t aspire to families of 800. As monogamy and contraceptives may have leveled the reproductive playfield, power has become its own psychological reward. Those who achieve high status still enjoy more sex with more partners than the rest of us, and the reason is no mystery. Researchers have consistently found that women favor signs of "earning capacity" over good looks. For sheer sex appeal, a doughy(脸色苍白的) bald guy in a Rolex will outscore a stud(非常英俊的男子) in a Burger King uniform almost every time.

According to the new school of scientists, technology is an overlooked force in expanding the horizons of scientific knowledge. (46) Science moves forward, they say, not so much through the insights of great men of genius as because of more ordinary things like improved techniques and tools. (47) "In short", a leader of the new school contends, "the scientific revolution, as we call it, was largely the improvement and invention and use of a series of instruments that expanded the reach of science in innumerable directions". (48) Over the years, tools and technology themselves as a source of fundamental innovation have largely been ignored by historians and philosophers of science. The modern school that hails technology argues that such masters as Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, and inventors such as Edison attached great importance to, and derived great benefit from, craft information and technological devices of different kinds that were unable in scientific experiments. The centerpiece of the argument of a technology-yes, genius-no advocate was an analysis of Galileo"s role at the start of the scientific revolution. The wisdom of the day was derived from Ptolemy, an astronomer of the second century, whose elaborate system of the sky put Earth at the center of all heavenly motions. (49) Galileo"s greatest glory was that in 1609 he was the first person to turn the newly invented telescope on the heavens to prove that the planets revolve around the sun rather than around the Earth. But the real hero of the story, according to the new school of scientists, was the long evolution in the improvement of machinery for making eyeglasses. Federal policy is necessarily involved in the technology vs. genius dispute. (50) Whether the government should increase the financing of pure science at the expense of technology or vice versa(反之) often depends on the issue of which is seen as the driving force.

Title: UnemploymentYour composition should be based on the Outline given in Chinese below:1. 下网被视为目前中国面临的头号问题。2. 政府已采取了一系列措施来解决这一问题。3. 随着政府和社会的共同努力，我们相信一定能解决下网问题。You should write about 160-200 words neatly.

Just east of downtown Irvine, in southern California, a pastoral landscape is under construction. Little by little, a former military airport is being dismantled, to be replaced by grass, trees and a canyon 70 feet (21 meters) deep. When it is finished, Orange County"s Great Park will cover 1,350 acres (550 hectares), more than one-and-a-half times as much as Central Park in New York.Thebiggest landscaped municipal park to be built in more than a century, it reveals much about how American attitudes to open space have changed. Urban parks are back in fashion. In Denver, an 80-acre park opened in September on the site of another disused airport. New York plans to build a huge park on top of the Fresh Kills landfill in Stat-en Island. Innumerable town squares and pocket parks have been created or beautified, even in places like Detroit. City planners, who once viewed parks as financial drains and nests of crime, now see them as magnets for tourists and creative types. The great parks that were built in the second half of the 19th century were intended to counteract the ill effects of city living, and so are the new ones. But the perceived ills have changed. Frederick Olmsted, who designed Central Park and many others, wanted to provide people with a break from their tough, dirty jobs. Ken Smith, the Great Park"s architect, reckons the residents of Orange County are quite idle enough. What they need is exercise: hence the park"s proposed 21 football fields and 12 baseball fields, together with some exhausting-looking walks. Another difference is that parks are now expected to function like natural ecosystems as well as looking like them. The Great Park will use recycled water in its lake (older parks often used mains water). The runways will be dismantled and turned into roads and a memorial In a nod to the local-food movement, the park will include land for farming. Even the car park will be situated in an orange orchard. Most striking of all is the new parks" deference to history. America"s great 19th-century landscape architects saw the land as a blank slate. An entire village was pulled down to build Central Park. By contrast, Denver"s park preserves a control tower, and the Great Park will convert an air-dock into a museum and retain the outline of a runway. A river diverted underground by the marines will be restored to its former course. The preservation lobby is stronger these days. And besides, says Yehudi Gaffen, a partner in the Great Park project, "Southern California has so little history that we should try to keep some of it."

There have been rumors. There"s been gossip. All Hollywood is shocked to learn that Calista Flockhart, star of Fox"s hit TV show Ally McBeal, is so thin. And we in the media are falling all over ourselves trying to figure out whether Flockhart has an eating disorder, especially now that she has denied it. Well, I"m not playing the game.【F1】 If the entertainment industry really cared about sending the wrong message on body image, it wouldn"t need so many slender celebrities in the first place. But the fact remains that 2 million Americans-most of them women and girls-do suffer from eating disorders.【F2】 In the most extreme cases they literally starve themselves to death, and those who survive are at greater risk of developing brittle bones, life-threatening infections, kidney damage and heart problems. Fortunately, doctors have learned a lot over the past decade about what causes eating disorders and how to treat them. The numbers are shocking.【F3】 Approximately 1 in 150 teenage girls in the U. S. falls victim to anorexia nervosa, broadly defined as the refusal to eat enough to maintain even a minimal body weight. 【F4】 Not so clear is how many more suffer from bulimia, in which they binge on food, eating perhaps two or three days" worth of meals in 30 minutes, then remove the excess by taking medicine to move the bowels or inducing vomiting. Nor does age necessarily protect you. Anorexia has been diagnosed in girls as young as eight. Most deaths from the condition occur in women over 45. Doctors used to think eating disorders were purely psychological. Now they realize there"s some problematic biology as well.【F5】 In a study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry recently, researchers found abnormal levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter in the brain, in women who had been free of bulimia for at least a year. That may help explain why drugs have allowed a lot of people to stop swallowing in large doses of food. Unfortunately, the pills don"t work as well for denial of food. Nor do they offer a simple one-stop cure. Health-care workers must re-educate their patients in how to eat and think about food. How can you tell if someone you love has an eating disorder? "Bulimics will often leave evidence around as if they want to get caught." says Tamara Pryor, director of an eating-disorders clinic at the University of Kansas in Wichita. Anorexics, by contrast, are more likely to go through long periods of denial.

In Don Juan Lord Byron wrote, "Sweet is revenge—especially to women". But a study released on Wednesday, supported by magnetic resonance imaging, suggests that men may be the more natural avengers. In the study, when male subjects witnessed people they perceived as had guys being stroke by a mild electrical shock, their M.R.I. scans lit up in primitive brain areas associated with reward. Their brains" empathy centers remained dull. Women watching the punishment, in contrast, showed no response in centers associated with pleasure. Even though they also said they did not like the bad guys, their empathy centers still quietly glowed. The study seems to show for the first time in physical terms what many people probably assume they already know: that women are generally more empathetic than men, and that men take great pleasure in seeing revenge exacted. Men "expressed more desire for revenge and seemed to feel satisfaction when unfair people were given what they perceived as deserved physical punishment", said Dr Tania Singer, the lead researcher, of the Welcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience at University College London. But far from condemning the male impulse for retribution, Dr. Singer said it had an important social function: "This type of behavior has probably been crucial in the evolution of society as the majority of people in a group are motivated to punish those who cheat on the rest". The study is part of a growing body of research that is attempting to better understand behavior and emotions by observing simultaneous physiological changes in the brain, a technique now attainable through imaging. "Imaging is still in its early days but we are transitioning from a descriptive to a more mechanistic type of study", said Dr. Klaas Enno Stephan, a co-author of the paper. Dr. Singer"s team was simply trying to see if the study subjects" degree of empathy correlated with how much they liked or disliked the person being punished. They had not set out to look into sex differences. To cultivate personal likes and dislikes in their 32 volunteers, they asked them to play a complex money strategy game, where both members of a pair would profit if both behaved cooperatively. The ranks of volunteers were infiltrated by actors told to play selfishly. Volunteers came quickly to "very much like" the partners who were cooperative, while disliking those who hided rewards, Dr. Stephan said. Effectively conditioned to like and dislike their game-playing partners, the 32 subjects were placed in scanners and asked to watch the various partners receive electrical shocks. On scans, both men and women seemed to feel the pain of partners they liked. But the real surprise came during scans when the subjects viewed the partners they disliked being shocked. "When women saw the shock, they still had an empathetic response, even though it was reduced". Dr. Stephan said. "The men had none at all". Furthermore, researchers found that the brain"s pleasure centers lit up in males when just punishment was meted out. The researchers cautioned that it was not clear if men and women are born with divergent responses to revenge or if their social experiences generate the responses. Dr. Singer said larger studies were needed to see if differing responses would be seen in cases involving revenge that did not involve pain. Still, she added. "This investigation would seem to indicate there is a predominant role for men in maintaining justice and issuing punishment".

Respect is your ability to empathize with another human being, despite contrasting opinions, values, or lifestyles. Being able to put yourself in another persons shoes, see the world as they may see it, and respect the decisions they make based on their life, is essential as a part of living. People are uniquely diverse. No one person will ever truly be the same as another. No one is ever going to have all the same opinions as you, agree with you always, or even understand where you are coming from all of the time. But, if you learn to respect that, things become a lot easier. Respecting a person can be easy when they are similar to you, or their character agrees with the things you favor in life. For example, if an aspiring writer meets a published author, they respect them. But, the more difficult part of respect is maintaining it even when the other person does not relate to you. If you think negatively of a person, it is hard to feel respect for them. But everyone has an aspect of themselves which deserves respect. Even if nothing else, every person deserves basic human respect. Respect comes in many forms, from what you say to a person, how you treat them, your body language around a person, and even the decisions you make based on a person. What is the simplest way to maintain respect? Treat others as you would be treated. It is never easy to respect someone who you dislike, or can"t relate to. But, it is the most rewarding aspect of respect. When you reach out your hand to a person who does not expect such a gesture from you, they open up. Maybe not right away, but with time, their opinion of you can change. The same goes for self-respect. It"s hard to respect yourself when you"ve done wrong, made bad decisions, or even just had a rough day. But if you keep believing in yourself, and try to do better each day, respect can become easier. So what is the true meaning of respect? It is being positive towards yourself and others when the easier option seems to be negativity. It" s giving people a chance, believing in opportunity, and understanding that just because someone is different, doesn"t mean you both don"t deserve the same.

You are going to read a list of headings and a text about unknown knowledge on AIDS. Choose the most suitable heading from the list A—F for each numbered paragraph (41—45). The first paragraphs of the text are not numbered. There is one extra heading which you do not need to use.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 cells 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.

BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B

Everybody loathes it, but everybody does it A recent poll showed that 20% of Americans hate the practice. It seems so arbitrary, after all. Why does a barman get a tip, but not a doctor who saves lives? In America alone, tipping is now a $16 billion-a-year industry. Consumers acting rationally ought not to pay more than they have to for a given service. Tips should not exist. So why do they? The conventional wisdom is that tips both reward the efforts of good service and reduce uncomfortable feelings of inequality. The better the service, the bigger the tip. Such explanations no doubt explain the purported origin of tipping—in the 16th century, boxes in English taverns carried the phrase "To Insure Promptitude"(later just "TIP"). But according to new research from Cornell University, tipping no longer serves any useful function. The paper analyses data from 2,327 groups dining at 20 different restaurants. The correlation between larger tips and better service was very weak: only a tiny part of the variability in the size of the tip had anything to do with the quality of service. Customers who rated a meal as "excellent" still tipped anywhere between 8% and 17% of the meal price. Tipping is better explained by culture than by economics. In America, the custom has become institutionalized: it is regarded as part of the accepted cost of a service. In a New York restaurant, failing to tip at least 15% could well mean abuse from the waiter. Hairdressers can expect to get 15-20%, the man who delivers your groceries $2. In Europe, tipping is less common; in many restaurants, discretionary tipping is being replaced by a standard service charge. In many Asian countries, tipping has never really caught on at all. How to account for these national differences? Look no further than psychology. According to Michael Lynn, the Cornell paper"s co-author, countries in which people are more extrovert, sociable or neurotic tend to tip more. Tipping relieves anxiety about being served by strangers. And, says Mr. Lynn, "In America, where people are outgoing and expressive, tipping is about social approval, ff you tip badly, people think less of you. Tipping well is a chance to show off." Icelanders, by contrast, do not usually tip—a measure of their introversion, no doubt. While such explanations may be crude, the hard truth seems to be that tipping does not work. It does not benefit the customer. Nor, in the case of restaurants, does it actually stimulate the waiter, or help the restaurant manager to monitor and assess his staff. Service people should "just be paid a decent wage" which may actually make economic sense.

An old saying has it that half of all advertising budgets are wasted—the trouble is, no one knows which half. In the internet age, at least in theory, this fraction can be much reduced. By watching what people search for, click on and say online, companies can aim "behavioral" ads at those most likely to buy. In the past couple of weeks a quarrel has illustrated the value to advertisers of such fin e-grained information: should advertisers assume that people are happy to be tracked and sent behavioral ads? Or should they have explicit permission? In December 2010 America's Federal Trade Commission(FTC)proposed adding a "do not track"(DNT)option to internet browsers, so that users could tell advertisers that they did not want to be followed. Microsoft' s Internet Explorer and Apple' s Safari both offer DNT; Google' s Chrome is due to do so this year. In February the FTC and Digital Advertising Alliance(DAA)agreed that the industry would get cracking on responding to DNT requests. On May 31 st Microsoft set off the row: It said that Internet Explorer 10, the version due to appear in Windows 8, would have DNT as a default. Advertisers are horrified. Human nature being what it is, most people stick with default settings. Few switch DNT on now, but if tracking is off it will stay off. Bob Liodice, the chief executive of the Association of National Advertisers, one of the groups in the DAA, says consumers will be worse off if the industry cannot collect information about their preferences. "People will not get fewer ads," he says. "They' 11 get less meaningful, less targeted ads." It is not yet clear how advertisers will respond. Getting a DNT signal does not oblige anyone to stop tracking, although some companies have promised to do so. Unable to tell whether someone really objects to behavioral ads or whether they are sticking with Microsoft' s default, some may ignore a DNT signal and press on anyway. Also unclear is why Microsoft has gone it alone. After all, it has an ad business too, which it says will comply with DNT requests, though it is still working out how. If it is trying to upset Google, which relies almost wholly on advertising,it has chosen an indirect method:there is no guarantee that DNT by default will become the norm. DNT does not seem an obviously huge selling point for Windows 8—though the firm has compared some of its other products favorably with Google' s on that count before. Brendon Lynch, Microsoft's chief privacy officer, blogged: "we believe consumers should have more control." Could it really be that simple?

When executives at Google went looking for Wall Street investment bankers to underwrite the company"s massive initial public offering, they laid down strict terms of engagement: bring us new ideas on how to sell the deal to investors and save the usual political gamesmanship. But with such a huge payday at stake—an estimated $100 million in fees for handling the offering—would you expect all the big firms to play by the Google rules? Of course not. Just ask Goldman Sachs. To win a chunk of the Google business, Goldman, the nation"s premier investment bank, set free its CEO, Hank Paulson, to pull some strings. Paulson is one of Wall Street"s best "call men", who can wave a Palm PDA full of connections when it"s crunch time to bring home a deal. But News week has learned that Paulson tried to sidestep Google"s orders by reaching out to one of Google"s largest investors, Kleiner Perkins, the powerful venture-capital firm that was an early Google backer. The move helped doom Goldman"s efforts to win the lead underwriting spot, which went instead to Credit Suisse First Boston and Morgan Stanley. Paulson thought his best shot was John Doerr, one of Kleiner"s top partners. Bad move. When word of Paulson"s misstep got back to Google"s top executives, Goldman was quickly bumped from the top of the short list. "The people at Google were such enthusiasts about the rules," said one executive who works at a rival Wall Street firm. "When they heard about this, they went ape." None of the parties involved—Google, Goldman Sachs or Doerr—would comment. The two winners, CSFB and Morgan Stanley, managed to keep a low profile. John Mack, CSFB"s famously well-connected chief executive, purposely stayed out of the bidding process for fear that he might tip the scales to another player, people with knowledge of the matter say. Meanwhile, new rules for Wall Street research analysts appear to have prevented Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley"s top Internet analyst, from playing a direct role, even though she and Doerr have done business together for years. Goldman, meanwhile, can"t blame its loss just on Paulson. People close to the deal say bankers for the firm bragged to Google about the Goldman name, and didn"t generate enough ideas about how to sell shares to investors through an auction. "Their lack of marketing wit may have hurt them more than Paulson," said the executive from a rival firm. Sometimes, it really does pay to play by the rules.