All men are created equal, or so reckoned Thomas Jefferson as he drafted America"s Declaration of Independence in 1776. Subsequent Americans have had reason to question the founding father. So too have people in the land from which the new nation gained its freedom. America and Britain are among the most unequal countries in the rich world and Britain, at any rate, is more unequal now than it was a generation ago. That is the conclusion of a study commissioned by Harriet Harman, the equalities minister. Class and money have always strongly affected how people do in life in Britain, with well-heeled families breeding affluent children just as the offspring of the desperately poor tend to remain poor. All that was supposed to have ceased at the end of the Second World War, with the birth of a welfare state designed to meet basic needs and promote social mobility. But despite devoting much thought and more money to improving the lot of the poor, governments have failed to boost those at the bottom of the pile as much as those at the top have boosted themselves. The new study, led by John Hills of the London School of Economics, found, for example, that the richest tenth of households received income more than four times that of the poorest tenth; just a generation ago, it was three times as much. Internationally, only six of the 30 members of the OECD, a club of mainly rich countries, show greater inequality. Wealth is distributed far more unequally than income, with the richest tenth in Britain holding assets worth almost 100 times those of the poorest. Although the study found that some of the widest gaps between social groups have diminished over time, deep-seated differences between haves and have-nots persist, ruining the life chances of the less fortunate. Politicians of all stripes talk up equality of opportunity, arguing that it makes for a fairer and more mobile society, and a more prosperous one. The goal of greater equality of outcomes also has its boosters. In "The Spirit Level", epidemic disease experts Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson claim that more equal societies are healthier than unequal ones, as well as happier. Not all agree, but in a country where the National Health Service accounts for almost a fifth of public spending, it is worth considering. The difficulty arises in putting these notions into practice, through severe tax increases for the middleclass and wealthy, or expanding government intervention. These have not recently been vote-winning propositions, but the recession that Britain is now limping away from may have changed things.

Of all the changes that have taken place in English-language newspapers during the past quarter-century, perhaps the most far-reaching has been the inexorable decline in the scope and seriousness of their arts coverage. It is difficult to the point of impossibility for the average reader under the age of forty to imagine a time when high-quality arts criticism could be found in most big-city newspapers. Yet a considerable number of the most significant collections of criticism published in the 20th century consisted in large part of newspaper reviews. To read such books today is to marvel at the fact that their learned contents were once deemed suitable for publication in general-circulation dailies. We are even farther removed from the unfocused newspaper reviews published in England between the turn of the 20th century and the eve of World War II, at a time when newsprint was dirt-cheap and stylish arts criticism was considered an ornament to the publications in which it appeared. In those far-off days, it was taken for granted that the critics of major papers would write in detail and at length about the events they covered. Theirs was a serious business, and even those reviewers who wore their learning lightly, like George Bernard Shaw and Ernest Newman, could be trusted to know what they were about. These men believed in journalism as a calling, and were proud to be published in the daily press. "So few authors have brains enough or literary gift enough to keep their own end up in journalism," Newman wrote, "that I am tempted to define "journalism "as "a term of contempt applied by writers who are not read to writers who are . Unfortunately, these critics are virtually forgotten. Neville Cardus, who wrote for the Manchester Guardian from 1917 until shortly before his death in 1975, is now known solely as a writer of essays on the game of cricket. During his lifetime, though, he was also one of England" s foremost classical-music critics, a stylist so widely admired that his Autobiography(1947)became a best-seller. He was knighted in 1967, the first music critic to be so honored. Yet only one of his books is now in print, and his vast body of writings on music is unknown save to specialists. Is there any chance that Cardus"s criticism will enjoy a revival? The prospect seems remote. Journalistic tastes had changed long before his death, and postmodern readers have little use for the richly upholstered Vicwardian prose in which he specialized. Moreover, the amateur tradition in music criticism has been in headlong retreat.

Anecdotal evidence has long held that creativity in artists and writers can be associated with living in foreign parts. Rudyard Kipling, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Paul Gauguin, Samuel Beckett and others spent years dwelling abroad. Now a pair of psychologists has proved that there is indeed a link. As they report in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, William Maddux of INSEAD, a business school in Fontainebleau, France, and Adam Galinsky, of the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago, presented 155 American business students and 55 foreign ones studying in America with a test used by psychologists as a measure of creativity. Given a candle, some matches and a box of drawing pins, the students were asked to attach the candle to a cardboard wall so that no wax would drip on the floor when the candle was lit. (The solution is to use the box as a candleholder and fix it to the wall with the pins.) They found 60% of students who were either living abroad or had spent some time doing so, solved the problem, whereas only 42% of those who had not lived abroad did so. A follow-up study with 72 Americans and 36 foreigners explored their creative negotiating skills. Pairs of students were asked to play the role of a seller of a petrol station who then needed to get a job and a buyer who would need to hire staff to run the business. The two were likely to reach a deadlock because the buyer had been told he could not afford what the seller was told was his minimum price. Nevertheless, where both negotiators had lived abroad 70% struck a deal in which the seller was offered a management job at the petrol station in return for a lower asking price. When neither of the negotiators had lived abroad, none was able to reach a deal. To check that they had not merely discovered that creative people are more likely to choose to live abroad, Dr Maddux and Dr Galinsky identified and measured personality traits, such as openness to new experiences, that are known to predict creativity. They then used statistical controls to filter out such factors. Even after that had been done, the statistical relationship between living abroad and creativity remained, indicating that it is something from the experience of living in foreign parts that helps foster creativity. Merely travelling abroad, however, was not enough. You do have to live there. Packing your beach towel and suntan lotion will not, by itself, make you Hemingway.

Mild-mannered Paul Ekman spent 40 years studying the human face. Then came September 11, 2001. Now the professor has become a warrior, one of America's most dedicated fighters against terrorism. 【C1】______. He's devoted much of his working life to discovering how to read faces with accuracy, and to solve such puzzles as: which of the muscles in the face reveal fear? Which muscles show anger, surprise, pleasure, and disgust? 【C2】______. For example; A genuine smile of enjoyment, as opposed to a forced (or "polite") one, involves not merely the muscles around the mouth but also a muscle around the eye, which, among other things, causes the eyebrows to move down slightly. Ekman has cataloged thousands of facial expressions. His Facial Action Coding System is used by hundreds of researchers around the world. But do these findings have practical value? "Indeed they do," says Ekman. 【C3】______. For that moment, a person's inner emotion—the true feeling or thought—leaks out through the face,and then it's repressed, perhaps deliberately, perhaps unconsciously, to be replaced by a forced smile or a blank face. 【C4】______. Starting in 1985, with the publication of his book Telling Lies, Ekman began working occasionally with police departments and other government agencies around the country. 【C5】______. A California scholar named Julian Bleecker, noting that science has a long, misguided history of attempting to classify people according to their physical characteristics, suggests that face reading is just another effort in this "pernicious and racist" tradition. Cynthia Cotts wrote in a New York City-based newspaper, The Village Voice, that the government's embrace of Ekman's ideas "could be seen as a major psychological advance—or a flimsy excuse for rounding up suspects".[A] Like many scientific endeavors, Ekman's face reading has its critics and skeptics. It's not universally accepted as a science. It's not accepted as evidence in courts of law (nor should it be, says Ekman). Also, a few people say it has a distinctly menacing aspect. [B] Ekman, a psychologist and scientist at the University of California at San Francisco, is probably the world's greatest expert on the human face, on the feelings that our faces reveal and on the things we try to hide. [C] Police and intelligence officials can also benefit from knowing about facial expressions, body language and vocal intonations when they're questioning a suspect. [D] A potential assassin lurks in a crowd. Can guards spot him via the language of his face and body? [E] For instance, one branch of his work has to do with microexpressions—brief facial announcements of deep emotion, lasting a fraction of a second, which we want to hide. [F] The human face has 44 muscles beneath its skin. Ekman, over the course of his career, has studied each of these muscles in finicky detail, coming to some startling conclusions about the connection between those muscles and our emotions. [G] Disgust can be indicated by a wrinkled nose and a raised upper lip. It is often signaled by raising and tightening the corner of a lip.

We often attribute key characteristics to one of our parents:" He gets his athleticism from his father." " Her quickness to anger—that's all her mother." Whether the genetics are actually pulling the strings in these cases is another story. But a growing body of research has suggested that heredity does apply to mood disorders—including depression, which afflicts more than 2.8 million adolescents in the U.S. alone—and that there is compelling evidence hereditary ties are strong between mothers and daughters. Researchers in a new study of 35 healthy families published in The Journal of Neuroscience this week have found that the brain's corticolimbic system, responsible for the regulation of emotion—and associated with the manifestation of depressive symptoms—is more likely to be passed down from mother to daughter than from mother to son or father to child. This finding, which supports past evidence from animal research and clinical studies on depression, could provide a better understanding of the role genetics play in mood disorders and other conditions, allowing better identification of at-risk groups and preventive measures. "Our study's uniqueness," says lead author Fumiko Hoeft, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco," is that we're the first one to get the whole family and scan both parents and offspring to look at how similar their brain networks are. And we joke about inheriting stubbornness or organization— but we've never actually seen that in human brain networks before." Hoeft cites Dr. Seuss' s children' s book Horton Hatches the Egg—in which an elephant sits on a bird's egg in lieu of its actual mother and a hybrid elephant-bird ends up hatching—as a cartoonish example of the inspiration for this research. The forces of both nature and nurture are at play. "What's relevant is that it shows the profound influence of prenatal impact on offspring, which we often forget," Hoeft adds. "Prenatal input is considered in the most severe cases, like alcohol and smoking. But it happens in everyone. A mom being stressed has an impact on her child's outcome." The finding is particularly relevant in light of the recommendations issued today by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which include the screening of pregnant women and new mothers for depression. Although this recommendation is primarily a response to concerns about the role of the "nurture" side of the equation, Hoeft seeks to unravel how biology plays its part as well.

A single night of taking the drug Ecstasy can cause serious brain damage and hasten the【C1】______of Parkinson" s disease, scientists say. Just two to three Ecstasy tablets-a quantity that thousands of clubbers take during raves-can permanently【C2】______brain cells that affect movement and【C3】______, according to American research that【C4】______the drug to Parkinson" s for the first time. A study by a team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland,【C5】______monkeys and baboons found that both species of primate【C6】______irreversible damage to key cells【C7】______dopamine neurons, which are lost in Parkinson" s, after receiving three low doses of Ecstasy at three-hour【C8】______. The study is particularly significant because baboons are one of the best animal models for the human 【C9】______. George Ricaurte, who led the research, said that widespread【C10】______of the drug may already be【C11】______ victims of such neurological damage. "The most troubling【C12】______is that young adults using Ecstasy may be 【C13】______ their risk for developing Parkinsonism as they get older." Alan Leshner, a former director of the US National Institute on Drug Abuse, said: "This study emphasizes the multi-faceted damage that Ecstasy can do【C14】______users. We"ve long known that repeated use damages serotonin brain cells. This study shows that even very【C15】______use can have long-lasting effects【C16】______ many different brain systems. It sends an important message to young people: don"t 【C17】______with your own brain." Janet Berts, the Essex mother whose daughter Leah died after a single Ecstasy tablet in 1995, said: "This comes as no【C18】______. People can"t see the effects at first, and they"re in permanent denial, saying it"s not going to happen to them. But we" ll see the【C19】______ later, just as we have【C20】______moking."

You are going to read a text about an old wedding tradition, followed by a list of examples. Choose the best example from the list for each numbered subheading. There is one extra example which you do not need to use. The wedding tradition of "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" has been around for hundreds of years. Many brides have been asked on their respective wedding days if they have gathered something old, new, borrowed and blue to carry with them as they walk down the aisle. The tradition of carrying or wearing one of each item is said to bring luck and fortune to the newly married couple. Have you ever stopped to think what the saying really means? What is its origin and what does each item represent? The original saying dates back to the Victoria times and states, "Something old something new, something borrowed, something blue and a silver sixpence in your shoe." (41) Something old A bride may wear or carry something old to represent her continued ties to her family and her old life. (42) Something new Something "new" is usually the easiest category to fill. (43) Something borrowed The borrowed item should be something borrowed from a friend that is happily married. (44) Something blue Wearing something blue dates back to biblical times. (45) Silver sixpence Placing a silver sixpence in the bride"s left shoe is said to be a symbol of wealth. This not only refers to financial wealth, but also a wealth of happiness and joy throughout her married life. Some brides aren"t hound by tradition but still may choose to carry out the custom at someone else"s request. If they don"t want to carry numerous items, they may simply carry two handkerchiefs in a small beaded bag. They may choose to buy a new, white handkerchief and borrow a blue one from a family member. That would provide them with something new the white handkerchief, as well as something that is old, borrowed and blue. The handkerchief just may come in handy during the wedding for drying their joyful tears.A. Wearing something new is supposed to represent success and hope in the bride"s new life and in her marriage. If the bride purchased her wedding dress new, it may represent her new item, but any item that is new may be used.B. At that time, a blue wedding dress was worn to represent purity, fidelity and love. Over time this has changed from wearing a blue dress to wearing just a blue band around the bottom of the bride"s wedding dress to modern times where it is commonplace for the bride to wear a blue garter.C. Many brides wear a piece of family jewelry as their old item. Some brides wear the wedding dress worn by their mother or grandmother. In many cases, something old may also be something borrowed.D. Some brides are more traditional than other and may take a great deal of care in selecting one item for each category. It may be traditional for the women in their families to wear the same piece of jewelry.E. It is suggested that their happiness will rub off on you and bring lasting happiness to your marriage. Some brides borrow an item of clothing, a piece of jewelry, a handkerchief or perhaps a beaded purse.F. Since most brides probably don"t even know what a sixpence is, this part of the tradition is not used very often in modern times. However, if a bride would like to include it in her wedding, she can purchase a silver sixpence from many companies that sell bridal supplies such as garters and invitations.

Karen Page braved pre-dawn darkness and freezing temperatures yesterday to face down a scene of "organized chaos". Hundreds of early-bird shoppers were waiting outside or in idling cars when Miss Page arrived for her job as a store greeter at Toys R Us in Fair Oaks Shopping Center in Fairfax. Welcome to "Black Friday", perhaps the biggest retail Sales day of the year as millions of shoppers across America are lured to stores with expanded hours and heavily discounted prices. "This is an organized chaos, which is a good thing," said Miss Page, who took up a position at the front of the store to greet and assist customers. She was quickly overwhelmed as crowds poured in and countless customers asked her to find a particular toy. On Black Friday shoppers hope to get the best stuff at the best prices for holiday gifts. Retailers hope to get a jump on the holiday sales season, which traditionally starts after Thanksgiving and runs through Christmas, said Ellen Tolley spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation, the largest trade association for retailers. The day after Thanksgiving is called "Black Friday" because it is traditionally the day when retailers" books shift from red to black. "You"ll see more consumers buying things ahead of time," she said. Miss Page, who has been working at the Toys R Us since 1995, called the 300 to 400 people waiting outside before the store opening yesterday "about average". Retailers nationwide anticipate a 4.5 percent sales jump this holiday season, bringing total spending up to $219.9 billion, Miss Tolley said. That is less than last year"s holiday sales spike of 5.1 percent, but still solid, she said. "It"s a sign that consumers are more settled than they were a year ago and they feel comfortable financially and confident with the economy," Miss Tolley said. Americans will spend on average $730 on Christmas gifts, accounting for roughly a quarter of annual retail sales, down from last year"s $734 per person, according to Gallup"s annual holiday survey. Luxury items like high-end electronics, furs and jewelry, along with toys are expected to lead sales this holiday season, Miss Tolley said. Additionally, consumers will spend an average $80.45 on gift cards, she said. Not all of those items will be bought at stores. Washington area shoppers will spend 58 percent of their budget online this year, according to America Online. Retailers in the District also are trying to attract shoppers with a sales tax holiday, which will run through Dec. 5. Washington"s 5.75 percent sales tax will be exempted from clothing, shoes and accessories that cost less than $100 each. There is no limit on the total value of the purchases.

In the end, a degree of sanity prevailed. The militant Hindus who had vowed to breach a police cordon and start the work of building a temple to the god Ram at the disputed site of Ayodhya decided to respect a Supreme Court decision barring them from the area. So charged have Hindu-Muslim relations in India become in recent weeks, as the declared deadline of March 15th neared, that a clash at Ram"s supposed birthplace might well have provoked bloodshed on an appalling scale across the nation. It has, unfortunately, happened often enough before. But the threat has not vanished. The court"s decision is only an interim one, and the main Hindu groups have not given up on their quest to build their temple. Extreme religious violence, which seemed in recent years to have faded after the Ayodhya related explosion of 1992 1993, is again a feature of the political landscape. Though faults lie on both sides (it was a Muslim attack on Hindus in a train in Gujarat that started the recent slaughter), the great bulk of victims were, as always, Muslims. Once again, educated Hindus are to be heard inveighing against the "appeasing" of Muslims through such concessions as separate constitutional status for Kashmir or the right to practice Islamic civil law. Once again, the police are being accused of doing little or nothing to help Muslim victims of rampaging Hindu mobs. Once again, India"s 130m Muslims feel unequal and unsafe in their own country. Far too many Hindus would refuse to accept that it is "their own country" at all. The wonder of it, perhaps, is that things are not worse. While the world applauds Pakistan for at last locking up the leaders of its extreme religious groups, in India the zealots still support, sustain and to a degree constitute the government. The BJP, which leads the ruling coalition, was founded as a political front for the Hindu movement. It is simply one, and by no means the dominant, member of what is called the Sangh Pariwar, the "family of organizations". Other members of the family are much less savoury. There is the VHO, the World Hindu Organization, which led the movement to build the Ram temple. There is the Bajrang Dal, the brutalist "youth wing" of the VHO. There is substantial evidence that members of the VHO and the Bajrang Dal helped to organize the slaughter of hundreds of Muslims in Gujarat after 58 Hindus were killed on a train as they returned from Ayodhya.

If you leave a loaded weapon lying around, it is bound to go off sooner or later. Snow-covered northern Europe heard the gunshot loud and clear when Russia cut supplies to Ukraine this week as part of a row about money and power, the two eternal battlegrounds of global energy. From central Europe right across to France on the Atlantic seaboard, gas supplies fell by more than one-third. For years Europeans had been telling themselves that a cold-war enemy which had supplied them without fail could still be depended on now it was an ally (of sorts). Suddenly, nobody was quite so sure. Fearing the threat to its reputation as a supplier, Russia rapidly restored the gas and settled its differences with Ukraine. But it was an uncomfortable glimpse of the dangers for a continent that imports roughly half its gas and that Gerard Mestrallet, boss of Suez, a French water and power company, expects to be importing 80% of its gas by 2030 much of it from Russia. It was scarcely more welcome for America, which condemned Russia"s tactics. And no wonder: it consumes one-quarter of the world"s oil, but produces only 3% of the stuff. Over the coming years, the world"s dependence on oil looks likely to concentrate on the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia. Russian oil had seemed a useful alternative. Fear of the energy weapon has a long history. When producers had the upper hand in the oil embargo of 1973-74, Arab members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cut supply, sowing turmoil and a global recession. When consumers had the upper hand in the early 1990s, the embargo cut the other way. After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the world shut in 5m barrels a day (b/d) of production from the two countries in an attempt to force him out. With oil costing $60 a barrel, five times more than the nominal price in 1999, and spot prices for natural gas in some European and American markets at or near record levels, power has swung back to the producers for the first time since the early 1980s. Nobody knows how long today"s tight markets will last. "It took us a long time to get there and it will take us a long time to get back," says Robin West, chairman of PFC Energy in Washington. A clutch of alarmist books with titles such as "The Death of Oil" predict that so little oil is left in the ground that producers will always have pricing power. The question is how worried consumers should be. What are the threats to energy security and what should the world do about them? The answers suggest a need for planning and a certain amount of grim realism, but not for outright panic.

At the Museum of Sex in New York City, artificial-intelligence researcher David Levy projected a mock image on a screen of a smiling bride in a wedding dress holding hands with a short robot groom. "Why not marry a robot? Look at this happy couple," he said to a laughing crowd. When Levy was then asked whether anyone who would want to marry a robot was deceived, his face grew serious. "If the alternative is that you are lonely and sad and miserable, is it not better to find a robot that claims to love you and acts like it loves you?" Levy responded. "Does it really matter, if you"re a happier person?" In his 2007 book, Love and Sex with Robots, Levy contends that sex, love and even marriage between humans and robots are coming soon and, perhaps, are even desirable. "I know some people think the idea is totally peculiar," he says. "But I am totally convinced it"s inevitable." The 62-year-old London native has not reached this conclusion on a whim . Levy"s academic love affair with computing began in his last year of university, during the vacuum-tube era. That is when he broadened his horizons beyond his passion for chess. "Back then people wrote chess programs to simulate human thought processes," he recalls. He later became engrossed in writing programs to carry on intelligent conversations with people, and then he explored the way humans interact with computers, a topic for which he earned his decorate last year from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. Over the decades, Levy notes, interactions between humans and robots have become increasingly personal. Whereas robots initially found work, say, building cars in a factory, they have now moved into the home in the form of Roomba the robotic vacuum cleaner and digital pets such as Tamagotchis and the Sony Aibo. Science-fiction fans have witnessed plenty of action between humans and characters portraying artificial life-forms, such as with Data from the Star Trek franchise or the Cylons from the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. And Levy is betting that a lot of people will fall in love with such devices. Programmers can tailor the machines to match a person"s interests or render them some what disagreeable to create a desirable level of friction in a relationship. "It"s not that people will fall in love with an algorithm but that people will fall in love with a convincing simulation of a human being, and convincing simulations can have a remarkable effect on people," he says.

Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawing,2)interpretitsmeaning,and3)giveyourcommentonthephenomenon.YoushouldwriteneatlyontheANSWERSHEET.(20points)

In the past, American colleges and universities were created to serve a dual purpose to advance learning and to offer a chance to become familiar with bodies of knowledge already discovered to those who wished it. To create and to impart, these were the distinctive features of American higher education prior to the most recent, disorderly decades of the twentieth century. The successful institution of higher learning had never been one whose mission could be defined in terms of providing vocational skills or as a strategy for resolving societal problems. In a subtle way Americans believed higher education to be useful, but not necessarily of immediate use. Another purpose has now been assigned to the mission of American colleges and universities. Institutions of higher learning—public or private—commonly face the challenge of defining their programs in such a way as to contribute to the service of the community. This service role has various applications. Most common are programs to meet the demands of regional employment markets, to provide opportunities for upward social and economic mobility, to achieve racial, ethnic, or social integration, or more generally to produce "productive" as compared to "educated" graduates. Regardless of its precise definition, the idea of a service-university has won acceptance within the academic community. One need only be reminded of the change in language describing the two-year college to appreciate the new value currently being attached to the concept of a service-related university. The traditional two-year college has shed its pejorative "junior" college label and is generally called a "community" college, a clearly value-laden expression representing the latest commitment in higher education. Even the doctoral degree, long recognized" as a required ".union card" in the academic world, has come under severe criticism as the pursuit of learning for its own sake and the accumulation of knowledge without immediate application to a professor"s classroom duties. The idea of a college or university that performs a triple function—communicating knowledge to students, expanding the content of various disciplines, and interacting in a direct relationship with society—has been the most important change in higher education in recent years. This novel development, however, is often overlooked. Educators have always been familiar with those parts of the two-year college curriculum that have a "service" or vocational orientation. It is important to know this. But some commentaries on American postsecondary education tend to underplay the impact of the attempt of colleges and universities to relate to, if not resolve, the problems of society. What"s worse, they obscure a fundamental question posed by the service-university—what is higher education supposed to do?

By the 1980s, according to international but admittedly inconsistent definitions of literacy, about seven out of ten adults in the world were considered literate. The increase in literacy from ancient times to the present has not been a story of unbroken progress. The ability of people within a given society to read and write has been influenced by a number of factors, including economic well-being, the availability of material to read, the amount of education available, and the basic matter of the usefulness of reading. Of these factors, usefulness has probably been the most decisive. In ancient societies, as people settled into stable patterns of agriculture and trade, it became useful for some of them to read and write in order to keep records, to transact business, and to measure amounts of land, animals, goods, materials, and produce. Since all economic aspects of a society were closely tied to the operations of government, literacy became useful and even necessary for the keeping of records by officials. The responsibilities of citizenship led to a fairly high level of literacy in ancient Greece and Rome, but in addition to that, there also grew an appreciation of good literature, poetry, drama, history, and philosophy. During the early Middle Ages, with the general breakdown of society in Europe and the decrease of commerce, literacy became largely confined to the church. But in the late Middle Ages, in the period of the Renaissance, the great expansion of commerce and banking led to a revival in literacy for the same reason that had caused it to increase in the ancient world—usefulness. With the invention of the printing press and inexpensive paper late in the 15th century there was for the first time a great availability of reading material for a much greater number of people. Religious reformers were among the first to utilize the situation, quickly getting translations of the Bible and educational tracts and booklets into the hands of many people. The broadened religious enlightenment that resulted was followed in later centuries by a political one. Political theorists who favored doctrines promoting the natural rights of man called for an attack upon illiteracy. Political revolutions, particularly in the United States and France, helped inaugurate an era in which all classes were called upon to become informed on public policy for their own welfare. Against this political background there emerged the movement for universal popular education. Literacy came to be understood as a means whereby the individual could benefit and advance,* and gradually whole societies began to acknowledge that universal literacy among their citizens was an avenue to greater economic well-being.

[A]Thefirstandmoreimportantistheconsumer'sgrowingpreferenceforeatingout;consumptionoffoodanddrinkinplacesotherthanhomeshasrisenfromabout32percentoftotalconsumptionin1995to35percentin2000andisexpectedtoapproach38percentby2005.Thisdevelopmentisboostingwholesaledemandfromthefoodservicesegmentby4to5percentayearacrossEurope,comparedwithgrowthinretaildemandof1to2percent.Meanwhile,astherecessionisloominglarge,peoplearegettinganxious.Theytendtokeepatighterholdontheirpurseandconsidereatingathomearealisticalternative.[B]RetailsalesoffoodanddrinkinEurope'slargestmarketsareatastandstill,leavingEuropeangroceryretailershungryforopportunitiestogrow.Mostleadingretailershavealreadytriede-commerce,withlimitedsuccess,andexpansionabroad.Butalmostallhaveignoredthebig,profitableopportunityintheirownbackyard:thewholesalefoodanddrinktrade,whichappearstobejustthekindofmarketretailersneed.[C]Willsuchvariationsbringaboutachangeintheoverallstructureofthefoodanddrinkmarket?Definitelynot.Thefunctioningofthemarketisbasedonflexibletrendsdominatedbypotentialbuyers.Inotherwords,itisuptothebuyer,ratherthantheseller,todecidewhattobuy.Atanyrate,thischangewillultimatelybeacclaimedbyanever-growingnumberofbothdomesticandinternationalconsumers,regardlessofhowlongthecurrentconsumerpatternwilltakehold.[D]Allinall,thisclearlyseemstobeamarketinwhichbigretailerscouldprofitablyapplytheirscale,existinginfrastructure,andprovenskillsinthemanagementofproductranges,logistics,andmarketingintelligence.RetailersthatmastertheintricaciesofwholesalinginEuropemaywellexpecttorakeinsubstantialprofitsthereby.Atleast,thatishowitlooksasawhole.Closerinspectionrevealsimportantdifferencesamongthebiggestnationalmarkets,especiallyintheircustomersegmentsandwholesalestructures,aswellasthecompetitivedynamicsofindividualfoodanddrinkcategories.BigretailersmustunderstandthesedifferencesbeforetheycanidentifythesegmentsofEuropeanwholesalinginwhichtheirparticularabilitiesmightunseatsmallerbutentrenchedcompetitors.Newskillsandunfamiliarbusinessmodelsareneeded,too.[E]Despitevariationsindetail,wholesalemarketsinthecountriesthathavebeencloselyexamined—France,Germany,ItalyandSpain—aremadeoutofthesamebuildingblocks.Demandcomesmainlyfromtwosources:independentmom-and-popgrocerystores,whichunlikelargeretailchains,aretoosmalltobuystraightfromproducers,andfoodserviceoperatorsthatcatertoconsumerswhentheydon'teatathome.Suchfoodserviceoperatorsrangefromsnackmachinestolargeinstitutionalcateringventures,butmostofthesebusinessesareknowninthetradeas"horeca":hotels,restaurantsandcafes.Overall,Europe'swholesalemarketforfoodanddrinkisgrowingatthesamesluggishpaceastheretailmarket,butthefigures,whenaddedtogether,masktwoopposingtrends.[F]Forexample,wholesalefoodanddrinksalescometo$168billioninFrance,Germany,Italy,Spain,andtheUnitedKingdomin2000—morethan40percentofretailsales.Moreover,averageoverallmarginsarehigherinwholesalethaninretail;wholesaledemandfromthefoodservicesectorisgrowingquicklyasmoreEuropeanseatoutmoreoften;andchangesinthecompetitivedynamicsofthisfragmentedindustryareatlastmakingitfeasibleforwholesalerstoconsolidate.[G]However,noneoftheserequirementsshoulddeterlargeretailers(andevensomelargegoodproducersandexistingwholesalers)fromtryingtheirhand,forthosethatmastertheintricaciesofwholesalinginEuropestandtoreapconsiderablegains.Order:

If they were just another product, the market would work its usual magic-supply would respond to high prices and rise to meet surging demand. But human kidneys are no ordinary commodity. Trading them is banned in most countries. So supply depends largely on the charity of individuals. Unsurprisingly, with altruism the only incentive, not enough people offer. Kidneys are the subject of a quietly growing global drama. As people in the rich world live longer and grow fatter, queues for kidneys are lengthening fast: at a rate of 7% a year in America, for example, where last year 4,039 people died waiting. Doctors are allowing older and more sluggish kidneys to be transplanted. Ailing, rich patients are buying kidneys from the poor and desperate in burgeoning black markets. In the face of all this, most countries are sticking with the worst of all policy options. Governments place the burden on their citizens to volunteer organs. A few European countries, including Spain, manage to push up supply a bit by presuming citizens" consent to having their organs transplanted when they die unless they specify otherwise. Whether or not such presumed consent is morally right, it does not solve the supply problem, in Spain or elsewhere. On the other hand, if just 0.06% of healthy Americans aged between 19 and 65 parted with one kidney, the country would have no waiting list. The way to encourage this is to legalize the sale of kidneys. That"s what Iran has done. An officially approved patients" organization oversees the transactions. Donors get $2,000-4,000. The waiting list has been eliminated. Many people will find the very idea of individuals selling their organs repulsive. Yet an organ market, in body parts of deceased people, already exists. Companies make millions out of it. It seems perverse, then, to exclude individuals. With proper regulation, a kidney market would be a big improvement on the current, sorry state of affairs. Sellers could be checked for disease and drug use, and cared for after operations. They could, for instance, receive health insurance as part of their payment—which would be cheap because properly screened donors appear to live longer than the average Joe with two kidneys. Buyers would get better kidneys, faster. Both sellers and buyers would do better than in the illegal market, where much of the money goes to the middleman. Instinct often trumps logic. Sometimes that"s right. But in this case, the instinct that selling bits of oneself is wrong leads to many premature deaths and much suffering. The logical answer, in this case, is the humane one.

The recent announcement that general practitioners(GPs)may send patients with depression away with the suggestion that they【C1】______a "mood-enhancing" book will have entranced some【C2】______left others bristling. When we set up our bibliotherapy service through The School of Life in 2008, our【C3】______was obvious: to show people that books, and【C4】______novels, not only have the【C5】______to lift spirits, but to【C6】______fundamental psychological shifts, healing and enriching the heart, the intellect and the soul in extraordinary ways. But you could【C7】______that someone with depression would【C8】______to make their way to the library,【C9】______put a spring in their stride, simply by the offer of some mood enhancing reads. One of the things we have found as biblio -therapists is that clients with depression【C10】______a therapeutic book require a very【C11】______prescription. Some may want a book that offers some escape—【C12】______case the odd English humour of Dodie Smith's / Capture the Castle may【C13】______. But others may【C14】______with impatience to anything【C15】______seems too unlike real life. The majority of our clients do not come to us for【C16】______reasons; most come because they love reading, and in this day of publishing overload they want to be sure they use their reading time well. There are few greater pleasures in life than discovering a novel that【C17】______back a world you recognise—and yet takes you into a deeper experience of that world. And research has shown that reading can be highly effective in【C18】______stress. We find Henry James a【C19】______way to order your mind when everything becomes too much— the literary【C20】______of Beethoven or Bach.

花园怎样反映人类的基本诉求 ——2013年英译汉及详解 It is speculated that gardens arise from a basic need in the individuals who made them: the need for creative expression. There is no doubt that gardens evidence an impossible urge to create, express, fashion, and beautify and that self-expression is a basic human urge;【F1】 Yet when one looks at the photographs of the gardens created by the homeless, it strikes one that, for all their diversity of styles, these gardens speak of various other fundamental urges, beyond that of decoration and creative expression. One of these urges had to do with creating a state of peace in the midst of turbulence, a "still point of the turning world," to borrow a phrase from T. S. Eliot.【F2】 A sacred place of peace, however crude it may be, is a distinctly human need, as opposed to shelter, which is a distinctly animal need. This distinction is so much so that where the latter is lacking, as it is for these unlikely gardens, the former becomes all the more urgent. Composure is a state of mind made possible by the structuring of one"s relation to one"s environment.【F3】 The gardens of the homeless which are in effect homeless gardens introduce form into an urban environment where it either didn" t exist or was not discernible as such. In so doing they give composure to a segment of the inarticulate environment in which they take their stand. Another urge or need that these gardens appear to respond to, or to arise from is so intrinsic that we are barely ever conscious of its abiding claims on us. When we are deprived of green, of plants, of trees,【F4】 most of us give into a demoralization of spirit which we usually blame on some psychological conditions, until one day we find ourselves in garden and feel the expression vanish as if by magic. In most of the homeless gardens of New York City the actual cultivation of plants is unfeasible, yet even so the compositions often seem to represent attempts to call arrangement of materials, an introduction of colors, small pool of water, and a frequent presence of petals or leaves as well as of stuffed animals. On display here are various fantasy elements whose reference, at some basic level, seems to be the natural world.【F5】 It is this implicit or explicit reference to nature that fully justifies the use of word "garden" though in a"liberated" sense, to describe these synthetic constructions. In them we can see biophilia—a yearning for contact with nonhuman life—assuming uncanny representational forms.

TV is so often a parent"s good friend, keeping kids happily occupied so the grownups can cook dinner, answer the phone, or take a shower. But【C1】______that electronic babysitter is not an educational【C2】______According to a recent research, babies who watch TV are more likely to have【C3】______cognitive development and language at 14 months, 【C4】______if they"re watching programs【C5】______for adults and older children. It"s surprising that TV-watching made a【C6】______at such a tender age. This new study【C7】______259 lower-income families in New York, most of whom spoke Spanish as their【C8】______language at home. Other studies examining higher-income families have come to the【C9】______conclusion: TV watching not only isn"t educational, but it seems to 【C10】______babies" development. Babies who watched 60 minutes of TV daily had developmental【C11】______one-third lower at 14 months than babies who weren"t watching that much TV. The【C12】______may be due to the fact that when kids and parents are watching TV, they"re【C13】______talking, playing, and interactions that are【C14】______to learning and development. But what about "【C15】______" TV, like Sesame Street? The researchers didn"t find any pluses or minuses when【C16】______to non-educational programs designed for small children, like Sponge-Bob SquarePants. 【C17】______research by some of the same scientists has found that parents whose children watch non-educational TV programs like SpongeBob SquarePants spend 【C18】______time reading to their children or teaching them. The latest study of educational TV programs like Sesame Street adds more【C19】______to a recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics that babies under age【C20】______watch no TV at all.

Congratulations Write an e-mail of about 100 words based on the following situation: Your friend Barbara is graduating from Yale University. Now write her an e-mail to congratulate her and wish her good luck during her new career. Do not sign your own name at the end of the e-mail. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.