The love affair with business started in the 1980s and has grown into a mighty passion backed not just by money but by glamour and class. In 2009 the money ran out, but the mood was one of such chaos and confusion that it was hard to tell what was going on underneath. In 2010 it will become clear that the class and glamour are draining away from business too. It will be the end of the affair: business will be cool no longer. Throughout this affair the business schools played the role of cupid. First, they made the study of business into an(almost)respectable academic discipline. More importantly, they made it socially acceptable, something even the classiest person could aspire to. But in 2010, for the second year running, tens of thousands of overqualified MBAs will emerge with nowhere exciting to go. A very few will land jobs in investment banking, but those who want grand jobs in big companies or consultancies will be disappointed. Increasingly they will go crawling back to their old employers to do pretty much whatever they were doing before for pretty much the same money, thus making them question whether it is really worth the $160,000 that a top MBA costs. This is not going to be a little recessionary dip. It will be a more fundamental reappraisal. The magical myth of the MBA has for some time left the facts behind. In future, those who stump up will do so because they want to learn the skills, not because they think they are buying entry into a cool and exclusive club. Some good things will follow from this. There will be fewer smart Alecs who think they know it all pouring into companies. There has been a bear market in management bullshit since the credit crunch began. In 2010 the decline of the MBA will cut off the supply of bullshit at source. Pretentious ideas about business will be in retreat. But there will be bad things too: if fewer bright, ambitious people go into business, economies may suffer. Instead the talent will go increasingly into the public sector, the law, medicine—which are already bursting with bright people as it is. While the decline of the B-schools will weaken the glamour of business in general, the government will do its bit too with increasing regulation. In 2010,being a board director of a listed company will never have been less fun: not only will the procedural side be more demanding, there will be even greater public hysteria over what directors are paid. And with those at the top having such a grim time, it is unrealistic to expect any excitement at the bottom.

TheInvestigationoftheScaleofChineseNetizenA.Studythefollowingchartcarefullyandwriteanessayof160-200words.B.Youressayshouldcoverthesetwopoints:1)thechangeofthenumberofnetizen2)possiblereasons

Directions:Translate the following text into Chinese. Write your translation on the ANSWER SHEET.The idea that plants have some degree of consciousness first took root in the early 2000s; the term “plant neurobiology” was ____【A1】____ around the notion that some aspects of plant behavior could be ____【A2】____ to intelligence in animals. ____【A3】____ plants lack brains, the firing of electrical signals in their stems and leaves nonetheless triggered responses that ____【A4】____ consciousness, researchers previously reported.But such an idea is untrue, according to a new opinion article. Plant biology is complex and fascinating, but it ____【A5】____ so greatly from that of animals that so-called ____【A6】____ of plants’ intelligence is inconclusive, the authors wrote.Beginning in 2006, some scientists have ____【A7】____ that plants possess neuron-like cells that interact with hormones and neurotransmitters, ____【A8】____ “a plant nervous system, ____【A9】____ to that in animals,” said lead study author Lincoln Taiz, “They ____【A10】____ claimed that plants have ‘brain-like command centers’ at their root tips.”This ____【A12】____ makes sense if you simplify the workings of a complex brain, ____【A12】____ it to an array of electrical pulses; cells in plants also communicate through electrical signals. ____【A13】____, the signaling in a plant is only ____【A14】____ similar to the firing in a complex animal brain, which is more than “a mass of cells that communicate by electricity,” Taiz said.“For consciousness to evolve, a brain with a threshold ____【A15】____ of complexity and capacity is required,” he ____【A16】____.” Since plants don’t have nervous systems, the ____【A17】____ that they have consciousness are effectively zero.”And what’s so great about consciousness, anyway? Plants can’t run away from ____【A18】____, so investing energy in a body system which ____【A19】____ a threat and can feel pain would be a very ____【A20】____ evolutionary strategy, according to the article.

"Frontier", one of many English words that took on new meanings in North America, has assumed as well a role in explaining the continent"s history during the past five hundred years. In time the word has acquired other connotations, both positive and negative. Among historians, the term "frontier" is most closely associated with Frederick Jackson Turner, whose essay profoundly influenced American historiography for forty years after its publication in 1893. Reacting against historians who considered American history essentially an outgrowth of British and European institutions, Turner argued that Old World customs and attitudes broke down and reformed in America"s radically different physical and social environment. The opportunity of "free land" drew pioneers westward into settings that required them to modify or scrap entirely many of the institutions and values of their previous lives. The result was a "merged nationality", a distinctive culture and people. Although he emphasized the positive, Turner observed that the same conditions that had helped reshape the society had less desirable effects. For instance, as early governments they had to create political forms almost on the fly, they were less likely to innovate than to copy what they knew from the past. The tension between change and tradition was played out in gender relations. Frontier conditions often required women to take on roles usually reserved for men, but the crushing load of work made women"s lives difficult and dangerous and left little room for individual fulfillment outside their labors. By Turner"s death in 1932, more fundamental critiques of his ideas were being heard. Some stressed that many other factors—among them patterns of immigration, American society"s middleclass nature, etc.—influenced the national character at least as much as the frontier. Others argued that class divisions and social and economic hierarchies have been much more a part of American life than the frontier-inspired equality implied in Turner"s work. The effect of these various critiques has been paradoxical. No longer considered the primary formative force on continental history, the frontier has been more broadly defined and its explanatory power has grown. Recent research has explored the interactions among Europeans, Euro-Americans, and Indian peoples. Along the various frontiers there developed what the historian Richard White has called a "middle ground", cultures of overlapping customs and mutual borrowing in which all sides created new terms of understanding and exchange. Consequently, many tribes merged and consolidated to meet the threats and opportunities posed by the newcomers. A frontier in this sense was certainly not a division between "civilization and savagery", but rather a place where peoples, ideas, cultures, and institutions came together and interacted on many levels, sometimes mixing and sometimes conflicting but always in mutual influence.

It has long been the subject of speculation among the police and criminologists: what would happen if all the officers who now spend so much of their time taking statements, profiling criminals and moving pieces of paper around were suddenly put on the streets? Crime figures released by London"s Metropolitan Police this week provide the best answer yet. Following the bombings of July 7th and 21st, thousands of police officers materialised on London"s pavements, many of them sporting brightly coloured jackets. Drawn from all over the city, they were assigned to guard potential targets such as railway stations. The police presence was especially heavy in the bombed boroughs: Camden (which was struck three times), Hammersnrith and Fulham, Lamheth, Tower Hamlets, Westminster and the City of London. The show of force did not just scare off terrorists. There was less crime in July than in May or June, which as unusual: the warmer month tends to bring out criminal tendencies, as windows are left open and alcohol is imbibed alfresco. But the chilling effect was much stronger in the six boroughs that were targeted by terrorists. There, overall crime was down by 12% compared with July 2004. In inner London as a whole, crime fell by 6%. But in outer London, where the blue line was thinner, it went up slightly. Simon Foy, who tracks such trends at the Metropolitan Police, says that crime fell particularly steeply on the days of the attacks, partly because of the overwhelming police presence and partly because "even criminals were watching their televisions". What is significant is that crime barely rose thereafter. That was a change from the aftermath of September 11th 2001, when crime quickly soared just about everywhere—possibly because officers were deployed only in the very centre of London. "The received wisdom among criminologists is that marginal changes in visible patrolling have little or no effect on crime," says Mike Hough, a criminologist at King"s College London. July"s experiment should put that argument to rest. Even if offenders do not make rational calculations about the odds of being caught—which was low both before and after the bombings—they will be moved by a display of overwhelming force.

I had no sooner reached home than it began to rain.

Television, the most pervasive and persuasive modern technologies, marked by rapid change and growth, is moving into a new era, an era of extraordinary sophistication and versatility, which promises to reshape our lives and our world.

HousingGrowthandLandLossA.Studythegraphscarefullyandwriteanessayof160-200words.B.Youressayshouldcoverthesethreepoints:1)therelationshipbetweenhousinggrowthandlandloss2)possiblereasons3)yoursuggestions

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

Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.YoushouldwriteneatlyontheANSWERSHEET.

In an October 2008 report, the Center for Disease Control placed the U. S. 29th in infant mortality. tied with Slovakia and Poland, and trailing Hungary and Cuba. J That stunning outcome was quickly seized: the U. S. health-care system needs to be more like the government-run systems in those lands. Proponents of that view often shift into one-on-one comparisons of Canada and America. Canada, with mandatory public health insurance, experiences 5. 3 deaths per 1,000 births; the U. S. , with private insurance for most, sees 6. 9 deaths, a rate 30 percent higher. This outcome is then attributed to cross-country differences in the health-care systems. "Canadian Health Care. Even Willi Queues, Bests U.S. ," writes Pat Wechsler for Bloomberg, com, citing infant mortality as 34 percent higher in the United States. But infant-mortality differences can and should be explained by the American proportion of teenage mothers, which runs here at three times the Canadian rate. These pregnancies are less healthy, producing more premature, low-birth-weight babies. Within each birth-mother age category, the U. S. has generally equal or belter infant survival, as a 2007 National Bureau of Economic Research paper by economists June and David O"Neill details. The problem of infant mortality remains. It should surely be reduced in the U. S. , and serious measures should be undertaken to accomplish this. But the factors that cause it—adolescent pregnancies, drug abuse, smoking, drinking, and obesity are probably not going to be fixed by changes in health insurance, public or private. Focusing on the healthcare system requires nuance that, for those happily touting summary statistics, is not worth the stress. Michael Moore"s documentary Sicko revels in rankings that place Cuba ahead of America in the infant-mortality race. Indeed, in 2008 Cuba claimed an infant-mortality rate of 5. 8 deaths per 1,000 births against the U. S. rate of 6. 9. Setting aside questions as to which deaths count in the infant mortality statistic—U. S. medicine makes extraordinary attempts to save low-birth-weight babies that would otherwise be deemed miscarriages—and the far higher mortality of birthing mothers in Cuba, just one adjustment is provocative; the rate for Cubans living in the U. S. is 4. 2. Holding culture constant, the U. S. outranks Cuba. That may not be much of a boast, but political opportunists and newspaper headlines trumpet just the reverse story. Alas, our PowerPoint Ceneration gravitates to bullet points and two-dimensional bar charts, even as we stumble our way through this multidimensional universe. CliffsNotes science drives crises where none exist and misses those that truly loom.

A study of art history might be a good way to learn more about a culture than that is possible to learn in general history classes. Most (1)_____ history courses concentrate on politics, economics, and war. (2)_____, art history (3)_____ on much more than this because art reflects not only the political values of a people, but also religious (4)_____, emotions, and psychology. (5)_____, information about the daily activities of our own can be provided by art. In short, art expresses the (6)_____ qualities of a time and a place, and a study of it clearly offers us a deeper understanding than what can be found in most history books. In history books, objective information about the political life of a country is (7)_____; that is, facts about political are given, but (8)_____ are not expressed. Art, on the other hand, is (9)_____: it reflects emotions and impressions. The great Spanish painter Francisco Goya severely criticized the Spanish government for its (10)_____ of power over people. Over a hundred years later, symbolic (11)_____ were used in Pablo Picasso"s Guemica to express the (12)_____ of war. (13)_____, on another continent, the powerful paintings of Diego Rivera depicted these Mexican artists" concealed (14)_____ and sadness about social problems. In the same way, art can (15)_____ a culture"s religious beliefs. For hundreds of years in Europe, religious art was (16)_____ the only type of art that existed. Churches and other religious buildings were filled with paintings that depicted people and stories from the Bible. (17)_____ most people couldn"t read, they could still understand biblical stories in the pictures on church walls. (18)_____, one of the main characteristics of art in the Middle East was (and still is) its (19)_____ of human and animal images. This reflects the Islamic belief that statues are (20)_____.

Today we 're told that to be great is to be bold, to be happy is to be sociable. In fact, one-third to one-half of Americans are introverts. If you're not an introvert yourself, you are surely raising, managing, married to, or coupled with one. If these statistics surprise you, that' s probably because so many people pretend to be extroverts. Some fool even themselves, until some life event jolts them into taking stock of their true natures. You have only to raise this subject with your friends and acquaintances to find that the most unlikely people consider themselves introverts. It makes sense that so many introverts hide even from themselves. We live with a value system that I call the Extrovert Ideal. The archetypal extrovert works well in teams and socializes in groups. We like to think that we value individuality, but all too often we admire one type of individual—the kind who's comfortable "putting himself out there". Sure, we allow technologically gifted loners who launch companies in garages to have any personality they please, but they are the exceptions, not the rule, and our tolerance extends mainly to those who get fabulously wealthy or hold the promise of doing so. Introversion—along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness—is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology . Introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal are discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we've turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform. The Extrovert Ideal has been documented in many studies, though this research has never been grouped under a single name. Talk active people, for example, are rated as smarter, better-looking, more interesting, and more desirable as friends. We rank fast talkers as more competent and likable than slow ones. Even the word introvert is stigmatized—one informal study, by psychologist Laurie Helgoe, found that introverts described their own physical appearance in vivid language, but when asked to describe generic introverts they drew a bland and distasteful picture. But we make a grave mistake to embrace the Extrovert Ideal so unthinkingly. Some of our greatest ideas, art, and inventions came from quiet and cerebral people who knew how to tune in to their inner worlds and the treasures to be found there.

BPart CDirections: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese./B

"Worse than useless", fumed Darrell Issa, a Republican congressman from California, on March 19th, when the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the Immigration and Naturalization Service. "Terrible, and getting worse", added Zoe Lofgren, a Democratic colleague who has kept a watchful eye on the INS for ten years. Committee members lined up to take swings at James Ziglar, the head of the INS. He explained, somewhat pathetically, that "outdated procedures" had kept the visa-processing wheels grinding slowly through a backlog of applications. He also had some new rules in mind to tighten up visas. Speeding up the paperwork—and getting more of it on to computers—is vital, but the September attacks have exposed the tension between the agency"s two jobs: on the one hand enforcing the security of America"s borders, and on the other granting privileges such as work permits to foreigners. But other people want more radical changes. James Sensenbrenner, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, wants to split the INS into two separate bodies, one dealing with border security and the other with handling benefits to immigrants. The other approach, favored in the White House, is to treat the two functions as complementary, and to give the INS even more responsibility for security. Under that plan, the INS would merge with the Customs Service, which monitors the 20m shipments of goods brought into America every year, as well as the bags carried in by some 500m visitors. The two agencies would form one large body within the Department of Justice, the current home of the INS. This would cut out some of the duplicated effort at borders, where customs officers and agents from the INS"s Border Patrol often rub shoulders but do not work together. Mr. Bush—who has said that the news of the visa approvals left him "plenty hot"—was expected to give his approval. The senate, however, may not be quite so keen. The Justice Department could have trouble handling such a merger, let alone taking on the considerable economic responsibilities of the Customs Service, which is currently part of the Treasury. The senate prefers yet another set of security recommendations, including links between the databases of different agencies that hold security and immigration information, and scanners at ports of entry to check biometric data recorded on immigration documents. These ideas are embodied in a bill sponsored by members of both parties, but are currently held up by Robert Byrd, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, who worries that there has not been enough debate on the subject. Mr. Ziglar, poor chap, may feel there Nas been more than enough.

“Two centuries ago, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark left St. Lois to explore the new lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase,” George W. Bush said, announcing his desire for a program to send men and women to Mars. “They made that journey in the spirit of discovery... America has ventured forth into space for the same reasons.” Yet there are vital differences between Lewis and Clark’s expedition and a Mars mission. First, Lewis and Clark were headed to a place amenable to life; hundreds of thousands of people were already living there. Second, Lewis and Clark were certain to discover places and things of immediate value to the new nation. Third, the Lewis and Clark venture cost next to nothing by today’s standards. In 1989 NASA estimated that a people-to-Mars program would cost $ 400 billion, which inflates to $ 600 billion today. But the fact that a destination is tantalizing does not mean the journey makes sense, even considering the human calling to explore. And Mars as a destination for people makes absolutely no sense with current technology. Present systems for getting from Earth’s surface to low-Earth orbit are so fantastically expensive that merely launching the 1,000 tons or so of spacecraft and equipment a Mars mission would require could be accomplished only by cutting health-care benefits, education spending or other important programs or by raising taxes. Absent some remarkable discovery, astronauts, geologists and biologists once on Mars could do little more than analyze rocks and feel awestruck beholding the sky of another world. It is interesting to note that when President Bush unveiled his proposal, he listed these recent major achievements of space exploration: pictures of the rings of Saturn and the outer planets, evidence of water on Mars and the moon of Jupiter, discovery of more than 100 planets outside our solar system and study of the soil of Mars. All these accomplishments came from automated probes or automated space telescopes. Bush’s proposal, which calls for “reprogramming” some of NASA’s present budget into the Mars effort, might actually lead to a reduction in such unmanned science, the one aspect of space exploration that’s working really well. Rather than spend hundreds of billions of dollars to hurl tons toward Mars using current technology, why not take a decade or two decades, or however much time is required researching new launch systems and advanced propulsion? If new launch systems could put weight into orbit affordably, and if advanced propulsion could speed up that long, slow transit to Mars, then the dreams of stepping onto the Red Planet might become reality. Mars will still be there when the technology is ready. The drive to explore is part of what makes us human, and exploration of the past has led to unexpected glories. Dreams must be tempered by realism, however. For the moment, going to Mars is hopelessly unrealistic.

A 1993 study showing that students who did reasoning tests while listening to the 1781 Sonata for Two Pianos in D by Mozart tended to outperform those who did so in a silent room launched a widespread belief in what is commonly referred to【B1】______"the Mozart effect." 【B2】______the Telegraph reported earlier this week, the findings【B3】______parents and childcare centers to play the composer"s【B4】______for their little ones, inspired【B5】______moms to pump Mozart"s music through headphones on their bellies, and【B6】______encouraged the state of Georgia to give【B7】______free CDs of the composer"s work to new parents. Yet【B8】______the broad embrace of the theory, critics have【B9】______wondered if it has any actual merit As the AFP reports, the "Mozart effect" is【B10】______number six in the 2009 book 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology. And a new inquiry from researchers in Vienna【B11】______with the skeptics: in a【B12】______of 40 studies including some 3,000 people, psychologists at Vienna University found no evidence that listening to Mozart【B13】______makes people smarter. They did find that people who listened to music while completing reasoning tests performed better than those who took the tests in【B14】______—but that was true【B15】______they were listening to Mozart, Bach or Pearl Jam, the AFP reports,【B16】______the notion that it"s external stimulus that【B17】______to improved performance, not Mozart. Of course, researchers still encouraged people to listen to Mozart—if for nothing more than pure【B18】______. As investigator Jakob Pietschnig told the AFP: "I【B19】______everyone listen to Mozart, but it"s not going to【B20】______cognitive abilities as some people hope."

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

It's true that she's ill.

【F1】 When a disease of epidemic proportions rips into the populace, scientists immediately get to work, trying to locate the source of the affliction and find ways to combat it. Oftentimes, success is achieved, as medical science is able to isolate the parasite, germ or cell that causes the problem and finds ways to effectively kill or contain it. In the most serious of cases, in which the entire population of a region or country may be at grave risk, it is deemed necessary to protect the entire population through vaccination, so as to safeguard lives and ensure that the disease will not spread. 【F2】 The process of vaccination allows the patient"s body to develop immunity to the virus or disease so that, if it is encountered, one can ward it off naturally. To accomplish this, a small weak or dead strain of the disease is actually injected into the patient in a controlled environment, so that his body"s immune system can learn to fight the invader properly. Information on how to penetrate the disease" s defenses is transmitted to all elements of the patient"s immune system in a process that occurs naturally, in which genetic information is passed from cell to cell.【F3】 This makes sure that, should the patient later come into contact with the real problem, his body is well equipped and trained to deal with it, having already done so before. There are dangers inherent in the process, however.【F4】 On occasion, even the weakened version of the disease contained in the vaccine proves too much for the body to handle, resulting in the immune system succumbing, and, therefore, the patient"s death. 【F5】 Such is the case of the smallpox vaccine, designed to eradicate the smallpox epidemic that nearly wiped out the entire Native American population and killed massive numbers of settlers. Approximately 1 in 10, 000 people who receives the vaccine contract the smallpox disease from the vaccine itself and dies from it. Thus, if the entire population of the United States were to receive the Smallpox Vaccine today, 3, 000 Americans would be left dead. Fortunately, the smallpox virus was considered eradicated in the early 1970"s, ending the mandatory vaccination of all babies in America. In the event of a re-introduction of the disease, however, mandatory vaccinations may resume, resulting in more unexpected deaths from vaccination. The process, which is truly a mixed blessing, may indeed hide some hidden curses.