Recently anti patent arguments have been advanced with regards to HIV and AIDS drugs. Governments and companies in Brazil, India, Thailand and Uganda have started to challenge patents monopolies on medicine, arguing that human lives are more important than patents, copyright, international trade laws, and the economic interest of the pharmaceutical industry. Anti-retroviral therapy has long been unaffordable for people suffering from HIV/AIDS in developing countries, and proponents of generic antiviral drugs argue that the human need justifies the breach of patent law. When the Thai Government Pharmaceutical Organization started producing generic antiviral drugs in March 2002 the cost of a monthly treatment for one person plummeted from $ 500- $ 750 to $ 30, hence making treatment more affordable. In response the US government placed Thailand on the list of "copyright violators" despite the fact that the production of antiviral drugs is not subject to copyright, even in the United States. In 2007 the government of Brazil declared Merck"s efavirenz anti-retroviral drug a "public interest" medicine, and challenged Merck to negotiate lower prices with the government or have Brazil strip the patent by issuing a compulsory license. It is reported that Ghana, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia have similar plans to produce generic antiviral drugs. Western pharmaceutical companies initially responded with legal challenges, but some have now promised to introduce alternative pricing structures for developing countries and NGOs. Campaigns for affordable access to medicines, such as Oxfam, argue that developing countries are dependent on foreign pharmaceutical companies. Quoting a recent World Health Organisation report, Trevor Jones argues that patent monopolies do not create monopoly pricing. He argues that the companies given monopolies "set prices largely on the willingness/ability to pay, also taking into account the country, disease and regulation" instead of receiving competition from legalized generics. Under World Trade Organization(WTO)rules, a developing country has options for obtaining needed medications under compulsory licensing or importation of cheaper versions of the drugs, even before patent expiration. In July 2008 Nobel Prize-winning scientist Sir John Sulston criticised the "moral corruption" of the medical industry. Amongst others Sulston said that the world is at a crisis point in terms of getting medicines to sick people, particularly in the developing world, Sulston called for an international biomedical treaty to clear up issues over patents. In response to these criticisms against pharmaceutical patents it has been pointed out that less than 5% of medicines on the WHO"s essential drugs list are subject to patent monopoly and that countries who believe that these monopolies are impeding health care may not be aware that the medicines in question, particularly for HIV/AIDS related drugs, are not patented in their country.

At the moment the second plane was slamming into the south tower, President Bush was (1)_____ to the second-graders of Emma E. Booker Elementary in Sarasota FTA. When he arrived at the school he had been whisked (2)_____ a holding room: National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice needed to (3)_____ to him. But he soon appeared in the classroom and listened (4)_____ as the children went through their reading drill. As he was getting ready to pose (5)_____ pictures with the teachers and kids, chief of staff Andy Card entered the room, walked (6)_____ to the President and whispered in Ms right ear. The President"s face became (7)_____ tense and serious. (8)_____ nodded, Card left and for several minutes the President seemed distracted and somber but then he (9)_____ his interaction with the class. "Really good readers, whew!" he told (10)_____ "These must be six-graders!" Meanwhile, in the room (11)_____ Bush was scheduled to give his remarks, about 200,people, (12)_____ local officials, school personnel and students, waited under the hot lights., Word of the crash began to (13)_____ reporters called their editors, but details were sparse until someone (14)_____ there was a TV in a nearby office. The President finally entered, about 35 minutes later, and (15)_____ his brief comments. "This is a (16)_____ time for America," he began. He ordered a massive (17)_____ to "hunt down the folks (18)_____ committed this act." Meanwhile the bomb dogs took a few extra passes through Air Force One, and an extra fighter escort was added. (19)_____ the President too was going to have trouble (20)_____ home.

The bastion of excellence in American education is being destroyed by state budget cuts and mounting costs. Whatever else it is, higher education is shot through with waste, lax academic standards and mediocre teaching and scholarship. Higher education is a bloated enterprise. Too many professors do too little teaching to too many ill-prepared students. Costs can be cut and quality improved without reducing the number of graduates. Many colleges and universities should shrink. Some should go out of business. Even so, our system has strengths. It boasts many top-notch schools and allows almost anyone to go to college. But mediocrity is pervasive. We push as many freshmen as possible through the door, regardless of qualifications. We create more graduate degrees of dubious worth. Does anyone believe the MBA explosion has improved management? You won't hear much about this from college deans or university presidents. They created this mess and are its biggest beneficiaries. Large enrollments support large faculties. More graduate students liberate tenured faculty from undergraduate teaching to concentrate on writing and research. Private schools will, for better or worse, be influenced by state actions. The states need to do three things. First, create genuine entrance requirements. States should raising tuitions sharply and coupling the increase with generous scholarships based on merit and income. To get scholarships, students would have to pass meaningful entrance exams. Ideally, the scholarships should be available for use at in-state private schools. All schools would then compete for students on the basis of academic quality and costs. Today' s system of general tuition subsidies provides aid to well-to-do families that don' t need it or to unqualified students who don' t deserve it. Next, states should raise faculty teaching loads. This would cut costs and reemphasize the primacy of teaching at most schools. "You can't do more of one (research) without less of the other (teaching)," says Fairweather. "People are working hard—it's just where they're working." Finally, states should reduce or eliminate the least useful graduate programs. Journalism or communications, business and education are prime candidates. A lot of what they teach can—and should—be learned on the job. If colleges and universities did a better job of teaching undergraduates, there would be less need for graduate degrees. Our colleges and universities need to provide a better education to deserving students. Higher education could become a bastion of excellence, if we would only try.

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

One of your close friends, Catherine, gave a piano solo at a concert last night and won the first prize. Now write her a letter of congratulation including the following details: 1) your heart-felt congratulations, 2) your strong impression, 3) and your encouragement. Write your letter in no less than 100 words and write it neatly. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter, use "12 Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

Studythefollowingpicturecarefullyandwriteanessayofabout160—200words.Youressaymustbewrittenclearlyandyouressayshouldmeettherequirementsbelow:1.Describethedrawingandinterpretitsmeaning,2.Andgiveyourcomments.

All Sumerian cities recognized a number of gods in common, including the sky god, the lord of storms, and the morning and evening star. (1)_____ the Sumerian worshipped the goddess of fertility, love, and war, she was evidently lower (2)_____ status than the male gods, indicating that in a more urbanized society the (3)_____ that the peoples of previous times had paid to the earth mother goddess had (4)_____. The gods seemed hopelessly violent and (5)_____, and one"s life a period of slavery at their easy will. The epic poem The Creation emphasizes that (6)_____ were created to enable the gods to (7)_____ up working. Each city moreover had its own god, who was considered to (8)_____ the temple literally and who was in theory the owner of all property within the city. (9)_____ the priests who interpreted the will of the god and controlled the (10)_____ of the economic produce of the city were favored (11)_____ their supernatural and material functions (12)_____. When, after 3000 B.C., growing warfare among the cities made military leadership (13)_____, the head of the army who became king assumed a(n) (14)_____ position between the god, whose agent he was, and the priestly class, whom he had both to use and to (15)_____. Thus king and priests represented the upper class in a hierarchical society. (16)_____ them were the scribes, the secular attendants of the temple, who (17)_____ every aspect of the city"s economic life and who developed a rough judicial system. (18)_____ the temple officials, society was divided among an elite or (19)_____ group of large landowners and military leaders; a mixed group of merchants, artisans, and craftsmen, free peasants who (20)_____ the majority of the population; and slaves.

A Letter of Apology Write a letter of apology of about 100 words based on the following situation: You have just come back from New York and found a book in your luggage that you forgot to return to Mark, your landlord there. Write him a letter to make an apology and suggest a solution. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

Man first appeared on earth about 2 million years ago. Then he was little more than an animal, but early man had a big advantage over the animals. He had in his brain special groups of nerve cells, not present in animals, that enabled him to invent a language and use it to communicate with his fellow men. (46) This ability to speak was of great value because it allowed men to share ideas, and to plan together, so that tasks impossible for a single person could be successfully undertaken by intelligent team-work. Speech also enabled ideas to be passed on from generation to generation so that the stock of human knowledge slowly increased. It was this special ability that put men far ahead of other living creatures in the struggle for existence. (47) He mastered darkness first with dim lights and later with brighter and brighter lamps, until he can now make for himself so dazzling a light with an arc lamp that, like the sun, it is too strong for his naked eyes. (48) Man found that his own muscles were too weak for the work which he wanted to do; be explored many other forms of power until now he has his hands on the ultimate source of physical energy, the nuclear power. From man"s earliest days the flight of birds has raised his wonder and desire. Why should he not fly as they did? Then he began to experiment. At last he learnt how to make the right machines to carry him through the air. Now he can fly faster than sound. Already he has plans for conquering space, and a series of experiments has been completed. (49) It will not be long now before man takes a giant step away from his planet and visits the moon, learning what it is like to have no weight to his body, no upward direction and no downward. Man, always a wanderer, has to overcome the difficulty of adapting himself to different climates. (50) Fortunately, in spite of having no thick skin or warm fur to protect him, he is peculiarly strong compared with other living creatures, most of whom are unable to live far outside the region that suits them best.

In recent years, railroads have been combining with each other, merging into super systems, causing heightened concerns about monopoly. As recently as 1995, the top four railroads accounted for under 70% of the total ton-miles moved by rails. Next year, after a series of mergers is completed, just four railroads will control well over 90% of all the freight moved by major rail carders. Supporters of the new super systems argue that these mergers will allow for substantial cost reductions and better coordinated service. Any threat of monopoly, they argue, is removed by fierce competition from trucks. But many shippers complain that for heavy bulk commodities traveling long distances, such as coal, chemicals, and grain, trucking is too costly and the railroads therefore have them by the throat. The vast consolidation within the rail industry means that most shippers are served by only one Rail Company/Railroads typically charge such "captive" shippers 20% to 30% more than they do when another railroad is competing for the business. Shippers who feel they are being overcharged have the right to appeal to the federal government"s Surface Transportation Board for rate relief, but the process is expensive, time-consuming, and will work only in truly extreme cases. Railroads justify rate discrimination against "captive" shippers on the grounds that in the long run it reduces everyone"s cost. If railroads charged all customers the same average rate, they argue, shippers who have the option of switching to trucks or other forms of transportation would do so, leaving remaining customers to shoulder the cost of keeping up the line. It"s a theory to which many economists subscribe, but in practice it often leaves railroads in the position of determining which companies will flourish and which will fail." Do we really want railroads to be the arbiters of who wins and who loses in the marketplace?" asks Martin Bercovici, a Washington lawyer who frequently represents shippers. Many "captive" shippers also worry they will soon be hit with a round of huge rate increases. The railroad industry as a whole, despite its brightening fortunes, still does not earn enough to cover the cost of the capital it must invest to keep up with its surging traffic. Yet railroads continue to borrow billions to acquire one another, with Wall Street cheering them on. Consider the $10.2 billion hid by Norfolk Southern and CSX to acquire Conrail this year. Conrail"s net railway operating income in 1996 was just $427 million, less than half of the carrying costs of the transaction. Who"s going to pay for the rest of the bill? Many "captive" shippers fear that they will, as Norfolk Southern and CSX increase their grip on the market.

Google already has a window into our souls through our Internet searches and it now has insight into our ailing bodies too. The Internet giant is using its vast database of individual search terms to【C1】______ the emergence of flu up to two weeks 【C2】______government epidemiologists. Google Flu Trends uses the【C3】______of people to seek online help for their health problems. By tracking【C4】______for terms such as "cough", "fever" and "aches and pains", it claims to be able to【C5】______estimate where flu is【C6】______. Google tested the idea in nine regions of the US and found it could accurately predict flu【C7】______between 7 and 14 days earlier than the federal centres for disease control and prevention. Google hopes the idea could also be used to help【C8】______other diseases. Flu Trends is limited【C9】______ the US. Jeremy Ginsberg and Matt Mohebb, two software engineers 【C10】______in the project, said that【C11】______in Google search queries can be very 【C12】______. In a blog post on the project they wrote: "It turns【C13】______that traditional flu surveillance systems take 1 to 2 weeks to collect and【C14】______surveillance data but Google search queries can be【C15】______counted very quickly. By making our estimates【C16】______each day, Flu Trends may provide an early-warning system for outbreaks of influenza." They explained that 【C17】______ information health would be kept【C18】______. "Flu Trends can never be used to identify individual users【C19】______we rely on anonymised, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries【C20】______ each week."

排序题A. Eye fixations are brief B. Too much eye contact is instinctively felt to be rude C. Eye contact can be a friendly social signal D. Personality can affect how a person reacts to eye contact E. Biological factors behind eye contact are being investigated F. Most people are not comfortable holding eye contact with strangers G. Eye contact can also be aggressive In a social situation, eye contact with another person can show that you are paying attention in a friendly way. But it can also be antagonistic, such as when a political candidate turns toward their competitor during a debate and makes eye contact that signals hostility. Here's what hard science reveals about eye contact: 41 We know that a typical infant will instinctively gaze into its mother's eyes, and she will look back. This mutual gaze is a major part of the attachment between mother and child. In adulthood, looking at someone else in a pleasant way can be a complimentary sign of paying attention. It can catch someone's attention in a crowded room. 'Eye contact and smiles' can signal availability and confidence, a common-sense notion supported in studies by psychologist Monica Moore. 42 Neuroscientist Bonnie Auyeung found that the hormone oxytocin increased the amount of eye contact from men toward the interviewer during a brief interview when the direction of their gaze was recorded. This was also found in high-functioning men with some autistic spectrum symptoms, who may tend to avoid eye contact. Specific brain regions that respond during direct gaze are being explored by other researchers, using advanced methods of brain scanning. 43 With the use of eye-tracking technology, Julia Minson of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government concluded that eye contact can signal very different kinds of messages, depending on the situation. While eye contact may be a sign of connection or trust in friendly situations, it's more likely to be associated with dominance or intimidation in adversarial situations. 'Whether you're a politician or a parent, it might be helpful to keep in mind that trying to maintain eye contact may backfire if you're trying to convince someone who has a different set of beliefs than you,' said Minson. 44 When we look at a face or a picture, our eyes pause on one spot at a time, often on the eyes or mouth. These pauses typically occur at about three per second, and the eyes then jump to another spot, until several important points in the image are registered like a series of snapshots. How the whole image is then assembled and perceived is still a mystery although it is the subject of current research. 45 In people who score high in a test of neuroticism, a personality dimension associated with self-consciousness and anxiety, eye contact triggered more activity associated with avoidance, according to the Finnish researcher Jari Hietanen and colleagues. 'Our findings indicate that people do not only feel different when they are the centre of attention but that their brain reactions also differ.' A more direct finding is that people who scored highly for negative emotions like anxiety looked at others for shorter periods of time and reported more comfortable feelings when others did not look directly at them.

阅读理解 If you are anything like me, you left the theater after Sex and the City 2 and thought, there ought to be a law against a looks-based culture in which the only way for 40-year-old actresses to be compensated like 40-year-old actors is to have them look and dress like the teenage daughters of 40-year-old actors. Meet Deborah Rhode, a Stanford law professor who proposes a legal regime in which discrimination on the basis of looks is as serious as discrimination based on gender or race. In a provocative new book, The Beauty Bias, Rhode lays out the case for an America in which appearance discrimination is no longer allowed. That means Hooters can't fire its servers for being too heavy, as allegedly happened last month to a waitress in Michigan who says she received nothing but excellent reviews but weighed 132 pounds. Rhode is at her most persuasive when arguing that in America, discrimination against unattractive women and short men is as pernicious and widespread as bias based on race, sex, age, ethnicity, religion, and disability. Rhode cites research to prove her point: 11 percent of surveyed couples say they would abort a fetus predisposed toward obesity. College students tell surveyors they'd rather have a spouse who is an embezzler, drug user, or a shoplifter than one who is obese. And all of this is compounded by a virtually unregulated beauty and diet industry and soaring rates of elective cosmetic surgery. Rhode reminds us how Hillary Clinton and Sonia Sotomayor were savaged by the media for their looks, and says it's no surprise that Sarah Palin paid her makeup artist more than any member of her staff in her run for the vice presidency. And the problem with making appearance discrimination illegal is that Americans just really, really like hot girls. And so long as being a hot girl is deemed a bona fide occupational qualification, there will be cocktail waitresses fired for gaining three pounds. It's not just American men who like things this way. The truth is that women feel good about competing in beauty pageants. To put it another way, appearance bias is a massive societal problem with tangible economic costs that most of us—perhaps especially women—perpetuate each time we buy a diet pill or sneer at fat women. This doesn't mean we shouldn't work toward eradicating discrimination based on appearance. But it may mean recognizing that the law won't stop us fi'om discriminating against the overweight, the aging, and the imperfect, so long as it's the quality we all hate most in ourselves.

阅读理解Money spent on advertising is money spent as well as any I know of. It serves directly to assist a rapid distribution of goods at reasonable prices, thereby establishing a firm home market and so making it possible to provide for export at competitive prices. By drawing attention to new ideas it helps enormously to raise standards of living. By helping to increase demand it ensures an increased need for labour, and is therefore an effective way to fight unemployment. It lowers the costs of many services: without advertisements your daily newspaper would cost four times as much, the price of your television licence would need to be doubled and travel by bus or tube would cost 20 percent more. 　　And perhaps most important of all, advertising provides a guarantee of reasonable value in the products and services you buy. Apart from the fact that twenty-seven Acts of Parliament govern the terms of advertising, no regular advertiser dare promote a product that fails to live up to the promise of his advertisements. He might fool some people for a little while through misleading advertising. He will not do so for long, for mercifully the public has the good sense not to buy the inferior article more than once. If you see an article consistently advertised, it is the surest proof I know that the article does what is claimed for it, and that it represents good value. 　　Advertising does more for the material benefit of the community than any other force I can think of. 　　There is one point I feel I ought to touch on. Recently I heard a well-known television personality declare that he was against advertising because it persuades rather than informs. He was drawing excessively fine distinctions. Of course advertising seeks to persuade. 　　If its message were confined merely to information―and that in itself would be difficult if not impossible to achieve, for even a detail such as the choice of the colour of a shirt is subtlety persuasive advertising would be so boring that no one would pay any attention. But perhaps that is what the well-known television personality wants.

阅读理解For three decades we''ve heard endlessly about the virtues of aerobic (increasing oxygen consumption) exercise. Medical authorities have praised running and jumping as the key to good health, and millions of Americans have taken to the treadmill(踏车) to reap the rewards. But the story is changing. Everyone from the American Heart Association to the surgeon general''s office has recently embraced strength training as a complement to aerobics. And as weight lifting has gone mainstream, so has the once obscure practice known as "Super Slow" training. Enthusiasts claim that by pumping iron at a snail''s pace-making each "rep"(repeat) last 14 seconds instead of the usual seven-you can safely place extraordinary demands on your muscles, and call forth an extraordinary response. Slow lifting may not be the only exercise you need, as some advocates believe, but the benefits are often dramatic. 　　Almost anyone can handle this routine. The only requirements are complete focus and a tolerance for deep muscular burn. Fox each exercise-leg press, bench press, shoulder press and so on-you set the machine to provide only moderate resistance. But as you draw out each rep, depriving yourself of impetus, the weight soon feels unbearable. Defying the impulse to stop, you keep going until you can''t complete a rep. Then you sustain your vain effort for 10 more seconds while the weight sinks gradually toward its cradle. Intense? Uncomfortable? Totally. But once you embrace muscle failure as the goal of the workout, it can become almost pleasure. 　　The goal is not to burn calories while you''re exercising but to make your body burn them all the time. Running a few miles many make you sweat, but it expends only 100 calories per mile, and it doesn''t stimulate much bone or muscle development. Strength training doesn''t burn many calories, either. But when you push a muscle to failure, you set off a pour of physiological changes. As the muscle recovers over several days, it will thicken-and the new muscle tissue will demand sustenance. By the time you add three pounds of muscle, your body requires an extra 9,000 calories a month just to break even. Hold your diet steady and, very quickly, you are vaporizing body fat. 　　One might have benefited from any strength-training program. But advocates insist the slow technique is safer and more effective than traditional methods.

阅读理解There will be a steady trend toward vegetarianism. A given quantity of ground can provide plant food for man or it can provide plant food for animals which are later killed for meat. 　　In converting the tissues of food into the tissues of the feeder, up to 90 per cent is used for reasons other than tissue maintenance and growth. This means that one hundred pounds of plant food will support ten pounds of human tissue―while one hundred pounds of plant food will support ten pounds of animal tissue, which will then support one pound of human tissue. In other words, land devoted to plant food will support ten times as many human beings as land devoted to animal food. 　　It is this (far more than food preferences or religious directions ) that forces overcrowded populations into vegetarianism. And it will be the direction in which the United States of 2001 will be moving―not by presidential order, but through the force of a steady rise in meat prices as compared with other kinds of food. 　　This, in turn, will come about because our herds will decrease as the food demand causes more and more meadow to be turned to farmland, and as land producing corn and other animal food is converted to providing food directly for man. 　　Another point is that it is not only energy that is in short supply. A shortage of oil means a shortage of plastics; a shortage of electricity means a shortage of aluminium. We are also experiencing a shortage of paper and most other raw materials. 　　This means that, for one thing, our generosity in wrapping, bagging and packaging will have to recede. There will have to be at least a partial return in supermarkets to the old days where goods were supplied in bulk and given out in bags to order. It may even become necessary to return bags, as we once returned bottles, or pay for new ones. 　　A decline in per-capita energy use will make it necessary to resort to human muscle again, so that the delivery man will make a comeback (his price added to that of the food, of course).Since energy shortages will cause unemployment in many sectors of the economy, there will be idle hands to do the manual work that will become necessary. 　　From an energy-saving standpoint, it would make far more sense to order by phone and have a single truck deliver food to many homes, than for a member of each home to drive an automobile, round-trip, to pick up a one-family food supply. 　　To be sure, it will not all be retrogression. Even assuming that Earth is in a desperate battle of survival through a crisis of still rising population and dwindling energy reserves, there should still continue to be technological advances in those directions that don''t depend on wasteful bulk use of energy. There will be continuing advances in the direction of "sophistication", in other words.

阅读理解 Veterans make up 8.5 percent of America's adult population but account for 18 percent of its suicides. In the past year, according to new data from the Veterans Affairs Department, 7,403 veterans killed themselves. That is about 20 deaths a day. This is a national emergency, and attacking it is the primary mission of the V.A.'s Veterans Crisis Line, a call center based in Canandaigua, N.Y. through phone conversations, online chats and text messages, trained operators listen and console, contact the police and hospitals if necessary, and steer callers to mental health care. Since 2007, the crisis line has been an all-purpose safety net for many thousands of veterans in free call. The V.A.'s inspector general reported in February that calls were going unanswered or being sent to voice mail or backup call centers outside the V.A. The report raised questions about poor training and oversight, citing one center where staff members had never answered voice mail messages because they didn't know the voice mail system existed. A report in May from the Government Accountability Office found that the Crisis Line was failing to meet its goals for phone response times, and not answering all its text messages. The V.A. deserves much of its bad reputation. But even the department's harshest critics have to admit that veterans are often better off inside the V.A. than out. The V.A.'s data show that suicide rates are highest among veterans who are 50 and older and those who do not receive V.A. care. The only real solution is to sign up more veterans, and to serve them better, with greater access to mental health care and a well-run crisis center that has the staffing, oversight and attention needed for its critical mission. The V.A. says it has been working to fix things. It has updated phone systems so calls do not go to voice mail. It says it has hired dozens of people and will soon have more than 300 trained responders. It is expanding mental health care for women and redoubling efforts to identify patients at high risk for suicide. Public confidence in the V.A., sorely tested, will not be repaired until the appalling suicide rate goes down, and watchdogs have no more appalling lapses to write about.

阅读理解Which of the following may be the best title of the text?

阅读理解 Is athletic expertise attained or innate? Those who have suffered the tongue-lashing of a cruel games master at school might be forgiven for doubting the idea that anyone and everyone is capable of great sporting achievement, if only they would put enough effort into it. Practice may make perfect, but not all are built in ways that make it worth bothering in the first place. The latest evidence of this truth has been gathered by Sabrina Lee of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and Stephen Piazza at Pennsylvania State University. They have looked at the physical structure of short-distance runners and found that their feet are built differently from those of couch potatoes. Dr. Lee and Dr. Piazza already knew that short-distance runners tend to have a higher proportion of fast- contracting muscle fibres in their legs than more sedentary folk can muster. They suspected, though, that they would find differences in the bone structure as well. And they did. They looked at seven university sprinters who specialize in the 100-metre dash and five 200-metre specialists, and compared them with 12 non-athletic university students of the same height. In particular, they looked at the sizes of bones of the toes and heel. They also used ultrasonic scanning to measure the sliding motion of the Achilles tendons of their volunteers as their feet moved up and down. This allowed them to study the length of the lever created by the tendon as it pulls on the back of the heel to make the foot flex and push off the ground. Dr. Lee and Dr. Piazza found that the toes of their short-distance runners averaged 8.2cm in length, while those of common people averaged 7.3cm. The length of the lever of bone that the Achilles tendon pulls on also differed, being a quarter shorter in short-distance runners. These findings suggest short-distance runners get better contact with the ground by having longer toes. That makes sense, as it creates a firmer platform to push against. In a short-distance running race, acceleration off the block is everything. Cheetahs, the champion of short-distance runners of the animal kingdom, have non-flexible claws that give a similar advantage. It is possible—just—that the differences in physical structure are the result of long and rigorous training. But it is unlikely. Far more probable is that the old saying of coaches, that great short-distance runners are born not made, is true. Everyone else, games masters included, should just get used to the idea.

阅读理解Orin Kerr’s comparison is quoted to indicate that