阅读理解 It is not quite Benidorm yet, but Antarctica has become an increasingly popular destination for the more adventurous tourist. In this year's southern-hemisphere summer season, running from November to March, as many as 39,000 visitors are expected to make the trip from Tierra del Fuego, the nearest jumping-off point to the world's emptiest continent. That amounts to a fourfold increase in a decade. Officials in both Chile and Argentina are getting increasingly worried about the risk of a fatal accident-'a new Titanic' as one Chilean naval officer puts it. Nobody has died so far, but there have been some near-collisions. In 2007 more than 150 people were evacuated when their ship, the Explorer, sank after hitting an iceberg near the South Shetland Islands. They were 'very lucky with the weather', says Chile's deputy minister for the navy, Carolina Echeverria. That was one of only two accidents last season, with a similar number the previous year and one so far this season. Help is usually not far away. Although cruise ships plan their route so as to keep out of each other's sight, there are generally 20 to 30 boats heading to or from the Antarctic Peninsula on any one day. Even so, surviving an accident is something of a lottery. It depends partly on the weather. Not all the ships have the covered lifeboats recommended for polar conditions. Small boats, like the Explorer, have a better chance of being able to transfer their passengers if they get into difficulties. But some cruise ships visiting Antarctica now carry almost 3,000 passengers-more than ten times the limit that offers a reasonable chance of timely rescue. according to Chile's navy. The navy is annoyed about the cost of patrols, rescue operations and cleaning up fuel spills. It wants legally binding rules, backed by penalties, for Antarctic cruise ships. But that is hard to achieve. Under the 1959 Antarctic Treaty no country can exercise sovereignty over any part of the continent and its waters are international. Some rules on tourism have been written under the treaty: cruise ships carrying over 500 passengers cannot make landings, for example. But these are not legally enforceable. Neither will be rules being debated by the United Nations' International Maritime Organization on safety requirements. Some tour operators say they would welcome tighter regulation and higher safety standards. Others insist that safety is already adequate. The world recession may place a temporary brake on the trade. But Chilean officials reckon that the trend to big cruise ships, with their cheaper fares, will resume once recovery comes. If so, a tragedy may be only a matter of time.

阅读理解 Of all the components of a good night's sleep, dreams seem to be least within our control. In dreams, a window opens into a world where logic is suspended and dead people speak. A century ago, Freud formulated his revolutionary theory that dreams were the disguised shadows of our unconscious desires and fears; by the late 1970s, neurologists had switched to thinking of them as just 'mental noise'—the random byproducts of the neural-repair work that goes on during sleep. Now researchers suspect that dreams are part of the mind's emotional thermostat, regulating moods while the brain is 'off-line.' And one leading authority says that these intensely powerful mental events can be not only harnessed but actually brought under conscious control, to help us sleep and feel better, 'It's your dream,' says Rosalind Cartwright, chair of psychology at Chicago's Medical Center. 'If you don't like it, change it.' Evidence from brain imaging supports this view. The brain is as active during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep—when most vivid dreams occur—as it is when fully awake, says Dr. Eric Nofzinger at the University of Pittsburgh. But not all parts of the brain are equally involved; the limbic system (the 'emotional brain') is especially active, while the prefrontal cortex (the center of intellect and reasoning) is relatively quiet. 'We wake up from dreams happy or depressed, and those feelings can stay with us all day.' says Stanford sleep researcher Dr. William Dement. The link between dreams and emotions shows up among the patients in Cartwright's clinic. Most people seem to have more bad dreams early in the night, progressing toward happier ones before awakening, suggesting that they are working through negative feelings generated during the day. Because our conscious mind is occupied with daily life we don't always think about the emotional significance of the day's events—until, it appears, we begin to dream. And this process need not be left to the unconscious. Cartwright believes one can exercise conscious control over recurring bad dreams. As soon as you awaken, identify what is upsetting about the dream. Visualize how you would like it to end instead; the next time it occurs, try to wake up just enough to control its course. With much practice people can learn to, literally, do it in their sleep. At the end of the day, there's probably little reason to pay attention to our dreams at all unless they keep us from sleeping or 'we wake up in a panic,' Cartwright says. Terrorism, economic uncertainties and general feelings of insecurity have increased people's anxiety. Those suffering from persistent nightmares should seek help from a therapist. For the rest of us, the brain has its ways of working through bad feelings. Sleep—or rather dream—on it and you'll feel better in the morning.

阅读理解Do you remember all those years when scientists argued that smoking would kill us but the doubters insisted that we didn''t know for sure? That the evidence was inconclusive, the science uncertain ? That the antismoking lobby was out to destroy our way of life and the government should stay out of the way? Lots of Americans bought that nonsense, and over three decades, some 10 million smokers went to early graves. There are upsetting parallels today, as scientists in one wave after another try to awaken us to the growing threat of global warming. The latest was a panel from the National Academy of Sciences, enlisted by the White House, to tell us that the Earth''s atmosphere is definitely warming and that the problem is largely man-made. The clear message is that we should get moving to protect ourselves. The president of the National Academy, Bruce Alberts, added this key point in the preface to the panel''s report: "Science never has all the answers. But science does provide us with the best available guide to the future, and it is critical that our nation and the world base important policies on the best judgments that science can provide concerning the future consequences of present actions." Just as on smoking, voices now come from many quarters insisting that the science about global warming is incomplete, that it''s OK to keep pouring fumes into the air until we know for sure. This is a dangerous game: by the time 100 percent of the evidence is in, it may be too late. With the risks obvious and growing, a prudent people would take out an insurance policy now. Fortunately, the White House is starting to pay attention. But it'' s obvious that a majority of the president''s advisers still don''t take global warming seriously. Instead of a plan of action, they continue to press for more research―a classic case of "paralysis by analysis." To serve as responsible stewards of the planet, we must press forward on deeper atmospheric and oceanic research. But research alone is inadequate. If the Administration won''t take the legislative initiative, Congress should help to begin fashioning conservation measures. A bill by Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, which would offer financial incentives for private industry, is a promising start. Many see that the country is getting ready to build lots of new power plants to meet our energy needs. If we are ever going to protect the atmosphere, it is crucial that those new plants be environmentally sound.

阅读理解 Whatever happened to the death of newspapers? A year ago the end seemed near. The recession threatened to remove the advertising and readers that had not already fled to the internet. Newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle were chronicling their own doom. America's Federal Trade commission launched a round of talks about how to save newspapers. Should they become charitable corporations? Should the state subsidize them? It will hold another meeting soon. But the discussions now seem out of date. In much of the world there is little sign of crisis. German and Brazilian papers have shrugged off the re-cession. Even American newspapers, which inhabit the most troubled corner of the global industry, have not only survived but often returned to profit. Not the 20% profit margins that were routine a few years ago, but profit all the same. It has not been much fun. Many papers stayed afloat by pushing journalists overboard. The American Society of News Editors reckons that 13,500 newsroom jobs have gone since 2007. Readers are paying more for slimmer products. Some papers even had the nerve to refuse delivery to distant suburbs. Yet these desperate measures have proved the right ones and, sadly for many journalists, they can be pushed further. Newspapers are becoming more balanced businesses, with a healthier mix of revenues from readers and advertisers. American papers have long been highly unusual in their reliance on ads. Fully 87% of their revenues came from advertising in 2008, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD). In Japan the proportion is 35%. Not surprisingly, Japanese newspapers are much more stable. The whirlwind that swept through newsrooms harmed everybody, but much of the damage has been concentrated in areas where newspaper are least distinctive. Car and film reviewers have gone. So have science and general business reporters. Foreign bureaus have been savagely cut off. Newspapers are less complete as a result. But completeness is no longer a virtue in the newspaper business.

阅读理解 Will fatherhood make me happy? That is a question many men have found themselves asking, and the scientific evidence is equivocal. A lot of studies have linked parenthood—particularly fatherhood—with lower levels of marital satisfaction and higher rates of depression than are found among non-parents. To investigate the matter further, psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky decided both to study the existing literature, and to conduct some experiments of her own. The results suggest parenthood in general, and fatherhood in particular, really are blessings, even though the parent in question might sometimes feel they are in disguise. Dr. Lyubomirsky's first port of call was the World Values Survey. This is a project which gathers huge amounts of data about the lives of people all around the planet. For the purposes of her research, Dr. Lyubomirsky looked at the answers 6,906 Americans had given, in four different years, to four particular questions. These were: how many children the responder had; how satisfied he (or she) was with life; how happy he was; and how often he thought about the meaning and purpose of life. She found that parents had higher happiness, satisfaction and meaning-of-life scores than non-parents. The differences were not huge, but they were statistically significant. Moreover, a closer look showed that the differences in happiness and satisfaction were the result of men's scores alone going up with parenthood. Those of women did not change. Armed with this result, Dr. Lyubomirsky conducted her own experiment. The problem with projects like the World Values Survey is that, because participants are asked to recall their feelings rather than stating what they are experiencing in the here and now, this might lead them into thinking more fondly in hindsight about their parenting duties. Dr. Lyubomirsky therefore gave pagers to 329 North American volunteers aged between 18 and 94, having first recorded, among other things, their sex, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, marital status and number of children. She told them they would be paged at random, five times a day. When they were so paged, they were asked to complete a brief response sheet about how they felt, then and there. She did not, however, tell them why she was asking these questions. The upshot was the same as her findings from the World Values Survey. Parents claimed more positive emotions and more meaning in their lives than non-parents, and a closer look revealed that it was lathers who most enjoyed these benefits. It looks, then, as if evolution has bolted into men a psychological mechanism to keep them in the family. At first sight, it is strange that women do not share this mechanism, but perhaps they do not need to. They know, after all, that the children are theirs, and that a man's potential to father an indefinite number of offspring if he can find willing volunteers, might encourage him to stray from the bosom of his family. Enjoying fatherhood, by contrast, will help keep him in the porch.

阅读理解Maybe it''s a sign of a mature mind when some of life''s bigger questions-about love, faith, ambition-suddenly seem more manageable than smaller ones, such as:Why did I just open the refrigerator? Where on earth did I put my keys? Where did I write down that phone number? 　　Our capacity for storing and recalling information does not stream down like sand through an hourglass, as neurologists once believed. On the contrary, new research suggests that, when stimulated in the right way, brains of almost any age can give birth to cells and forge fresh pathways to file away new information. This emerging picture has not only encouraged those who treat and care for the 5% of older adults who have dementia (痴呆症) such as Alzheimer''s disease, but also generated a wave of optimism among those studying memory changes in the other 95%, as well as an increasing public fascination with "memory enhancement" dietary supplements, books and brain-improving techniques. 　　The slight failures of memory that many of us attribute to a failing brain are often due to something entirely different: anxiety, sleep problems, depression, even heart disease. The biological nuts and bolts of learning and memory in fact change little over time in healthy people, researchers say. "There''s very little cell loss, and structurally all the machinery is there, even very late in life," said a neuroscientist Greg Cole. It''s the cells'' speed and ability to send and receive signals that diminish gradually, which is what makes the mind go blank when trying to recall familiar words and names. 　　For more than a decade, researchers have known that people who have active, intellectually challenging lives are less likely to develop dementia than those who do not. Part of this difference is attributable to intelligence, some doctors believe:The more you start with, the longer it takes to lose it. And new evidence suggests that the act of using your brain is in itself protective, no matter who you are. 　　All of the activities, such as reading newspapers, watching TV, playing games, etc. canimprove people''s scores on standard tests measuring recall of numbers and names, experts say. They also acknowledge, however, that there is a big difference between playing chess with a friend and doing a mental exercise, such as memorizing numbers. One is an organic part of a person''s life, the other a purely intellectual exercise, done in isolation. The first is fun; the second, often, is a tiring task.

阅读理解 America doesn't have a worker shortage; it has a work shortage. The unemployment rate is at a 15-year low, but only 55% of American adults 18 to 64 have fulltime jobs. Nearly 95 million people have removed themselves entirely from the job market. According to demographer Nicholas Eberstadt, the labor-force participation rate for men ages 25 to 54 is lower now than it was at the end of the Great Depression. The welfare state is largely to blame. More than 20% of American men of prime working age are on Medicaid. According to the Census Bureau, nearly 60% of nonworking men receive federal disability benefits. The good news is that the 1996 welfare reform taught us how to reduce government dependency and get idle Americans back to work. Attaching work requirements to social benefits like Medicaid, food stamps, Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income would make what these pages have called 'America's growing labor shortage' a nonissue. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 41% of nondisabled adults on Medicaid don't have jobs. Thirteen million Americans ages 18 to 54 currently receive SSDI or SSI benefits. Conservatively, work requirements could add 25% of that population (3.3 million workers) back to the labor force. Work requirements for people on food stamps would increase the worker rolls by 1.9 million if only 10% who aren't engaged in work rejoined. There's no question that insisting on work in exchange for social benefits would succeed in reducing dependency. We have the data: Within 10 years of the 1996 reform, the number of Americans in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program fell 60%. But no reform is permanent. Under President Obama, federal poverty programs ballooned. A better long-term solution to the work shortage would be to eliminate all forms of public support except for those who are unable to work, and eliminate all poverty programs, since they haven't reduced poverty since they were established in 1965. The money being spent on these programs should be redirected to job creation—preferably for private-sector jobs, but public-sector jobs will do in a pinch. A trillion-dollar federal infrastructure program, such as the one President Trump has said he will propose, could absorb a large number of the unemployed and underemployed. There are other avenues to pursue. For young men who aren't working, a mandatory two-year public-service requirement with an off-ramp for those who snag a job could motivate them to get off—and stay off—the couch. Too many Americans who could be available to help fuel robust economic growth are instead sitting on the sidelines. It's time to get them in the game. It's time to solve the work shortage.

阅读理解 In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell argues that 'social epidemics' are driven in large part by the actions of a tiny minority of special individuals, often called influentials, who are unusually informed, persuasive, or well connected. The idea is intuitively compelling--we think we see it happening all the time--but it doesn't explain how ideas actually spread. The supposed importance of influentials derives from a plausible-sounding but largely untested theory called the 'two-step flow of communication': Information flows from the media to the influentials and from them to everyone else. Marketers have embraced the two-step flow because it suggests that if they can just find and influence the influentials, those select people will do most of the work for them. The theory also seems to explain the sudden and unexpected popularity of certain looks, brands, or neighborhoods. In many such cases, a cursory search for causes finds that some small group of people was wearing, promoting or developing whatever it is before anyone else paid attention. Anecdotal evidence of this kind fits nicely with the idea that only certain special people can drive trends. In their recent work, however, some researchers have come up with the finding that influentials have far less impact on social epidemics than is generally supposed. In fact, they don't seem to be required at all. The researchers' argument stems from a simple observation about social influence, with the exception of a few celebrities like Oprah Winfrey--whose outside presence is primarily a function of media, not interpersonal influence--even the most influential members of a population simply don't interact with that many others. Yet it is precisely these non-celebrity influentials who, according to the two-step-flow theory, are supposed to drive social epidemics, by influencing their friends and colleagues directly. For a social epidemic to occur, however, each person so affected must then influence his or her own acquaintances, who must in turn influence theirs, and so on; and just how many others pay attention to each of these people has little to do with the initial influential. If people in the network just two degrees removed from the initial influential prove resistant, for example, the cascade of change won't propagate very far or affect many people. Building on the basic truth about interpersonal influence, the researchers studied the dynamics of populations, manipulating a number of variables relating to people's ability to influence others and their tendency to be influenced.

阅读理解 Add CO2 to the atmosphere and the climate will get warmer—that much is well established. But climate change and carbon aren't in a one-to-one relationship. If they were, climate modeling would be a cinch. How much the globe will warm if we put a certain amount of CO2 into the air depends on the sensitivity of the climate. How vulnerable is the polar sea ice; how rapidly might the Amazon dry up; how fast could the Greenland ice cap disintegrate? That's why models like those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change spit out a range of predictions for future warming, rather than a single neat number. One of the biggest questions in climate sensitivity has been the role of low-level cloud cover. Low-altitude clouds reflect some of the sun's radiation back into the atmosphere, cooling the earth. It's not yet known whether global warming will dissipate clouds, which would effectively speed up the process of climate change, or increase cloud cover, which would slow it down. But a new study published in the July 24 issue of Science is clearing the haze. A group of researchers from the University of Miami studied cloud data of the northeast Pacific Ocean over the past 50 years and combined that with climate models. They found that low-level clouds tend to dissipate as the ocean warms—which means a warmer world could well have less cloud cover. 'That would create positive feedback, a reinforcing cycle that continues to warm the climate,' says Amy Clement, the leading author of the Science study. The data showed that as the Pacific Ocean has warmed over the past several decades—part of the gradual process of global warming—low-level cloud cover has lessened. That might be due to the fact that as the earth's surface warms, the atmosphere becomes more unstable and draws up water vapor from low altitudes to form deep clouds high in the sky. (Those types of high-altitude clouds don't have the same cooling effect.) The Science study also found that as the oceans warmed, the trade winds—the easterly surface winds that blow near the equator—weakened, which further dissipated the low clouds. The question now is whether this process will continue in the future, as the world keeps warming.

阅读理解Which of the following would be the best for the text?

阅读理解Well, no gain without pain, they say. But what about pain without gain? Everywhere you go in America, you hear tales of corporate revival. What is harder to establish is whether the productivity revolution that businessmen assume they are presiding over is for real. 　　The official statistics are mildly discouraging. They show that, if you lump manufacturing and services together, productivity has grown on average by 1.2% since 1987. That is somewhat faster than the average during the previous decade. And since 1991, productivity has increased by about 2% a year, which is more than twice the 1978―1987 average. The trouble is that part of the recent acceleration is due to the usual rebound that occurs at this point in a business cycle, and so is not conclusive evidence of a revival in the underlying trend. There is, as Robert Rubin, the treasury secretary, says, a" disjunction" between the mass of business anecdote that points to leap in productivity and the picture reflected by the statistics. 　　Some of this can be easily explained. New ways of organizing the workplace―all that reengineering and downsizing―are only one contribution to the overall productivity of an economy, which is driven by many other factors such as joint investment in equipment and machinery, new technology, and investment in education and training. Moreover, most of the changes that companies make are intended to keep them profitable, and this need not always mean increasing productivity: switching to new markets or improving quality can matter just as much. 　　Two other explanations are more speculative. First, some of the business restructuring of recent years may have been ineptly done. Second, even if it was well done, it may have spread much less widely than people suppose. 　　Leonard Schlesinger, a Harvard academic and former chief executive of Au Bon Pain, a rapidly growing chain of bakery cafes, says that much" re-engineering" has been crude. In many cases, he believes, the loss of revenue has been greater than the reductions in cost. His colleague, Michael Beer, says that far too many companies have applied re-engineering in a mechanistic fashion, chopping out costs without giving sufficient thought to long-term profitability. BBDO''s AI Rosenshine is blunter. He dismisses a lot of the work of re-engineering consultants as mere rubbish―" the worst sort of ambulance-chasing."

阅读理解[A] Eye fixactions are brief [B] Too much eye contact is instinetively 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

阅读理解 There is nothing quite like falling in love. The palms sweat, the heart races. But time passes, and, nights of endless passion are replaced with snoring. Studies show that married couples can expect around two years of the passionate stuff, and then decades of a companionable slog. So why get married at all? Why not just look for the next dopamine hit? It is a good question. Many are clearly asking it, as nearly nine in ten people live in a country with a falling marriage rate. In search of answers, Aziz Ansari, an American comedian, teamed up with Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at New York University, to write Modern Romance, a lively look at love, marriage and the oddities of mating in the 21st century. The pursuit of love has never before involved so many choices, with so many new-fangled tools and such high expectations. Dating apps and social networking sites ensure that anyone with a smartphone can sample from a seemingly endless buffet of romantic prospects. This makes being single more enjoyable, but also more stressful. Digital wooing helps people to behave like scoundrels. Among the hundreds of people interviewed for Modern Romance, many admitted to becoming addicted to dating sites. One woman confessed to having hunted for better-looking alternatives while enroute to a first date. Others talked about the ease of starting affairs or snooping on partners. Countless women complained of receiving messages from aspiring Lotharios that ranged from lewd to asinine. Requests to 'hang out' do not make the heart go aflutter. The book treads more novel territory when it considers mating rites farther afield. In Qatar, where the only way for a woman to leave her family's home is 'to get married or die' (in the words of one woman), the Internet affords more freedom to socialise away from prying eyes. In Japan, where a sluggish economy has left men feeling more insecure, few can pluck up the nerve to ask women out. This has ensured a booming 'relationship replacement' industry, in which women are paid to serve drinks and listen attentively. Readers should not expect a serious work of sociology, but a breezy survey of the relevant research. But when it comes to the question of marriage, Mr. Ansari reaches a satisfying conclusion. Certainly, fewer people are tying the knot, in part because fewer people need to, and the plethora of potential mates raises the opportunity cost of choosing one. But people in good marriages statistically live longer, happier and healthier lives. The passion may burn up, but a more stable, more trusting love takes its place—and this kind of love only gets stronger with time.

阅读理解When it comes to the slowing economy, Ellen Spero isn'' t biting her nails just yet. But the 47- year-old manicurist isn'' t cutting, filing or polishing as many nails as she'' d like to, either. Most of her clients spend ＄12 to ＄50 weekly, but last month two longtime customers suddenly stopped showing up. Spero blames the softening economy. "I'' m a good economic indicator," she says. "I provide a service that people can do without when they'' re concerned about saving some dollars." So Spero is downscaling, shopping at middle-brow Dillard'' s department store near her suburban Cleveland home, instead of Neiman Marcus. "I don'' t know if other clients are going to abandon me, too," she says. Even before Alan Greenspan'' s admission that America'' s red-hot economy is cooling, lots of working folks had already seen signs of the slowdown themselves. From car dealerships to Gap outlets, sales have been lagging for months as shoppers temper their spending. For retailers, who last year took in 24 percent of their revenue between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the cautious approach is coming at a crucial time. Already, experts say, holiday sales are off 7 percent from last year'' s pace. But don'' t sound any alarms just yet. Consumers seem only mildly concerned, not panicked, and many say they remain optimistic about the economy'' s long-term prospects even as they do some modest belt- tightening. Consumers say they'' re not in despair because, despite the dreadful headlines, their own fortunes still feel pretty good. Home prices are holding steady in most regions. In Manhattan, "there'' s a new gold rush happening in the ＄4 million to ＄10 million range, predominantly fed by Wall Street bonuses," says broker Barbara Corcoran. In San Francisco, prices are still rising even as frenzied overbidding quiets. "Instead of 20 to 30 offers, now maybe you only get two or three," says John Tealdi, a Bay Area real-estate broker. And most folks still feel pretty comfortable about their ability to find and keep a job. Many folks see silver linings to this slowdown. Potential home buyers would cheer for lower interest rates. Employers wouldn'' t mind a little fewer bubbles in the job market. Many consumers seem to have been influenced by stock-market swings, which investors now view as a necessary ingredient to a sustained boom. Diners might see an upside, too. Getting a table at Manhattan'' s hot new Alain Ducasse restaurant used to be impossible. Not anymore. For that, Greenspan & Co. may still be worth toasting.

阅读理解Half the world''s population will be speaking or learning English by 2015, researchers say. Two billion people are expected to start learning English within a decade and three billion will speak it,says a British Council estimate. 　　Other languages, such as French, risk becoming the casualties of this "linguistic globalization". But the boom will be over by 2050 and the English-language teaching industry will have become a victim of its own success, says David Graddol, author of the report, The Future of English. 　　Mr. Graddol''s research was based on a computer model developed to estimate demand for English-language teaching around the world. The lecturer, who has worked in education and language studies at the Open University for the past 25 years, said the model charted likely student numbers through to 2050. 　　It was compiled by looking at various estimates from the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) on education provision, demographic projections, government education policies and international student mobility figures. The impact of educational innovations and other developments affecting the world population including the Chinese government''s policy of one baby per family were also factored in. 　　Based on its findings, Mr. Graddol has predicted that the world is about to be hit by a tidal wave of English. "Many governments, especially in countries which have relatively recently gained independence, are introducing the teaching of English under a utilitarian banner." 　　"But English predominates in the business world, and for such countries to be able to compete for work, including lucrative (profitable) outsourcing contracts, English is being pushed heavily from kindergarten on." 　　The potential bonanza (source of wealth) on offer from outsourcing means even maths and science are being taught in English at secondary schools in Malaysia. But demand for English teaching would drop as children progress through academia, and more universities across the world choose to teach in the language. 　　Mr. Graddol also estimated that the boom would be over by 2050. "English-language students will be down from two billion to 500 million then," he said," Increasingly, as English spread across the globe,more people will become bilingual, even multi-lingual and such skills are highly prized in business. But Britain has not got the best reputation for learning other languages." 　　The report also showed that English was not the only language spreading, and the world, far from being dominated by English, was to become more multi-lingual. Mr. Graddol said," Chinese, Arabic and Spanish are all popular, and likely to be languages of the future."

阅读理解 It must feel good to be back on top—and this time, almost liked. Twenty years ago Microsoft was considered an evil empire, scheming for domination and involved in a fierce antitrust battle with America's Justice Department. Five years ago, having dozed through the rise of social media and smartphones, it was derided as a doddery has-been. Now, after several quarters—this month it reported revenue of $33.7bn, up by 12% year on year—Microsoft is once again the world's most valuable listed company, worth over $1trn. How did Satya Nadella, the boss since 2014, pull off this comeback? And what can the other tech giants learn from Microsoft's experience? First, be prepared to look beyond the golden goose. Microsoft missed social networks and smartphones because of its obsession with Windows, the operating system that was its main money-spinner. One of Mr. Nadella's most important acts after taking the helm was to deprioritize Windows. More important, he also bet big on the 'cloud'—just as firms started getting comfortable with renting computing power. In the past quarter revenues at Azure, Microsoft's cloud division, grew by 68% year on year, and it now has nearly half the market share of Amazon Web Services, the industry leader. Second, work with regulators rather than try to outwit or overwhelm them. From the start Microsoft designed Azure in such a way that it could accommodate local data-protection laws. Its president and chief legal officer, Brad Smith, has been the source of many policy proposals, such as a 'Digital Geneva Convention' to protect people from cyber-attacks by nation-states. He is also behind Microsoft's comparatively cautious use of artificial intelligence, and calls for oversight of facial recognition. The firm has been relatively untouched by the current backlash against tech firms, and is less vulnerable to new regulation. True, missing the boat on social media means thorny matters such as content moderation pose greater difficulties for Facebook and Google. Still, others would do well to follow Microsoft's lead. Apple has championed its customers' privacy, but its treatment of competitors' services in its app store may soon land it in antitrust trouble. Facebook and Google have started to recognize that with great power comes great responsibility, but each has yet to find its equivalent of Azure, a new business model beyond its original golden goose. Amazon, in its ambition and culture, most resembles the old Microsoft. Even a reformed monopolist demands scrutiny. It should not be forgotten that Microsoft got where it is today in part through rapacity. Critics argue that in its battle with Slack, a corporate-messaging service which competes with a Microsoft product, it is up to some of its old tricks. A growing number of women at the firm are complaining about sexual harassment and discrimination. The new Microsoft is far from perfect. But it has learned some lessons that other tech giants should heed.

阅读理解Which of the following would be the best title of the test?

阅读理解 For decades a titan has towered over America's shopping landscape. Walmart is not just the world's biggest retailer but the biggest private employer and, by sales, the biggest company. Last year its tills rang up takings of $482 billion, about twice Apple's revenue. But now the beast of Bentonville must cope with an unfamiliar sensation. After ruling as the undisputed disrupter of American retailing, Walmart finds itself being disrupted. The source of the commotion is online shopping, specifically online shopping at Amazon. E-commerce accounted for $1 in every $10 that American shoppers spent last year, up by 15% from 2014. Amazon's North American sales grew at about twice that rate. Walmart's share of America's retail sales, which stands at 10.6%, is still more than twice Amazon's, but it peaked in 2009 at nearly 12%. In January Walmart said it would close 154 American stores. It may need to shut more. Walmart's 'supercentres' once offered an unmatched combination of squeezed prices and expansive choice, but this formula is losing its magic. Discounters and other competitors are rivalling Walmart's low prices at the same time as Amazon's warehouses can beat its range. Amazon is also offering something different. Whereas Walmart has strived to help Americans save money, Amazon is obsessed with helping them save time. Amazon has become a new kind of big-box retailer, with warehouses placed strategically around America to speed deliveries to customers. Innovations such as Dash, which let you press a button in your kitchen to order soap or coffee, could turn Amazon from an online store into something like a utility. Walmart is fighting back. It is spending billions in the hope of growing even larger. It is offering more goods to more customers, in stores and online. With its legendary attention to detail, it is making its operations even more efficient. For instance, it will save more than 35 truckloads of buttercream icing this year, after spotting that its bakers were leaving too much icing in the bottom of their tubs. By using 27 different boxes rather than i2 to deliver online goods, the firm reckons it can save 7.2m cubic feet of cardboard boxes a year. Last month sunny results sent up its share price by 10%. Yet far from offering comfort to other retailers hoping to knit together physical and online businesses, Walmart's fightback shows how hard it will be for them to repel Amazon.

阅读理解To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind is liable, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all errors, but from silly errors. 　　If the matter is one that can be settled by observation, make the observation yourself. Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted. He did not do so because he thought he knew. Thinking that you know when in fact you don''t is a fatal mistake, to which we are all liable. 　　Many matters, however, are less easily brought to the test of experience. If, like most of mankind, you have strong convictions on many such matters, there are ways in which you can make yourself aware of your own prejudice. If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you subconsciously are aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If someone maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence justifies. 　　For those who have enough psychological imagination, it is a good plan to imagine an argument with a person having a different opinion. This has one advantage, and only one, ascompared with actual conversation with opponents; this one advantage is that the method is not subject to the same limitations of time and space. Mahatma Gandhi (圣雄甘地) considered it unfortunate to have railways and steamboats and machinery; he would have liked to undo the whole of the industrial revolution. You may never have an opportunity of actually meeting anyone who holds this opinion, because in Western countries most people take the advantage of modern technology for granted. But if you want to make sure that you are right in agreeing with the prevailing opinion, you will find it a good plan to test the arguments that occur to you by considering what Gandhi might have said in refutation of them. I have sometimes been led actually to change my mind as a result of this kind of imaginary dialogue. Furthermore, I have frequently found myself growing more agreeable through realizing the possible reasonableness of a hypothetical opponent.

阅读理解 NASA has hired airplane manufacturer Lockheed Martin to build its next experimental plane, which is designed to fly faster than the speed of sound without producing the loud sonic booms that have plagued the transportation form. The plane is due to be delivered in 2021 and will cost just shy of $250 million. During a press conference hosted by the agency during which they announced the partnership, Lockheed Martin spokesperson Dave Richardson explained that the new plane will be neither a prototype for a new commercial airplane, nor a reincarnation of previous supersonic jets. 'This is a purpose-built experimental research craft,' he said. 'This aircraft was designed from a clean sheet.' NASA will use the plane to gather data about the impact of its low-boom design, which the agency hopes will address the single biggest challenge of supersonic flight. Flying faster than the speed of sound produces shock waves that result in a loud booming sound. 'The air does not know that the airplane is coming,' Peter Coen, a NASA project manager for supersonic technology, explained during the press conference. Because no one liked hearing that noise, the Federal Aviation Administration and similar international organizations banned supersonic travel over land. Now, NASA thinks technology can break the sound barrier without being quite so loud about it. The secret is in the shape of the plane. Sonic booms form because the plane's flight produces many shock waves of different strengths headed in different directions that absorb into each other to create two strong pulses of pressure. From the testing done so far, NASA thinks the new plane's design successfully dissipates and weakens those shock waves, keeping them from forming the strong pulses responsible for booms. The plane would still produce what they've dubbed 'sonic thumps,' but the hope is that those would be much easier to deal with. Once the new plane is built, NASA will run surveys on the ground to see how people respond to the sonic thumps. Then, the agency will bring that survey data to the Federal Aviation Administration and its international counterparts in order to revisit the rule about breaking the speed of sound over land. 'It's not about making a new airplane for airplanes' sake, although I love airplanes,' Richardson said. 'It's about the data that will be collected.' If the rule change does come through, that could kick off a new era of commercial supersonic travel.