阅读理解Americans today don'' t place a very high value on intellect. Our heroes are athletes, entertainers, and entrepreneurs, not scholars. Even our schools are where we send our children to get a practical education―not to pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Symptoms of pervasive anti- intellectualism in our schools aren''t difficult to find. "Schools have always been in a society where practical is more important than intellectual," says education writer Diane Ravitch. "Schools could be a counterbalance." Ravitch '' s latest book, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, traces the roots of anti-intellectualism in our schools, concluding they are anything but a counterbalance to the American distaste for intellectual pursuits. But they could and should be. Encouraging kids to reject the life of the mind leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and control. Without the ability to think critically, to defend their ideas and understand the ideas of others, they cannot fully participate in our democracy. Continuing along this path, says writer Earl Shorris, "We will become a second-rate country. We will have a less civil society." "Intellect is resented as a form of power or privilege," writes historian and professor Richard Hofstadter in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, a Pulitzer-Prize winning book on the roots of anti- intellectualism in US politics, religion, and education. From the beginning of our history, says Hofstadter, our democratic and populist urges have driven us to reject anything that smells of elitism. Practicality, common sense, and native intelligence have been considered more noble qualities than anything you could learn from a book. Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalist philosophers thought schooling and rigorous book learning put unnatural restraints on children: "We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for I0 or 15 years and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing." Mark Twain'' s Huckleberry Finn exemplified American anti-intellectualism. Its hero avoids being civilized― going to school and learning to read―so he can preserve his innate goodness. Intellect, according to Hofstadter, is different from native intelligence, a quality we reluctantly admire. Intellect is the critical, creative, and contemplative side of the mind. Intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, and adjust, while intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes, and imagines. School remains a place where intellect is mistrusted. Hofstadter says our country'' s educational system is in the grips of people who "joyfully and militantly proclaim their hostility to intellect and their eagerness to identify with children who show the least intellectual promise."

阅读理解When a Scottish research team startled the world by revealing 3 months ago that it had cloned an adult sheep, President Clinton moved swiftly. Declaring that he was opposed to using this unusual animal husbandry technique to clone humans, he ordered that federal funds not be used for such an experiment although no one had proposed to do so--and asked an independent panel of experts chaired by Princeton President Harold Shapiro to report back to the White House in 90 days with recommendations for a national policy on human cloning. That group--the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC)--has been working feverishly to put its wisdom on paper, and at a meeting on 17 May, members agreed on a near-final draft of their recommendations. 　　NBAC will ask that Clinton''s 90-day ban on federal funds for human cloning be extended indefinitely, and possibly that it be made law. But NBAC members are planning to word the recommendation narrowly to avoid new restrictions on research that involves the cloning of human DNA or cells--routine in molecular biology. The panel has not yet reached agreement on a crucial question, however, whether to recommend legislation that would make it a crime for private funding to be used for human cloning. 　　In a draft preface to the recommendations, discussed at the 17 May meeting, Shapiro suggested that the panel had found a broad consensus that it would be"morally unacceptable to attempt to createa human child by adult nuclear cloning". Shapiro explained during the meeting that the moral doubt stems mainly from fears about the risk to the health of the child. The panel then informally accepted several general conclusions, although some details have not been settled. 　　NBAC plans to call for a continued ban on federal government funding for any attempt to clone body cell nuclei to create a child. Because current federal law already forbids the use of federal funds to create embryos ( the earliest stage of human offspring be for birth) for research or to be for knowingly endanger an embryo''s life, NBAC will remain silent on embryo research. 　　NBAC members also indicated that they will appeal to privately funded researchers and clinics not to try to clone humans by body cell nuclear transfer. But they were divided on whether to go further by calling for a federal law that would impose a complete ban on human cloning. Shapiro and most members favored an appeal for such legislation, but in a phone interview, he said this issue was still "up in the air."

阅读理解 Schools have banned cupcakes, issued obesity report cards and cleared space in cafeterias for salad bars. Just last month, Michelle Obama's campaign to end childhood obesity promised to get young people moving more and improve school lunch, and beverage makers said they had cut the sheer number of liquid calories shipped to schools by almost 90 percent in the past five years. But new research suggests that interventions aimed at school-aged children may be, if not too little, too late. More and more evidence points to crucial events very early in life—-during the toddler years, infancy and even before birth—that can set young children on an obesity track that is hard to alter by the time they're in kindergarten. The evidence is not invulnerable, but it suggests that prevention efforts should start very early. Among the findings are these: The chubby angelic baby who is growing so nicely may be growing too much for his or her own good, research suggests. Babies whose mothers smoked during pregnancy are at risk of becoming obese, even though the babies are usually small at birth. Babies who sleep less than 12 hours are at increased risk for obesity later. If they don't sleep enough and also watch two hours or more of TV a day, they are at even greater risk. Some early interventions are already widely practiced. Doctors recommend that overweight women lose weight before pregnancy rather than after, to cut the risk of obesity and diabetes in their children; breast-feeding is also recommended to lower the obesity risk. But weight or diet restrictions on young children have been avoided. 'It used to be kind of taboo to label a child under 5 as overweight or obese, even if the child was—the thinking was that it was too disgraceful,' said Dr. Elsie M. Taveras of Harvard Medical School, lead author of a recent paper on racial difference in early risk factors. Scientists worry about what are called epigenetic changes. The genes inherited from mother and father may be turned on and off and the strength of their effects changed by environmental conditions in early development. Many doctors are concerned about women being obese and unhealthy before pregnancy because, as they point out, the womb is the baby's first environment. Experts say change may require abandoning some cherished cultural attitudes. 'The idea that a big baby is a healthy baby, and a crying baby is probably a hungry baby who should be fed, are things we really need to rethink,' Dr. Birch said.

阅读理解 Progressives often support diversity mandates as a path to equality and a way to level the playing field. But all too often such policies are an insincere form of virtue-signaling that benefits only the most privileged and does little to help average people. A pair of bills sponsored by Massachusetts state Senator Jason Lewis and House Speaker Pro Tempore Patricia Haddad, to ensure 'gender parity' on boards and commissions, provide a case in point. Haddad and Lewis are concerned that more than half the state-government boards are less than 40 percent female. In order to ensure that elite women have more such opportunities, they have proposed imposing government quotas. If the bills become law, state boards and commissions will be required to set aside 50 percent of board seats for women by 2022. The bills are similar to a measure recently adopted in California, which last year became the first state to require gender quotas for private companies. In signing the measure, California Governor Jerry Brown admitted that the law, which expressly classifies people on the basis of sex, is probably unconstitutional. The US Supreme Court frowns on sex-based classifications unless they are designed to address an 'important' policy interest. Because the California law applies to all boards, even where there is no history of prior discrimination, courts are likely to rule that the law violates the constitutional guarantee of 'equal protection'. But are such government mandates even necessary? Female participation on corporate boards may not currently mirror the percentage of women in the general population, but so what? The number of women on corporate boards has been steadily increasing without government interference. According to a study by Catalyst, between 2010 and 2015 the share of women on the boards of global corporations increased by 54 percent. Requiring companies to make gender the primary qualification for board membership will inevitably lead to less experienced private sector boards. That is exactly what happened when Norway adopted a nationwide corporate gender quota. Writing in The New Republic, Alice Lee notes that increasing the number of opportunities for board membership without increasing the pool of qualified women to serve on such boards has led to a 'golden skirt' phenomenon, where the same elite women scoop up multiple seats on a variety of boards. Next time somebody pushes corporate quotas as a way to promote gender equity, remember that such policies are largely self-serving measures that make their sponsors feel good but do little to help average women.

阅读理解PartBHowdoesyourreadingproceed?Clearlyyoutrytocomprehend,inthesenseofidentifyingmeaningsforindividualwordsandworkingoutrelationshipsbetweenthem,drawingonyourimplicitknowledgeofEnglishgrammar.(41)_____________________________________Youbegintoinferacontextforthetext,forinstancebymakingdecisionsaboutwhatkindofspeecheventisinvolved:whoismakingtheutterance,towhom,whenandwhere.Thewaysofreadingindicatedherearewithoutdoubtkindsofcomprehension.Buttheyshowcomprehensiontoconsistnotjustofpassiveassimilationbutofactiveengagementininferenceandproblem-solving.Youinferinformationyoufeelthewriterhasinvitedyoutograspbypresentingyouwithspecificevidenceandclues;(42)_________________________________Conceivedinthisway,comprehensionwillnotfollowexactlythesametrackforeachreader.Whatisinquestionisnottheretrievalofanabsolute,fixedor‘true’meaningthatcanbereadoffandcheckedforaccuracy,orsometimelessrelationofthetexttotheworld.(43)_________________________________________Suchbackgroundmaterialinevitablyreflectswhoweare.(44)____________________________Thisdoesn’t,however,makeinterpretationmerelyrelativeorevenpointless.Preciselybecausereadersfromdifferenthistoricalperiods.Placeandsocialexperiencesproducedifferentbutoverlappingreadingsofthesamewordsonthepage—includingfortextsthatengagewithfundamentalhumanconcerns—debatesabouttextscanplayanimportantinthesocialdiscussionofbeliefsandvalues.Howwereadagiventextalsodependstosomeextentonourparticularinterestinreadingit.(45)_________________________________________Suchdimensionsofreadingsuggest—asotherintroducedlaterinthebookwillalsodo—thatwebringanimplicit（oftenunacknowledged）agendatoanyactofreading.Itdoesn’tthennecessarilyfollowthatonekindofreadingisfuller,moreadvancedandmoreworthwhilethananother.Ideally,differentkindsofreadinginformeachother,andactasusefulreferencepointsforandcounterbalancestooneanother.Together,theymakeupthereadingcomponentofyouroverallliteracy,orrelationshiptoyoursurroundingtextualenvironment.A.Arewestudyingthattextandtryingtorespondinawaythatfulfilstherequirementofagivecourse?Readingitsimplyforpleasure?Skimmingitforinformation?Waysofreadingonatrainorinbedarelikelytodifferconsiderablyfromreadinginaseminarroom.B.Factorssuchastheplaceandperiodinwhichwearereading,ourgender,ethnicity,ageandsocialclasswillencourageustowardscertaininterpretationsbutatthesametimeobscureorevencloseoffothers.C.Ifyouareunfamiliarwithwordsoridioms,youguessattheirmeaning,usingcluespresentedinthecontext.Ontheashemptionthattheywillbecomerelevantlater,youmakeamentalnoteofdiscourseentitiesaswellaspossiblelinksbetweenthem.D.Ineffect,youtrytoreconstructthelikelymeaningoreffectsthatanygivensentence,imageorreferencemighthavehad:Thesemightbetheonesauthorintended.E.Youmakefurtherinferences,forinstance,abouthowthetextmaybesignificanttoyou,oraboutitsvalidity—inferencesthatfromthebasisofpersonalresponseforwhichtheauthorwillinevitablybefarlessresponsible.F.Inplays,novelsandnarrativepoems,charactersspeakasconstructscreatedtheauthor,notnecessarilyasmouthpiecesfortheauthor’sownthoughts.G.Rather,weascribemeaningstotextsonthebasisofinteractionbetweenwhatwemightcalltextualandcontextualmaterial:betweenkindsoforganizationorpatteringweperceiveinatext’sformalstructures(soespeciallyitslanguagestructures)andvariouskindsofbackground,socialknowledge,beliefandattitudethatwebringtothetext.

阅读理解 This year marks exactly two centuries since the publication of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley. Even before the invention of the electric light bulb, the author produced a remarkable work of speculative fiction that would foreshadow many ethical questions to be raised by technologies yet to come. Today the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) raises fundamental questions: 'What is intelligence, identity, or consciousness? What makes humans humans?' What is being called artificial general intelligence, machines that would imitate the way humans think, continues to evade scientists. Yet humans remain fascinated by the idea of robots that would look, move, and respond like humans, similar to those recently depicted on popular sci-fi TV series such as 'Westworld' and 'Humans'. Just how people think is still far too complex to be understood, let alone reproduced, says David Eagleman, a Stanford University neuroscientist. 'We are just in a situation where there are no good theories explaining what consciousness actually is and how you could ever build a machine to get there.' But that doesn't mean crucial ethical issues involving AI aren't at hand. The coming use of autonomous vehicles, for example, poses thorny ethical questions. Human drivers sometimes must make split-second decisions. Their reactions may be a complex combination of instant reflexes, input from past driving experiences, and what their eyes and ears tell them in that moment. AI 'vision' today is not nearly as sophisticated as that of humans. And to anticipate every imaginable driving situation is a difficult programming problem. Whenever decisions are based on masses of data, 'you quickly get into a lot of ethical questions,' notes Tan Kiat How, chief executive of a Singapore-based agency that is helping the government develop a voluntary code for the ethical use of AI. Along with Singapore, other governments and mega-corporations are beginning to establish their own guidelines. Britain is setting up a data ethics center. India released its AI ethics strategy this spring. On June 7 Google pledged not to 'design or deploy AI' that would cause 'overall harm,' or to develop AI-directed weapons or use AI for surveillance that would violate international norms. It also pledged not to deploy AI whose use would violate international laws or human rights. While the statement is vague, it represents one starting point. So does the idea that decisions made by AI systems should be explainable, transparent, and fair. To put it another way: How can we make sure that the thinking of intelligent machines reflects humanity's highest values? Only then will they be useful servants and not Frankenstein's out-of-control monster.

阅读理解All the characteristics and abilities a person acquires and all developmental changes result from two basic, though complex, processes: learning and maturation. Since the two processes almost always interact, it is difficult to separate their effects from each other or to specify the relative contribution of each to a child''s development. Clearly, growth in height is not learned but depends on maturation, a biological process. But improvements in motor activities such as walking, depend on maturation and learning, and the interaction between them. 　　What, then, are maturation and learning? Developmental psychologists are not entirely in agreement, though there is a common core of accepted meaning. Thus all definitions of maturation stress organic processes or structural changes occurring within an individual''s body that are relatively independent of external environmental conditions, experiences, or practice. By maturation it is meant development of the organism as a function of time, or age. 　　Learning has also been defined in diverse ways, but the term generally refers to changes in behavior or performance as a consequence of experience. Learning is the process by which an activity originates or is changed through training procedures as distinguished from changes not attributable to training. 　　A number of important and stimulating theories of learning have been proposed, each with its own set of principles and hypotheses for explaining the learning process. For our purposes, we do not need to be concerned with the specific details of the learning process, even though learning plays the most important role in most aspects of development and change. We shall employ only a few generally accepted principles of learning in this discussion. 　　Specifically, we accept the principle that a child will learn a response more effectively and more thoroughly if he is motivated to learn it. Moreover, he will learn a response better if he is rewarded for learning it. According to this view, the more a response is rewarded, the stronger it becomes and the more likely it is to be repeated. Although most learning involves motivation and reward, I believe some learning does occur without them. 　　As for the interrelationships between maturation and learning process, a general principle may be provided: maturation is essential to learning.

阅读理解Science-fiction movies can serve as myths about the future and thus give some assurance　about it. Whether the film is 2001 or Star Wars, such movies tell about progress that will expand man''s powers and his experiences beyond anything now believed possible, while they assure us that all these advances will not wipe out man or life as we now know it. Thus one great anxiety about the future--that it will have no place for us as we now are--is alleviated by such myths. They also promise that even in the most distant future, and despite the progress that will have occurred in the material world, man''s basic concerns will be the same, and the struggle of good against evil--the central moral problem of our time--will not have lost its importance. 　　Past and future are the lasting dimensions of our lives: the present is but a brief moment. So these visions about the future also contain our past; in Star Wars, battles are fought around issues that also motivated man in the past. Thus, any vision about the future is really based on visions of the past, because that is all we can know for certain. 　　As our religious myths about the future never went beyond Judgment Day, so our modern myths about the future cannot go beyond the search for life''s deeper meaning. The reason is that only as long as the choice between good and evil remains man''s supreme moral problem does life retain that special dignity that derives from our ability to choose between the two. A world in which this conflict has been permanently resolved eliminates man as we know him. It might be a universe peopled by angels, but it has no place for man. 　　The moving picture is a visual art, based on sight. Speaking to our vision, it ought to provide us with the visions enabling us to live the good life; it ought to give us insight into ourselves. About a hundred years ago, Tolstoy wrote," Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen." Later, Robert Frost defined poetry as "beginning in delight and ending in wisdom." Thus it might be said that the state of the art of the moving image can be assessed by the degree to which it meets the mythopoetic task of giving us myths suitable to live by in our time--visions that transmit to us the highest and best feelings to which men have risen--and by how well the moving images give us that delight which leads to wisdom. Let us hope that the art of the moving image, this most genuine American art, will soon meet the challenge of becoming truly the great art of our age.

阅读理解 Demand for the most common cosmetic surgery procedures, like breast enlargements and nose jobs, has increased by more than 400 per cent over the last decade. According to Dr. Dai Davies, of the Plastic Surgery Partnership in Hammersmith, the majority of cosmetic surgery patients are not chasing physical perfection. Rather, they are driven to fantastic lengths to improve their appearance by a desire to look normal. 'What we all crave is to look normal, and normal is what is prescribed by the advertising media and other external pressures. They give us a perception of what is physically acceptable and we feel we must look like that.' In America, the debate is no longer about whether surgery is normal; rather, it centres on what age people should be before going under the knife. New York surgeon Dr. Gerard Imber recommends 'maintenance' work for people in their thirties. 'The idea of waiting until one needs a heroic transformation is silly,' he says. 'By then, you've wasted 20 great years of your life and allowed things to get out of hand.' Dr. Imber draws the line at operating on people who are under 18, however. 'It seems that someone we don't consider old enough to order a drink shouldn't be considering plastic surgery.' In the UK cosmetic surgery has long been seen as the exclusive domain of the very rich and famous. But the proportionate cost of treatment has fallen substantially, bringing all but the most advanced laser technology within the reach of most people. Dr. Davies, who claims to 'cater for the average person', agrees. He says: 'I treat a few of the rich and famous and an awful lot of secretaries. Of course, ￡3,000 for an operation is a lot of money. But it is also an investment for life which costs about half the price of a good family holiday.' Dr. Davies suspects that the increasing sophistication of the fat injecting and removal techniques that allow patients to be treated with a local anaesthetic in an afternoon has also helped promote the popularity of cosmetic surgery. Yet, as one woman who recently paid ￡2,500 for liposuction to remove cellulite from her thighs admitted, the slope to becoming a cosmetic surgery veteran is a deceptively gentle one. 'I had my legs done because they'd been bugging me for years. But going into the clinic was so low key and effective it whetted my appetite. Now I don't think there's any operation that I would rule out having if I could afford it.'

阅读理解 The digital onslaught of e-books and Amazon-style e-tailers have put bookstores in an existential dilemma. Digital books are said to outsell print titles by 2015 in Britain, and even sooner in America. With the demise of HMV, that music-peddling giant, still fresh in everyone's minds, bricks-and-mortar bookstores appear to be on borrowed time. So, what is the future of the bookstore? This was the burning questions on everyone's lips at a recent event at Foyles's flagship bookshop on Charing Cross Road in London. For a bookstore to remain successful, it must improve 'the experience of buying books,' says Alex Lifschutz, an architect whose London-based practice is designing the new Foyles. He suggests an array of approaches: 'small, quiet spaces cocooned with books; larger spaces where one can dwell and read; other larger but still intimate spaces where one can hear talks from authors about books, literature, science, travel and cookery.' The atmosphere is vital, he adds. Exteriors must buzz with activity, entrances must be full of eye-catching presentations and a bar and cafe is essential. There are plenty of ways to delight the bookstore customer, but few are easily monetised. The consensus is that bookstores need to become cultural destinations where people are prepared to pay good money to hear a concert, see a film or attend a talk. The programming will have to be intelligent and the space comfortable. Given how common it is for shoppers to browse in shops only to buy online later, some wonder whether it makes sense to charge people for the privilege. But forcing people to pay for the privilege of potentially paying for goods could deter shoppers altogether. A more attractive idea might be a membership scheme like those offered by museums and other cultural venues. Unlike reward cards, which offer discounts and other nominal benefits, a club membership could provide priority access to events (talks, literary workshops, retreats) and a private lounge where members can eat, drink and meet authors before events. Different memberships could tailor to the needs of children and students. To survive and thrive, bookstores should celebrate the book in all its forms: rare, second-hand, digital, self-printed and so on. Digital and hybrid readers should have the option of buying e-books in- store, and budding authors should have access to self-printing book machines. The latter have been slower to take off in Britain, but in America bookstores are finding them to be an :important source of revenue. The bookstore of the future will have to work hard. Service will be knowledgeable and personalised, the inventory expertly selected, spaces well-designed and the cultural events attractive. Whether book stores, especially small independents are up to the challenge, is not clear. The fate of these stores is a cliff-hanger.

阅读理解 College graduates are now leaving school with not only a diploma, but also with more debt than in any other period in history. According to the College Board, average financial aid per full time equivalent student adjusted for inflation, has almost doubled in the last decade. Additionally, not only is the average student debt load higher, but also the number of loans originated increased by nearly fourfold. Thus student lending has increased in breadth as well as depth, doubly impacting the financial situations of those students who must depend on student loans to finance their education. Furthermore, these figures no doubt understate the true level of indebtedness incurred by students and their families since some undoubtedly finance part of their education and living expenses through the use of consumer loans, home equity loans or credit cards. Thus, the already huge burden of student loan debt incurred by students and their families is exacerbated by financial obligations from other sources. This situation is the outcome of a precarious combination of easy credit, thanks to card issuers who are eager to tap into this lucrative market, financial naiveté on the part of students, and a sense on both sides that, if worse comes to worse, mommy and daddy will step in and set things right. All combine to make credit a tempting lure to students strapped for cash. While credit still remain a virtual element for the financing of many students' education at expensive colleges, its implications must carefully weighed and considered, lest the cash-poor student find himself with more that he bargained for. Most students in the United States attend colleges whose tuition does not exceed $15,000, however. Nevertheless, rising prices, combined with stagnant income gains among low-and moderate-income families, have made it difficult if not impossible for a student from a family of such an income level, a student who has the most to gain from a college education, to attend college without significantly adding to the financial burden of his or her family. While student loans still remain a vital element for the financing of many students' education at expensive colleges, its implications must be carefully weighed and considered, lest the cash-poor student find himself with more than he bargained for.

阅读理解 Europe is not a gender-equality heaven. In particular, the corporate workplace will never be completely family-friendly until women are part of senior management decisions, and Europe's top corporate-governance positions remain overwhelmingly male. Indeed, women hold only 14 percent of positions on European corporate boards. The Europe Union is now considering legislation to compel corporate boards to maintain a certain proportion of women—up to 60 percent. This proposed mandate was born of frustration. Last year, Europe Commission Vice President Viviane Reding issued a call to voluntary action. Reding invited corporations to sign up for gender balance goal of 40 percent female board membership. But her appeal was considered a failure: only 24 companies took it up. Do we need quotas to ensure that women can continue to climb the corporate ladder fairly as they balance work and family? 'Personally, I don't like quotas,' Reding said recently. 'But I like what the quotas do.' Quotas get action: they 'open the way to equality and they break through the glass ceiling,' according to Reding, a result seen in France and other countries with legally binding provisions on placing women in top business positions. I understand Reding's reluctance—and her frustration. I don't like quotas either; they run counter to my belief in meritocracy, governance by the capable. But, when one considers the obstacles to achieving the meritocratic ideal, it does look as if a fairer world must be temporarily ordered. After all, four decades of evidence has now shown that corporations in Europe as well as the US are evading the meritocratic hiring and promotion of women to top positions—no matter how much 'soft pressure' is put upon them. When women do break through to the summit of corporate power—as, for example, Sheryl Sandberg recently did at Facebook—they attract massive attention precisely because they remain the exception to the rule. If appropriate pubic policies were in place to help all women—whether CEOs or their children's care-givers—and all families, Sandberg would be no more newsworthy than any other highly capable person living in a more just society.

阅读理解 Any fair-minded assessment of the dangers of the deal between Britain's National Health Service (NHS) and DeepMind must start by acknowledging that both sides mean well. DeepMind is one of the leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies in the world. The potential of this work applied to health-care is very great, but it could also lead to further concentration of power in the tech giant. It is against that background that the information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, has issued her damning verdict against the Royal Free hospital trust under the NHS, which handed over to DeepMind the records of 1.6 million patients in 2015 on the basis of a vague agreement which took far too little account of the patients' rights and their expectations of privacy. DeepMind has almost apologized. The NHS trust has mended its ways. Further arrangements—and there may be many—between the NHS and DeepMind will be carefully scrutinised to ensure that all necessary permissions have been asked of patients and all unnecessary data has been cleaned. There are lessons about informed patient consent to learn. But privacy is not the only angle in this case and not even the most important. Ms Denham chose to concentrate the blame on the NHS trust, since under existing law it 'controlled' the data and DeepMind merely 'processed' it. But this distinction misses the point that it is processing and aggregation, not the mere possession of bits, that gives the data value. The great question is who should benefit from the analysis of all the data that our lives now generate. Privacy law builds on the concept of damage to an individual from identifiable knowledge about them. That misses the way the surveillance economy works. The data of an individual there gains its value only when it is compared with the data of countless millions more. The use of privacy law to curb the tech giants in this instance feels slightly maladapted. This practice does not address the real worry. It is not enough to say that the algorithms DeepMind develops will benefit patients and save lives. What matters is that they will belong to a private monopoly which developed them using public resources. If software promises to save lives on the scale that drugs now can, big data may be expected to behave as big pharma has done. We are still at the beginning of this revolution and small choices now may turn out to have gigantic consequences later. A long struggle will be needed to avoid a future of digital feudalism. Ms Denham's report is a welcome start.

阅读理解Which of the following is true of CSR, according to the last paragraph?

阅读理解Which of the following is suggested in the last paragraph?

阅读理解 Under pressure from animal welfare groups, two national science teachers associations have adopted guidelines that ban classroom experiments harming animals. The National Association of Biology Teachers and the National Science Teachers Association hope to end animal abuse in elementary and secondary schools and, in turn, discourage students from mishandling animals in home experiments and science fair projects. Animal welfare groups are apparently most concerned with high school students experimenting with animals in extracurricular projects. Barbara Orlans, President of the Scientists' Center for Animal Welfare, said that students have been performing surgery at random, testing known poisonous substances, and running other pathology experiments on animals without even knowing normal physiology. At one science fair, a student cut off the leg and tail of a lizard to demonstrate that only the tail can regenerate, she said. In another case, a student bound sparrows, starved them and observed their behavior. 'The amount of abuse has been quite horrifying,' Orlans said. Administrators of major science fairs are short-tempered over the teachers' policy change and the impression it has created. 'The teachers were sold a bill of goods by Barbara Ortans,' said Thurman Grafton, who heads the rules committee for the International Science and Engineering Fair. 'Backyard tabletop surgery is just nonsense. The new policies throw cold water on students' inquisitiveness,' he said. Grafton said he wouldn't deny that there hasn't been animal abuse among projects at the international fair, but he added that judges reject contestants who have unnecessarily injured animals. The judges have a hard time monitoring local and regional fairs that may or may not choose to comply with the international fair's rules that stress proper care of animals, Grafton said. He said that several years ago, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search banned harmful experiments to animals when sponsors threatened to cancel their support after animal welfare groups lobbied for change. The teachers adopted the new policies also to fend off proposed legislation--in states including Missouri and New York--that would restrict or prohibit experiments on animals. Officials of the two teachers organizations say that they don't know how many animals have been abused in the classroom. On the one hand, many biology teachers are not trained in the proper care of animals, said Wayne Moyer, executive director of the biology teachers' association. On the other, the use of animals in experiments has dropped in recent years because of school budget cuts. The association may set up seminars to teach better animal care to its members. (414 words)Notes: pathology 病理学。lizard 蜥蜴。tabletop 桌面。short-tempered 脾气急躁的。lobby for 游说支持。fend off 躲开。

阅读理解The author suggests in the last paragraph that the effect of peer pressure is

阅读理解Text 2 Grade inflation--the gradual increase in average GPAs(grade-point averages) over the past few decadesis often considered a product of a consumer era in higher education, in which students are treated like customers to be pleased

阅读理解 Science and its practical applications in the form of technology, or the 'science' of the industrial arts, as Webster defines the term, have had an enormous impact on modem society and culture. For generations it was believed that science and technology would provide the solutions to the problem of human suffering disease, famine, war, and poverty. But today these problems remain; in fact, many argue that they are expanding. Some even conclude that science and technology as presently constituted are not capable of meeting the collective needs of mankind. A more radical position is that modem scientific methods and institutions, because of their very nature and structure, thwart basic human needs and emotions; the catastrophes of today's world, and the greatest threat to its future, some claim, are the direct consequences of science and technology. A major paradox has been created: scientific rationality taken as the supreme form of the application of the rational faculties of human beings and which, along with its practical applications in the form of technological development, have liberated man from ignorance, from the whims and oppressions of a relentless nature and while having subordinated the earth to man, has become the potential instrument of the self-destruction of the human species. War, pollution, and economic oppression are seen as the inevitable results of scientific advance by large sections of the public. The atomic disaster of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings are seen as the products of an uninterested scientific rationality. In recent decades in the West there has emerged a wave of anti-scientific, antirational moods, especially among the young people, which threatens a complete rejection not simply of the technological fruits of science, but of scientific rationalism as well, in favor of one or another version of mysticism, irrationalism, and primitivism-or as one philosopher of science has called it, of blood and soil philosophy. Wartovsky has described the argument of the anti-science people as one in which we are warned to 'listen to the blood, get back to our roots, and cast out the evil demons of a blind and inhuman rationality, and thereby we will save ourselves'. The only 'reasonable thing' to do, according to the oppositionist, is to reject reason itself-at least in its scientific form. The very rejection of that reason, in 'reasonable' terms, is in itself a paradox.

阅读理解Throughout history, gold has been a precious material, eagerly sought and cherished. It was probably the first metal to be mined because it is beautiful and imperishable (which will always exist or cannot wear out), and because beautiful objects can be made from it-even with primitive tools. The amount of gold known to ancient peoples probably totaled not much more than the amount produced each year by the world''s largest gold mine located in the Witwatersrand district of South Africa. Stores of gold discovered by archaeologists in Greece, Scythia, and Egypt, as well as the gold from Indian treasuries in Mexico and Peru, represented years of patient collection of small quantities from streams and veins (矿脉) , often by slave labor. 　　The essential value of gold has always been known, even before gold was used in coinage. It remains the only universally recognized standard of value in international monetary exchange. Most of the world''s refined gold is absorbed by governments and central banks to provide backing for paper currency. But the amount of gold used in arts and in industry is increasing. In addition to its use for jewelry, decorative finishes, and dentistry, its special properties have led to many applications in modern science and technology. Surface coatings of gold protect earth satellites from heat and corrosion, and certain electrical components and circuits of spacecraft are made of gold when extreme reliability is required. 　　Gold was first produced in the United States from the southern Appalachian region, beginning about 1792. These deposits, though rich, were relatively small and were quickly depleted. The discovery of gold at Sutter''s Mill in California sparked the gold rush of 1849-50. Hundreds of mining camps sprang to life as new deposits were discovered. As a result, the production of gold increased rapidly. 　　During World War I and for some years thereafter, annual production declined to about two million ounces. When the price of gold was raised in 1934 to $35 an ounce, production increased rapidly. Shortly after the start of World WarⅡ, gold mines were closed and the government did not permit them to reopen until 1945. Since then the production of gold has not exceeded two million ounces a year. 　　The largest producing gold mine in the United States is the Homestake Mine in South Dakota, which yields about 575,000 ounces of gold each year. Other mines scattered throughout various parts of the world produce even larger amounts of this highly prized and eagerly sought yellowish material.