单选题Human language is the subject of endless scientific investigation, but the gestures that accompany speech are a surprisingly neglected area. It is sometimes jokingly said that the way to render an Italian speechless is to tie his wrists together, but almost everyone moves their hands in meaningful ways when they talk Susan Goldin-Meadow of the University of Chicago, however, studies gestures carefully—and not out of idle curiosity. Introspection suggests that gesturing not only helps people communicate but also helps them to think. She set out to test this, and specifically to find out whether gestures might be used as an aid to children's learning. It turns out, as she told the American Association for the Advancement of Science, that they can. The experiment she conducted involved balancing equations. Presented with an equation of the form 2+3+4=x+4, written on a blackboard, a child is asked to calculate the value of x. In the equations Dr Goldin-Meadow always made the last number on the left the same as the last on the right; so x was the sum of the first two numbers. Commonly, however, children who are learning arithmetic will add all three of the numbers on the left to arrive at the value of x. In her previous work Dr Goldin-Meadow had noted that children often use spontaneous gestures when explaining how they solve mathematical puzzles. So to see if these hand-movements actually help a child to think, or are merely descriptive, she divided a group of children into two and asked them to balance equations. One group was asked to gesture while doing so. A second was asked not to. Both groups were then given a lesson in how to solve problems of this sort. As Dr Goldin-Meadow suspected, the first group learnt more from the lesson than the second. By observing their gestures she refined the experiment. Often, a child would touch or point to the first two numbers on the left with the first two fingers of one hand. Dr Goldin-Meadow therefore taught this gesture explicitly to another group of children. Or, rather, she taught a third of them, taught another third to point to the second and third numbers this way, and told the remainder to use no gestures. When all were given the same lesson it was found those gesturing "correctly" learnt the most. But those gesturing "incorrectly" still outperformed the non-gesturers. Gesturing, therefore, clearly does help thought. Indeed, it is so thought-provoking that even the wrong gestures have some value. Perhaps this helps to explain why the arithmetic-intensive profession of banking was invented in Italy.

单选题Throughout the years, music has been a common thread that unites generations and had provided social commentary, individual expression, and a soundtrack for life. Music has evolved and changed as time has moved forward, and become, in some cases more of an art, and in other cases, less than one. Today music has nearly universal appeal—though there are more styles and types of music than ever before, there are also wider gaps in ever between groups who listen to certain types of music. This said, however there are still millions of Americans who consider themselves to have "global musical tastes" meaning that they listen to numerous genres of music on a regular basis instead of focusing their time and attention on only rap, country, or rock and roll. In Utah, as in most other parts of the country, there are many people who listen to a broad range of music: from Oldies to Emo and from Blues to Hip Hop. These varying tastes in music are reflected by the concerts in Utah during any given year. Utah's concerts range from the biggest names in Hip Hop and Country music to Rock and Roll acts that you might have thought had been dissolved in the 80's. There seems to be just as much excitement for a Cyndi Lauper or Pretenders reunion tour as for a tour from Snoop Dogg or The Foo Fighters. The sheer dynamism of Utah concert goers—in age and musical taste makes Utah a "must stop" for most any musical act. Utah's concert scene consists of many small venues such as bars and private clubs that host touring acts year round, as well as a few large venues, both indoor and outdoor that host only the larger acts and are only open during certain times of the year—as dictated by sports team schedules and weather. The varying degrees of concert venues in Utah makes for an additional plus for great musical acts to stop in Utah. There are obviously some acts, while very well received in bars and small venues, that just would not be able to fill a 20,000 seat amphitheater. Thus, the various small venues are perfect for lesser known or up-and-coming rock and country acts that are not quite able to fill the bigger venues. All things considered, Utah has a lot going for it in terms of creating a solid environment for musical acts as well as fans of music from a myriad of genres. As the state continues to grow and become a more mainstream culture, concerts in Utah will continue to be growing attractions.

单选题Every day, employees make decisions about whether to act like givers or like takers. When they act like givers, they contribute to others without seeking anything in return. They might offer assistance, share knowledge, or make valuable introductions. When they act like takers, they try to get other people to serve their ends while carefully guarding their own expertise and time. Organizations have a strong interest in fostering giving behavior. A willingness to help others achieve their goals lies at the heart of effective collaboration, innovation, quality improvement, and service excellence. In workplaces where such behavior becomes the norm, the benefits multiply quickly. But even as leaders recognize the importance of generous behavior and call for more of it, workers receive mixed messages about the advisability of acting in the interests of others. As a matter of fact, various situations put employees against one another, encouraging them to undercut rather than support their colleagues' efforts. Even without a dog-eat-dog scoring system, strict description of responsibilities and a focus on individual performance metrics can cause a "not my job" mentality to take hold. As employees look around their organizations for models of success, they encounter further reasons to be wary of generosity. A study by the Stanford professor Frank Flynn highlighted this problem. When he examined patterns of favor exchange among the engineers in one company, he found that the leastproductive engineers were givers—workers who had done many more favors for others than they'd received. I made a similar discovery in a study of salespeople: The ones who generated the least revenue reported a particularly strong concern for helping others. This creates a challenge for managers. Can they promote generosity without cutting into productivity and undermining fairness? How can they avoid creating situations where already-generous people give away too much of their attention while selfish coworkers feel they have even more license to take? How, in short, can they protect good people from being treated like doormats? Part of the solution must involve targeting the takers in the organization—providing incentives for them to collaborate and informing them of the consequences of refusing reasonable requests. But even more important, my research suggests, is helping the givers act on their generous impulses more productively. The key is for employees to gain a more subtle understanding of what generosity is and is not. Givers are better positioned to succeed when they distinguish generosity from three other attributes-timidity, availability, and empathy—that tend to travel with it.

单选题To function well in the world, people need a good sense of where their body is in space and how it's postured. This "position sense" helps us coordinate high-fives, boot a soccer ball or pick up the remote. But that doesn't seem to mean that our brains have an accurate sense of our body's precise proportions. A new study found that people tend to have rather inaccurate mental models of their own hands. When asked to estimate where the fingertips and finger joints of their hidden hands were, study volunteers were way off. But they were all incorrect in the same directions, guessing that their hands were both shorter and wider than they actually were. The findings come from a study led by Matthew Longo of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. "Our results show dramatic distortions of hand shape, which were highly consistent across participants," Longo said in a prepared statement. He and his co-author, Patrick Haggard, had subjects place their left hand on a platform (using different orientations in different groups), which was then covered with a board to obscure the hand. The subjects were asked to use their free right hand point with a stick to the location of each finger joint and fingertip of their left hand. The process was filmed and compared to before and after pictures of the hand. On average, the volunteers judged their hands to be 27.9 percent shorter and 69 percent wider than they were measure to be. Underestimation of each finger length, from the thumb to the little finger, increased by about 7 percent in each finger, rendering the little finger quite a bit littler than it really was. This trend "mirrors similar grades of decreasing sensory acuteness," the authors pointed out, and the results seem to back up models of the human body constructed from the amount of sensory cortex dedicated to various body parts. In these models the hands and face are disproportionately large in comparison to most of the body. But Longo and Haggard are still not sure why the brain has such a distorted perception of our hand proportions. Longo speculated that these disproportions might occur in other parts of the body as well. "These findings may well be relevant to psychiatric conditions involving body image such as anorexia nervosa, as there may be a general bias toward perceiving the body to be wider than it is," Longo said. "Our healthy participants had a basically accurate visual image of their own body, but the brain's model of the hand underling position sense was highly distorted. This distorted perception could come to dominate in some people, leading to distortions of body image."

单选题A new book by a former lawyer at Kirkland unlike other speculative bubbles in the past, lawyers will always be a necessity not a passing fashion. But then, The Very, Very Challenging Job Market for Lawyers doesn't have the same ring to it.

单选题A Getting carried away with the culture B. Carrying vast amount of luggage C. Staying on the road too long D. Wearing sexy clothing E. Judging other travelers F. Failing to respect the local culture G. Expecting everything to go to plan There is no doubt that tourism provides a positive impact on tourist spots. It creates quality jobs for the local community, revives the local culture rather than destroying it, and encourages the protection and restoration of the environment. Yet not every traveler will receive warm welcome. On the contrary, some upset the locals and make fellow travelers retreat. Here is a listed some of the deadliest sins of travel. Pray you don't commit them. 【R1】______ OK, traveling for long periods of time is hardly a sin, provided you're spending some cash, but if you stay away longer than you meant to, it can turn you into a less-than-agreeable traveler. You start to think that everyone you meet is out to rip you off, you get a little too confident when someone helps themselves to a spot ahead of you in line and the language barrier starts to be an annoying headache rather than an entertaining challenge. 【R2】______ And at some point we're all guilty of saying yes to a couple of cultural no-nos such as not moderating their clothing as they head from the sheltered environment of the hotel pool to the wider world of Egypt's tombs. But sometimes those who've been wandering the world for great lengths of time feel that they know it all and can do no wrong. Remember sexy clothing, chugging beer and grabbing your boyfriend's ass could well offend a few locals. And if you've upset the locals, it'll be the next group of travelers who pay. 【R3】______ Enveloping yourself in local customs is part of the reason we travel. We want to sample original flavors, see unusual architecture, learn foreign tongues and experience the new traditions that come with a different religion. But some travelers go too far: they put on the local traditional clothes to go about their daily affairs, would never dream of eating a hamburger and frown at the very notion of socializing with one of their countrymen. Respecting a culture is one thing, but adopting it as your own can sometimes cause offence. Plus you look ridiculous. 【R4】______ No matter how many years you've been traveling the globe, things will always go wrong. Trains will break down, hotels will fill up, attractions will close on the only day you could possibly visit and food poisoning will put you out of action just as you had some life-affirming adventure planned. The key is to accept the setbacks as a natural part of your adventure. Expecting everything to run smoothly is to set foot on the road to disappointment and a way to ruin your trip. 【R5】______ Travel snobs are people who consider themselves superior for a wealth of bizarre reasons. They travel for longer, rough it more, stray further from the beaten track or simply carry less luggage and therefore feel the need to look down on anyone who doesn't meet their standards. Who cares if someone opts for package tours or carries vast amounts of designer luggage to their five-star hotels? If you spend your time sorting out the good travelers from the bad, you run the risk of raining your trip.

单选题The major task facing adolescents is to create a stable identity. There are some developmental tasks that enable them to create an identity. It's important to accept one's body shape. The beginning of adolescence and the rate of body changes for adolescent varies tremendously. How easily adolescents【C1】______those changes will partly reflect how closely their bodies match the well-defined【C2】______of the "perfect" body for young women and young men. Adolescents who do not match it may need【C3】______support from adults to improve their feelings of comfort and self-worth regarding their shapes. Try to achieve emotional independence from parents. Children derive strength from【C4】______their parents' values and attitudes. Adolescents,【C5】______, must redefine their【C6】______of personal strength and move toward self-reliance. This change is【C7】______if the adolescent and parents can agree on some level of【C8】______that increases over time.【C9】______, parents and adolescents should set a time by which children must be back home. That time should be increased【C10】______the adolescent matures. Prepare for an economic career. In our society, an adolescent【C11】______adult status when he or she is able to【C12】______support himself or herself. This task has become more【C13】______than in the past because the job market demands increased education and skills. Today, this developmental task is generally not achieved【C14】______late adolescence or early adulthood, after the individual completes her/his education and gains some entry level work experience. Adolescents can think abstractly and about possible situations. With these【C15】______in thinking, the adolescent is able to develop his or her own【C16】______of values and beliefs. Thus, it is essential to take an ideology as a guide to behavior. The family is【C17】______children define themselves and their world. Adolescents define themselves and their world from their new social roles. Status【C18】______the community, beyond that of family is an important achievement for older adolescents and young adults. Adolescents and young adults become members of the larger community【C19】______employment (financial independence) and 【C20】______independence from parents.

单选题Why does Peter Drucker continue to enjoy such a high reputation? Part of the answer lies in people's mixed emotions about management. The management-advice business is one of the most successful industries of the past century. When Drucker first turned his mind to the subject in the 1940s it was a backwater. Business schools were treated as poor relations by other professional schools. McKinsey had been in the management-consulting business for only a decade and the Boston Consulting Group did not yet exist. Officials at General Motors doubted if Drucker could find a publisher for his great study of the company, "Concept of the Corporation". Today the backwater has turned into Niagara Falls. The world's great business schools have replaced Oxbridge as the nurseries of the global elite. The management-consulting industry will earn revenues of $300 billion this year. Management books regularly top the bestseller lists. Management masters can command $60,000 a speech. Yet the practitioners of this great industry continue to suffer from a severe case of status anxiety. This is partly because the management business has always been prey to fads and frauds. But it is also because the respectable end of the business seems to lack what Yorkshire folk call "bottom". Consultants and business-school professors are forever discovering great ideas, like re-engineering, that turn to dust, and wonderful companies, like Enron, that burst into flames. Peter Drucker is the perfect antidote to such anxiety. He was a genuine intellectual who, during his early years, rubbed shoulders with the likes of Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter. He illustrated his arguments with examples from medieval history or 18th-century English literature. He remained at the top of his game for more than 60 years, advising generations of bosses and avoiding being trapped by fashion. But Drucker was more than just an antidote to status anxiety. He was also a preacher of management. He argued that management is one of the most important engines of human progress: "the organ that converts a mob into an organization and human effort into performance". He endlessly extended management's empire. From the 1950s onwards he offered advice to Japanese companies as well as American ones. He insisted that good management was just as important for the social sector as the business sector.

单选题When George Price died in January 1975, his funeral in London was attended by five homeless men: untidy, smelly and cold. Alongside them were Bill Hamilton and John Maynard Smith, both distinguished British evolutionary biologists. All seven men had come to mourn an American scientist who helped to unpick the riddle of why people should ever be kind to one another, who had chosen to give away his clothes, his possessions and his home, and who, when his generosity was exhausted, slashed his own throat with a pair of scissors, aged 52. Ever since Charles Darwin had published his theory of evolution in 1859, scientists have pondered whether it can explain the existence of altruism: behavior that decreases an individual's fitness but which increases the average fitness of the group to which he belongs. Such kindness is not unique to humans but exists also in complex insect societies. Bees, for example, live in colonies headed by a queen and populated by sterile workers. One reading of Darwin's theory says that, because the workers do not breed, evolution should result in their elimination. Yet this is not what happens in nature. In the 1960s, Hamilton proposed that evolution acts on characteristics that favor the survival of close relatives of a certain individual. The bee colonies that survive are those in which sterile workers provide the "fittest" service to their mother. Each worker thus strives to favor the reproductive success of the queen, even at the price of her own reproductive failure. Price wanted to describe mathematically how a genetic predisposition to altruism could evolve. He devised a formula, now called the Price equation, that describes how characteristics that can, in some cases, prove disadvantageous, nevertheless persist in the population By slightly changing the variables, he was able to describe populations in which kindness was widespread, everyone benefited and altruism was passed down the generations, and other, more brutal worlds, where charity was abused and kindness died out. Ultimately, Price ended up in such a place. In 1967 he moved to London, where he hooked up with Hamilton and derived the equation for which he is famed. At the same time, his interest in altruism blossomed into something less kin-based and more practical: he began to seek out needy strangers. At one stage, he had four homeless men staying in his flat, while he slept in his office. As he became increasingly unwell, both physically and mentally, he redoubled his efforts to help the poor, moving into a dirty cabin where, one freezing night, he committed suicide. Price ultimately became one of the homeless he had set out to save.

单选题Though experts were quick to declare that the election of Barack Obama represented the emergence of a "post-racial" America, the macro-economy has provided a corrective. During the American economy's last deep recession, in the early 1980s, black unemployment soared to twice the level among whites, passing 21% in 1983. And according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, time has changed little. The current unemployment rate among black Americans is almost 16%; among whites the figure is under 10%. The widening gap between blacks and whites persists across demographic lines. The current "mances-sion" has hit male-dominated professions hardest. But white men face a relatively mild unemployment rate of just over 10% compared with over 18% among black men. For the worst-off, the data are catastrophic. Among young black men without a high-school diploma, nearly half have no jobs. These rates are based on a labor-force number which excludes those in prison; if there were not five times as many blacks behind bars as whites, the figures would look even worse. There is no shortage of explanations for the gap. States with weaker labor markets, like South Carolina and Michigan, also tend to have larger black populations than low-unemployment states like Iowa and Montana. Predominantly black neighborhoods are often a long way from where jobs are concentrated, in largely white suburbs, so those without cars cannot get to them. Blacks are also at a disadvantage when it comes to relying on friends and family connections to find jobs; there is not the same network of family businesses that whites and Latinos have. Some studies have found that this factor may explain as much as 70% of the difference in black and white unemployment rates, and may also explain the difference between black and Latino jobless rates. Among young men, for instance, the near-20% Hispanic unemployment rate is much closer to that for whites (17%) than blacks (30%). What is clear is that the unemployment problem in black communities will not end with the recession. The employment-to-population ratio among black adults is only just above 50%, and it is closer to a shocking 40% for young black men; for adult whites it is 59%. Black workers are also unemployed for about five weeks longer, on average, than the rest of the population. Some 45% of unemployed blacks have been out of work for 27 weeks or longer, compared with just 36% of unemployed whites. That means continued loss of skills, and a longer and harder road back into the workforce.

单选题Music produces profound and lasting changes in the brain. Schools should add music classes, not cut them. Nearly 20 years ago, a small study advanced the【C1】______that listening to Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major could boost mental functioning. It was not long【C2】______trademarked "Mozart effect" products began to appeal to anxious parents aiming to put little kids【C3】______the fast track to prestigious universities like Harvard and Yale. Georgia's governor even【C4】______giving every newborn there a classical CD or cassette. The evidence for Mozart therapy【C5】______to be weak, perhaps nonexistent, although the【C6】______study never claimed anything more than a temporary and limited effect. In recent years,【C7】______, scientists have examined the benefits of a concerted【C8】______to study and practice music, as【C9】______to playing a Mozart CD or a computer-based "brain fitness" game【C10】______in a while. Advanced monitoring【C11】______have enabled scientists to see what happens【C12】______your head when you listen to your mother and actually practice the violin for an hour every afternoon. And they have found that music【C13】______can produce profound and lasting changes that【C14】______the general ability to learn. These results should【C15】______public officials that music classes are not a mere decoration, ripe for discarding in the budget crises that constantly【C16】______public schools. Studies have shown that【C17】______instrument training from an early age can help the brain to【C18】______sounds better, making it easier to stay focused when absorbing other subjects, from literature to mathematics. Those who are good at music are better able to【C19】______a biology lesson despite the noise in the classroom【C20】______, a few years later, to finish a call with a client when a colleague in the next office starts screaming at a subordinate. They can attend to several things at once in the mental scratch pad called working memory, an essential skill in this era of multitasking.

单选题While U.S. companies are worrying about how to recruit talent from abroad in the face of increasingly rigorous immigration rules, a different and far more significant challenge is quietly building. When young knowledge workers look for a job today, they seriously consider companies half a world away. Homegrown American talent is moving abroad, in what could become a huge shift in the world economic order. Early warning signs abound. Look at Singapore's success in recruiting top U.S. academics to its universities and research centers: It lured the world's leading seismologist (a geologist who studies earthquakes and the mechanical characteristics of the Earth) away from the California Institute of Technology and the number two scientist at the National Institutes of Health away from that organization. Silicon Valley expatriates have been moving to China in a small but steady stream. Farmers from the Midwest are using their high-tech methods to make a new start in Brazil, where real estate is cheap. The United States' current economic woes are accelerating this trend. The trickle that has started at the top will become a flood as mid-career executives look for new opportunities abroad. Of course, even the best manager will struggle if he or she doesn't speak the local language. But one can get by in India with English only, and Spanish is relatively easy to learn. Moreover, when the children of today's expatriates enter the workforce, they'll reap a huge advantage from knowing the second language—Chinese, Portuguese, Hindi—they learned to speak at home as youngsters. More and more parents are discovering that a multilingual education can help in guaranteeing lifelong employ ability for their offspring. Government policy will be crucial in determining how well U.S. companies respond to the increasing outflow of American talent. Lawmakers must not resort to knowledge protectionism—for instance, by requiring people who attend state-funded universities to spend a certain amount of their working life in the United States. Rather, they must ensure that America remains the most favorable place for high-tech enterprises and continues to attract foreign students to its universities and foreign workers to its companies. The U.S. monopoly on leading-edge opportunities is at an end. The world's best and brightest no longer assume that their future lies exclusively in the United States, and America's best are coming to a-gree: Their path to a dream career may well lead them overseas.

单选题Why is it that most of us can remember our precise surroundings the moment that we first learned of John Fitzgerald Kennedy's assassination, the Challenger explosion or the fall of the Twin Towers, but not say, what grocery aisle we were standing in when the phone call came to remind us to pick up milk? What is it about the timing—or more specifically, the coincidence with intense experience—that seals in visual memories more effectively? That's the question that a new study from psychologists at the University of Washington set out to answer. The study, published online recently in the open-access journal PLoS Biology included a series of four experiments. In each experiment, which included distinct participants, Jeffrey Y. Lin and colleagues showed study subjects 16 photographs depicting familiar landscapes. The first time, participants merely looked at the images; the second time, they were also asked to focus on a number shown in the middle of the image; the third time, they also had to make note of an auditory cue as they looked at the images; and finally, they were shown images with a number in the middle, but told to ignore the number and focus only on the scene depicted. Researchers found that, when shown an image later and asked to recall if it had been among those they'd already seen, subjects' memory formation was consistently best when they had also been trying to concentrate on another task in both the second and third experiments, which involved viewing numbers or hearing audio tones while the images were presented, subjects formed clearer memories than in the first experiment—when they were simply instructed to look at the photos—and than in the fourth experiment—when they were shown numbers in the center of photos, but told to ignore them and focus on the images themselves. The findings suggest that it isn't the novelty of what we're seeing, but the experience that we are having while we look at something, that determines how well we store it away in our memories. Or, as the authors phrase it, the study results provide "evidence of a mechanism where traces of a visual scene are automatically encoded into memory at behaviorally relevant points in time regardless of the spatial focus of attention." When it comes to making memories, timing is of the essence.

单选题Three makes a trend. The Washington Post Co. Friday announced that it would look to sell its headquarters building in downtown Washington, D.C. In January, the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News announced they would put up for sale their headquarters. The same month, Frank Gannett said it will sell the building that houses the Rochester, N.Y., Democrat circulation revenues are back to where they were in 1996. The digital numbers are rising, but not fast enough. Print media is hampered by high fixed costs incurred in the pre-digital era—pensions and union contracts, equipment like printing presses, large numbers of employees, and big office buildings. Virtually every newspaper company has engaged in drastic measures—laying off experienced employees, eliminating sections, cutting back printing from daily to a few days per week. Those efforts are all meant to lower day-to-day operating costs. But we've also seen newspaper companies seek onetime injections of cash by selling off non-core assets. Increasingly, the headquarters building—typically located right in the middle of town—is falling into the non-core asset category. Traditionalists may find these sales and the continued shrinking of newspapers' real-estate footprints to be depressing. But it's actually a positive development. Call it creative destruction, or adaptive reuse. In cities around the country, investors are finding better uses for properties. In lower Manhattan, Class B office buildings that used to house financial firms have been converted into expensive separate apartments. "It's a great thing, because it drives more tax revenue to the cities. And it gives the suburbs a run for the money," said Jonathan Miller, president of appraisal company MillerSamuel. In D.C, the Washington Post will likely fetch an excellent price for its headquarters because Washington is a boomtown. Throughout D.C, investors are plowing cash into housing, office, and retail developments. The building that housed the organization that exposed the Watergate scandal may become the next Watergate complex Of course, progress inevitably displaces the prior tenants. It's likely the new homes that will be occupied by newspapermen and newspaperwomen in Washington, Rochester, and Detroit will be less grand, less central, and less historic than their current homes. And the sale of these properties alone won't solve the newspapers' financial problems. But it will buy them a very valuable commodity: time.

单选题"Watch out, it'll hurt for a second." Not only children but also many adults get uneasy when they hear those words from their doctors. And, as soon as the needle touches their skin the piercing pain can be felt very clearly. "After such an experience it is enough to simply imagine a needle at the next vaccination appointment to activate our pain memory," knows Prof. Dr. Thomas Weiss from the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena. As the scientist and his team from the Deptartment of Biological and Clinical Psychology could show in a study for the first time it is not only the painful memories and associations that set our pain memory on the alert. "Even verbal stimuli lead to reactions in certain areas of the brain," claims Prof. Weiss. As soon as we hear words like "tormenting," "tiring" or "plaguing," exactly those areas in the brain are being activated which process the corresponding pain. The psychologists from Jena University were able to examine this phenomenon using functional magnetic resonance tomography (fMRT). In their study they investigated how healthy subjects process words associated with experiencing pain. In order to prevent reactions based on a plain negative affect the subjects were also confronted with negatively connotated words like "tenifying," "horrible" or "disgusting" besides the proper pain words. "Subject performed two tasks," explains Maria Richter in Weiss's team. "In a first task, subjects were supposed to imagine situations which correspond to the words," the Jena psychologist says. In a second task, subjects were also reading the words but they were distracted by a puzzle. "In both cases we could observe a clear activation of the pain matrix in the brain by pain-associated words," Maria Richter states. Other negatively connotated words, however, do not activate those regions. Neither for neutrally nor for positively connotated words comparable activity patterns could be examined. "These findings show that words alone are capable of activating our pain matrix," underlines Prof. Weiss. To save painful experiences is of biological advantage since it allows us to avoid painful situations in the future which might be dangerous for our lives. "However, our results suggest as well that verbal stimuli have a more important meaning than we have thought so far." For the Jena psychologist the question remains open which role the verbal confrontation with pain plays for chronic pain patients. "They tend to speak a lot about their experiencing of pain to their physician," Maria Richter says. It is possible that those conversations intensify the activity of the pain matrix in the brain and therefore intensify the pain experience. And so far it won't do any harm not to talk too much about pain. Maybe then the next injection will be only half as painful.

单选题Fromantiquitytomoderntimes,thenationhasalwaysbeenaproductofinformationmanagement.Theabilitytoimposetaxes,proclaimlaws,countcitizensandraiseanarmyliesattheheartofstatehood.Yetsomethingnewisbeingplanned.Thesedaysdemocraticopennessmeansmorethanthatcitizenscanvoteatregularintervalsinfreeandfairelections.Theyalsoexpecttohaveaccesstogovernmentdata.Thestatehaslongbeenthebiggestgenerator,collectoranduserofdata.Itkeepsrecordsoneverybirth,marriageanddeath,compilesfiguresonallaspectsoftheeconomyandkeepsstatisticsonlicenses,lawsandtheweather.YetuntilrecentlyallthesedatahavebeenlockedtightEvenwhenpubliclyaccessibletheywerehardtofind,andcollectinglotsofprintedinformationisnotoriouslydifficult.Butnowcitizensandnon-governmentalorganizationstheworldoverarepressingtogetaccesstopublicdataatthenational,stateandmunicipallevel—andsometimesgovernmentofficialsenthusiasticallysupportthem."Governmentinformationisaformofinfrastructure,nolessimportanttoourmodernlifethanourroads,electricalnetworkorwatersystems,"saysCarlMalamud,thebossofagroupcalledPub-lic.Resource.Orgthatputsgovernmentdataonline.Americaisintheleadondataaccess.OnhisfirstfulldayinofficeBarackObamaissuedapresidentialmemorandumorderingtheheadsoffederalagenciestomakeavailableasmuchinformationaspossible,urgingthemtoact"withaclearpresumption:inthefaceofdoubt,opennessprevails".Mr.Obama'sdirectivecausedawhirlofactivity.Itisnowpossibletoobtainfiguresonjob-relateddeathsthatnameemployers,andtogetannualdataonmigrationfree.Someinformationthatwaspreviouslyavailablebuthardtogetatnowcomesinacomputer-readableformat.Itisallonapublicwebsite,data.gov.Andmoreinformationisbeingreleasedallthetime.Within48hoursofdataonflightdelaysbeingmadepublic,awebsitehadsprunguptodiffusethem.Providingaccesstodata"createsacultureofaccountability",saysVivekKundra,thefederalgovernment'sCIO.Oneofthefirstthingshedidaftertakingofficewastocreateanonline"dashboard"detailingthegovernment'sown$70billiontechnologyspending.Nowthattheinformationisfreelyavailable,Congressandthepubliccanaskquestionsoroffersuggestions.Themodelwillbeappliedtootherareas,perhapsincludinghealth-caredata,saysMrKundra—providedthatloomingprivacyissuescanberesolved.Allthishasmadeabigdifference."Thereisaculturalchangeinwhatpeopleexpectfromgovernment,fuelledbytheexperienceofshoppingontheinternetandhavingreal-timeaccesstofinancialinformation,"saysJohnWonderlichoftheSunlightFoundation,whichpromotesopengovernment.Theeconomiccrisishasspeededupthatchange,particularlyinstateandcitygovernments.ChrisVein,SanFrancisco'sCIO,insiststhatprovidingmoreinformationcanmakegovernmentmoreefficient.California'sgenerous"sunshinelaws"providethenecessarylegalbacking.Amongthefirstusersofthenewlyavailabledatawasasitecalled"SanFranciscoCrimespotting"thatlayershistoricalcrimefiguresontopofmapinformation.Peoplenowoftencometopublicmeetingsarmedwithcrimemapstodemandpolicepatrolsintheirparticulararea.

单选题The technology revolution may be coming to poor countries via the mobile phone, not the personal computer, as it did in rich ones. And just as the Internet encouraged an entrepreneurial philosophy, and with it the creation of a few too many dotcom firms, Africa's surge in mobile-phone use may unleash the same sort of business energy, but tailored to local needs. One such initiative is about to begin. TradeNet, a software company based in Accra, Ghana, will unveil a simple sort of eBay for agricultural products across a dozen countries in West Africa. It lets buyers and sellers indicate what they are after and their contact information, which is sent to all relevant subscribers as an SMS text message in one of four languages. Interested parties can then reach others directly to do a deal. Listing offers is free, as is receiving the texts. TradeNet plans to earn revenue by putting advertisements in the messages, though it hopes the service will become so useful that recipients will eventually want to pay. For the moment, though, the company is busy signing up users and swallowing the cost of sending the messages. Mobile-phone use in sub-Saharan Africa is soaring. Whereas only 10% of the population had network coverage in 1999, today more than 60% have it, a figure expected to exceed 85% in the coming year, according to the GSM Association, an industry trade group. This provides the infrastructure for businesses like TradeNet to function. TradeNet is the brainchild of Mark Davies, a British dotcom tycoon who gave up the rat race and went to Africa in 2000. In 2005, he started the prototype for TradeNet using around $600,000 of his own money and about $200,000 from aid agencies. An early set of trials last year generated a surplus of trades, such as a sale of organic fertilizer between a person in Yemen and another in Nigeria. A number of other mobile-phone market-places taking shape also started as aid projects. For example, Trade at Hand, a project funded by the UN's International Trade Centre in Geneva, provides daily price information for fruit and vegetable exports in Burkina Faso and Mali, with plans to add more countries. And Manobi, a telecoms firm based in Senegal, providing real-time agricultural and fish prices to fee-paying subscribers, is also backed by aid money. But TradeNet's approach is unique so far because it collects valuable economic data—names, locations, business interests and telephone numbers—and then sells them to advertisers. The price of economic development may be junk mail by mobile phone.

单选题American presidents seem to age before our eyes. But the common belief that high-office stress grays our leaders faster than【C1】______may be a myth, new research finds. In fact, the majority of American presidents have lived longer than【C2】______men of their times. That's not to【C3】______that chronic stress has no effect on a person's lifespan, but【C4】______does high social standing. The findings【C5】______a body of research linking high status to better health:【C6】______, Oscar winners live longer than those who were only【C7】______; and the long life effect is also seen in Nobel Prize winners. The new study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association,【C8】______the dates of birth, inauguration and death of all 34 past presidents who died of natural causes. The【C9】______lifespan for these men should have been 68 years,【C10】______they'd aged twice as fast during their years in【C11】______as the popular wisdom suggests they do. 【C12】______, the study found, these presidents lived an average 73 years. And indeed, 23 of the 34 presidents who died of natural causes lived longer than【C13】______, compared with other men their age during their lifetimes. Some presidents【C14】______an exceptionally long time: Gerald Ford died at 93.5 years, AND Ronald Reagan at 93.3. All【C15】______living presidents have already exceeded their life【C16】______, or are likely to do so. So why do people【C17】______the top of the hierarchy fare better than those below?【C18】______to wealth, education and the best health care of their times would seem to be obvious factors【C19】______medical attention seems to have actually killed President Garfield, who died from a fatal【C20】______introduced by his doctors' unclean treatment techniques after he was shot by an assassin.

单选题The simple act of hand-washing has been shown to help clear a guilty conscience and even make you more forgiving of the moral mistakes of others. It's known as the Macbeth principle of morality: we make a fundamental, psychological association between physical purity and moral purity, which lets us literally wash away our sins. The trick even works in the opposite direction, with cleanliness prompting moral behavior in one study, people exposed to a clean-smelling environment were induced to act more fairly and charitably toward strangers than people in a neutral-smelling place. Now a new study published in Science asks whether hand-washing can wipe the slate clean of any past behavior—even everyday decisions, like, say, choosing Paris over Rome for vacation. When people make choices, especially between two similarly attractive options, they tend to go to great lengths to justify them as psychological assurance they've made the right decision. The mental exercise reduces post-decisional doubt and the authors of the new study found that handwashing eliminated people's need to do it. As part of an alleged consumer survey, 40 undergraduates browsed 30 CD covers as if they were in a music store. They selected 10 CDs they would like to own and ranked them by preference. Later, the experimenter offered them a choice between their fifth- and sixth-ranked CDs as a token of appreciation from the sponsor. After the choice, participants completed an seemingly unrelated product survey that asked for evaluations of a liquid soap; half merely examined the bottle before answering, whereas others tested the soap by washing their hands. After a filler task, participants ranked the 10 CDs again. "People who merely examined the soap bottle dealt with their doubts about their decision by changing how they saw the CDs: as in hundreds of earlier studies, once they had made a choice, they saw the chosen CD as much more attractive than before, and the rejected CD as much less attractive," said study co-author Norbert Schwarz, a psychologist at University of Michigan. "But hand-washing eliminated this classic effect. Once participants had washed their hands, they no longer needed to justify their choice when they ranked the CDs the second time around." The researchers repeated the experiment, this time asking participants to rank the desirability of four kinds of fruit jam. Once again, volunteers who wiped their hands clean after choosing showed the kind of satisfaction with their decision that the non-wipers lacked. Still, there's no guarantee that a bout of handwashing will avoid post-decision remorse in the long run. As far as those big decisions go, however, you're probably best off engaging in good old-fashioned justification.

单选题Ten years ago, I got a call from a reporter at a big-city daily paper. "I'm writing a story on communication skills," she said. "Are communication skills important in business?" I assumed I had misheard her question, and after she repeated it for me I still didn't know how to respond. Are communication skills important? "Er, they are very important," I managed to squeak out. My brain said: Are breathing skills important? The reporter explained: "The people I've spoken with so far have been mixed on the subject." Ten years ago, we were trapped even deeper in the Age of Left-Brain Business. We were way into Six Sigma and ISO 9000 and spreadsheets and regulations and policies. We thought we could line-item budget our way to greatness, create shareholder value by tracking our employees' every keystroke, and employ a dress-code policy to win in the marketplace. And lots of us believed that order and uniformity could save the world—the business world, anyway. We had to go pretty far down that path before we caught onto the limits of process, technology, and linear thinking. The right brain is coming back into style in the business world, and not a moment too soon. Smart salespeople say, "We've got compelling story that accords with our customer's values and history." Strong leaders say, "We're creating a context for our team members that weaves their passions into ours." Consultants get big money for providing perspective on the "user experience." That's not a linear, analytical process. These days, we're talking about emotion again, and context and meaning. Thank goodness we are. I was about to choke on the death-by-spreadsheet diet, and I wasn't the only one. Job seekers get great jobs today by avoiding the Black Hole of Keyword-Searching and going straight to a human decision-maker to share a story that links the job seeker's powerful history with the decisionmaker's present pain. Leadership teams spend their off-site weekends talking about not the next 400 strategic initiatives on somebody's list but rather a story-type road map to keep the troops philosophically on board while they take the next hill. The right brain's return is coming just at the right time, when employees are sick of not only their jobs but also the cynical, hypocritical, and obsessively left-brain behaviors they see all around them in corporate life. Smart employers will grab this opportunity to lose the three-inch-thick policy manuals and enforcement mentality. There's no leverage in those, no spark, and no aha. We've seen where the left-brain mentality has gotten us: to the land of spreadsheets, with PowerPoints and burned-out shells where our workforce used to be.