单选题The mental health movement in the United States began with a period of considerable enlightenment. Dorothea Dix was shocked to find the mentally ill in jails and almshouses and crusaded for the establishment of asylums in which people could receive humane care in hospital-like environments and treatment which might help restore them to sanity. By the mid 1800s, 20 states had established asylums, but during the late 1800s and early 1900s, in the face of economic depression, legislatures were unable to appropriate sufficient funds for decent care. Asylums became overcrowded and prison-like. Additionally, patients were more resistant to treatment than the pioneers in the mental health field had anticipated, and security and restraint were needed to protect patients and others. Mental institutions became frightening and depressing places in which the rights of patients were all but forgotten. These conditions continued until after World War Ⅱ. At that time, new treatments were discovered for some major mental illnesses theretofore considered untreatable, and newspaper reports called attention to the plight of the mentally ill. Improvements were made and Dr. David Vail"s Humane Practices Program is a beacon for today. But changes were slow in coming until the early 1960s. At that time, the Civil Rights movement led lawyers to investigate America"s prisons, which were disproportionately populated by blacks, and they in turn followed prisoners into the only institutions that were worse than the prisons—the hospitals for the criminally insane. The prisons were filled with angry young men who, encouraged by legal support, were quick to demand their rights. The hospitals for the criminally insane, by contrast, were populated with people who were considered "crazy" and who were often kept obediently in their place through the use of severe bodily restraints and large doses of major tranquilizers. The young cadre of public interest lawyers liked their role in the mental hospitals. The lawyers found a population that was both passive and easy to champion. These were, after all, people who, unlike criminals, had done nothing wrong. And in many states, they were being kept in horrendous institutions, an injustice, which, once exposed, was bound to shock the public and, particularly, the judicial conscience. Patients" rights groups successfully encouraged reform by lobbying in state legislatures. Judicial interventions have had some definite positive effects, but there is growing awareness that courts cannot provide the standards and review mechanisms that assure good patient care. The details of providing day-to-day care simply cannot be mandated by a court, so it is time to take from the courts the responsibility for delivery of mental health care and assurance of patient rights and return it to the state mental health administrators to whom the mandate was originally given. Though it is a difficult task, administrators must undertake to write rules and standards and to provide the training and surveillance to assure that treatment is given and patient rights are respected.

单选题The liberal view of democratic citizenship that developed in the 17th and 18th centuries was fundamentally different from that of the classical Greeks. The pursuit of private interests with as little interference as possible from government was seen as the road to human happiness and progress rather than the public obligations and involvement in the collective community that were emphasized by the Greeks. Freedom was to be realized by limiting the scope of governmental activity and political obligation and not through immersion in the collective life of the polis. The basic role of the citizen was to select governmental leaders and keep the powers and scope of public authority in check. On the liberal view, the rights of citizens against the state were the focus of special emphasis. Over time, the liberal democratic notion of citizenship developed in two directions. First, there was a movement to increase the proportion of members of society who were eligible to participate as citizens especially through extending the right of suffrage—and to ensure the basic political equality of all. Second, there was a broadening of the legitimate activities of government and a use of governmental power to redress imbalances in social and economic life. Political citizenship became an instrument through which groups and classes with sufficient numbers of votes could use the state power to enhance their social and economic well-being. Within the general liberal view of democratic citizenship, tensions have developed over the degree to which government can and should be used as an instrument for promoting happiness and well-being. Political philosopher Martin Diamond has categorized two views of democracy as follows. On the one hand, there is the "libertarian" perspective that stresses the private pursuit of happiness and emphasizes the necessity for restraint on government and protection of individual liberties. On the other hand, there is the "majoritarian" view that emphasizes the "task of the government to uplift and aid the common man against the malefactors of great wealth." The tensions between these two views are very evident today. Taxpayer revolts and calls for smaller government and less government regulation clash with demands for greater government involvement in economic marketplace and the social sphere.

单选题Fear seems to be the dominant mood of the moment. Hurricanes, tidal waves, floods, earthquakes and terrorism this year have all brought with them not only appalling scenes of devastation, death and suffering, but also outrage at the lack of preparations to avoid or cope with these disasters. Now even the birds of the air are a threat, we are told. That migrating flock visible on the horizon at sunset, once a consoling reminder of the eternal rhythms of nature, could be carrying the virus which might soon kill tens of millions of people. Given the many fingers pointed at governments in the wake of other disasters this year, it is hardly surprising that they are scrambling to respond to the threat posed by avian influenza. After confirmation this week that the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which has been spreading quickly in Asia, had been discovered in Romania and perhaps Greece, European Union foreign ministers convened an emergency meeting. President George Bush, still smarting from a torrent of criticism of his government"s clumsy response to Hurricane Katrina, has promised to rush out emergency plans for dealing with an outbreak of pandemic flu which have been stalled for years. Countries around the world are hurrying to stockpile the only current antiviral drug, Tamiflu, which might be effective in saving lives in any pandemic or curbing its spread. The World Health Organisation is calling for an internationally co-ordinated effort. Health ministers from around the globe are due to meet next week in Canada to discuss what steps to take. Is any of this effort justified? Or are politicians simply helping to feed public panic, and then covering themselves by promising to spend lavishly against a threat which may never materialize and to reduce a risk which they do not understand? To ask these questions is not to counsel complacency, but to apply the kind of test which is required in any kind of disaster planning, not least because the world is an inherently dangerous place and it is impossible to plan against every possible disaster. With the media full of warnings of impending mass death, an overreaction is all too possible.

单选题European countries are confronted by two global forces: atmospheric pressures that, as it were, change the weather, silently transforming societies and the assumptions of public policy. One is climate change. The other is demography. The two have a lot in common. Both are easily recognised but less easily understood. Both are products of complex forces and inconspicuous influences. Both create huge effects from tiny and gradual changes. A rise in global temperature by one degree or a fall in fertility by one point may sound trivial but, over 100 years, will make the earth unbearably hot, or reshape the size and composition of societies. It would be too much to say Europe"s population is back on the rise. But its long-term decline is starting to bottom out, and is even rising in a few places. On its face, this seems an odd assertion. In 1957, every one of the 27 countries that are now EU members had fertility rates above 2.1. Now, none does. 2.1 is the replacement level, the point at which the population stabilises. Received opinion holds that "demography is destiny". American observers from Walter Laqueur, an academic, to Mark Steyn, a conservative thinker, argue that Europe is fast becoming a barren, ageing, enfeebled place. The combination of low fertility, longer life and mass immigration will put intolerable pressure on public health, pensions and social services, leading (probably) to upheaval. There are several possible objections to that gloomy forecast. One is that a growing population is not, of itself, necessarily a good thing, nor a falling one unambiguously bad. Another is that there is no short-term correlation between population change and wealth: Japan and South Korea have even lower fertility than Europe. But there is a simpler objection: the picture of relentless decline is wrong, or, to be accurate, half wrong. Europe is not in decline. Rather, as Jitka Rychtarikova of the Charles University in Prague argues, it no longer makes sense to talk about Europe as a single demographic unit at all. There are two Europes. One is the familiar place of low fertility and population decline. The low fertility belt runs from the Mediterranean to central and eastern Europe, embracing both old and new parts of the continent. The other, surprising Europe is a place of recovering fertility and rising population. It stretches from Scandinavia to France. Here, countries have escaped the fertility trap and the childbearing rate is around 1.8—not high, but higher than it was, and, in some cases, reaching the magic replacement level. Europeans are only starting the process of recovery. Compared with America, even the growing parts of the continent have modest fertility rates and high dependency ratios. But if Europe has a demographic future it lies in Britain, France and Scandinavia, not across the Atlantic.

单选题There is nothing like a good bidding war to lift capitalism"s spirits. And that may be exactly what is about to happen after Kraft made a $17 billion bid for Cadbury on September 7th. The well-known British confectioner straightly rejected the American food giant"s offer, saying it "fundamentally undervalues" the company, which could continue to thrive on its own. Kraft"s move is one of several in recent days that have raised hopes of a new wave of mergers and acquisitions just as it seemed, after a summer of inactivity, that 2009 would be a declining year for M&A. On September 8th Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom said they would merge their British mobile-phone operations, respectively T-Mobile and Orange, to create a new market leader. On August 31st Disney bought superhero factory Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion, and Baker Hughes offered $5.5 billion for its fellow Houston-based energy-services firm, BJ Services. Perhaps this will prove to be nothing more than a dead-cat bounce, a brief increase of long-overdue deals that were held back until senior executives and investment bankers returned from the beach. After all, dealmaking had fallen to unnaturally low levels in the aftermath of last year"s financial panic and subsequent economic slump, so a burst of post-summer action was always a possibility without it necessarily implying a turn in the cycle. Yet hopes are rising that the recent outbreak of deals might indicate a genuine turning point in the merger market. "While it is not yet evident in the statistics, the level of corporate dialogue has picked up recently," says Christopher Ventresca, co-head of North American M&A for JPMorgan. One reason is that many firms now think systemic risk in the financial system has fallen to a low level. Another, he says, is that they have done the defensive work needed to ensure their earnings after last year"s panic., refinancing debt where necessary and making sure that they have plenty of what the crisis revealed as the possible difference between corporate life and death—financial liquidity. With that sorted out—thanks, not least, to a dramatic reopening of the debt markets, at least for more creditworthy companies—managers are trying to figure out how to expand their businesses in what forecasts suggest will remain a gloomy economy for years, at least in rich countries. Buying growth from outside, rather than generating it organically, may be the easiest option. There is also a momentum effect in M&A, especially as the cycle turns. "Seeing some well-known firms start to do deals will create more confidence in others," says Mr Ventresca. Share prices are also now in a sweet spot for a revival of deals, says David Bianco, a strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. They have increased decisively enough to inspire confidence that the worst is over, yet valuations are still depressed by historic standards and when compared with past recoveries from financial crises. In other words, there are bargains to be had.

单选题Researchers who are unfamiliar with the cultural and ethnic groups they are studying must take extra precautions to shed any biases they bring with them from their own culture. For example, they must make sure they construct measures that are meaningful for each of the cultural or ethnic minority groups being studied! In conducting research on cultural and ethnic minority issues, investigators distinguish between the emic approach and the etic approach. In the emic approach, the goal is to describe behavior in one culture or ethnic group in terms that are meaningful and important to the people in that culture or ethnic group, without regard to other cultures or ethnic groups. In the etic approach, the goal is to describe behavior so that generalizations can be made across cultures. If researchers construct a questionnaire in an emic fashion, their concern is only that the questions are meaningful to the particular culture or ethnic group being studied. If, however, the researchers construct a questionnaire in an etic fashion, they want to include questions that reflect concepts familiar to all cultures involved. How might the emic and etic approaches be reflected in the study of family processes? In the emic approach, the researchers might choose to focus only on middle-class White families, without regard for whether the information obtained in the study can be generalized or is appropriate for ethnic minority groups. In a subsequent study, the researchers may decide to adopt an etic approach by studying not only middle-class White families, but also lower-income White families, Black American families, Spanish American families, and Asian American families. In studying ethnic minority families, the researchers would likely discover that the extended family is more frequently a support system in ethnic minority families than in White American families. If so, the emic approach would reveal a different pattern of family interaction than would the etic approach, documenting that research with middle-class White families cannot always be generalized to all ethnic groups.

单选题 We have known for a long time that the organization of any particular society is influenced by the definition of the sexes and the distinction drawn between them. But we have realized only recently that the identity of each sex is not so easy to pin down, and that definitions evolve in accordance with different types of culture known to us, that is, scientific discoveries and ideological revolutions. Our nature is not considered as unchangeable, either socially or biologically. As we approach the beginning of the 21 st century, the substantial progress made in biology and genetics is radically challenging the roles, responsibilities and specific characteristics attributed to each sex, and yet, scarcely twenty years ago, these were thought to be "beyond dispute". We can safely say, with a few minor exceptions, that the definition of the sexes and their respective functions remained unchanged in the West from the beginning of the 19th century to the 1960s. The role distinction lasted throughout this period, appealing for its justification to nature, religion and customs alleged to have existed since the dawn of time. The woman bore children and took care of the home. The man set out to conquer the world and was responsible for the survival of his family, by satisfying their needs in peacetime and going to war when necessary. The entire world order rested on the divergence of the sexes. Any overlapping or confusion between the roles was seen as a threat to the time-honored (由来已久的) order of things. It was felt to be against nature, a deviation from the norm. Sex roles were determined according to the "{{U}}place{{/U}}" appropriate to each. Women's place was, first and foremost, in the home. The outside world, i.e. workshops, factories and business firms, belonged to men. This sex-based division of the world (private and public) gave rise to a strict dichotomy (对立) between the attitudes, which conferred on each its special identity. The woman, sequestered at home, "cared, nurtured and conserved". To do this, she had no need to be daring, ambitious, tough or competitive. The man, on the other hand, competing with his fellow men, was caught up every day in the struggle for survival, and hence developed those characteristics which were thought natural in a man. Today, many women go out to work, and their reasons for doing so have changed considerably. Besides the traditional financial incentives, we find ambition and personal fulfillment motivating those in the most favorable circumstances, and the wish to have a social life and to get out of their domestic isolation influencing others. Above all, for all women, work is invariably connected with the desire for independence.

单选题For years, doctors advised their patients that the only thing taking multivitamins does is give them expensive urine. After all, true vitamin deficiencies are practically unheard of in industrialized countries. Now it seems those doctors may have been wrong. The results of a growing number of studies suggest that even a modest vitamin shortfall can be harmful to your health. Although proof of the benefits of multivitamins is still far from certain, the few dollars you spend on them is probably a good investment. Or at least that"s the argument put forward in the New England Journal of Medicine . Ideally, say Dr. Walter Willett and Dr. Meir Stampfer of Harvard, all vitamin supplements would be evaluated in scientifically rigorous clinical trials. But those studies can take a long time and often raise more questions than they answer. At some point, while researchers work on figuring out where the truth lies, it just makes sense to say the potential benefit outweighs the cost. The best evidence to date concerns folate, one of the B vitamins. It"s been proved to limit the number of defects in embryos, and a recent trial found that folate in combination with vitamin B12 and a form of t36 also decreases the re-blockage of arteries after surgical repair. The news on vitamin E has been more mixed. Healthy folks who take 400 international units daily for at least two years appear somewhat less likely to develop heart disease. But when doctors give vitamin E to patients who already have heart disease, the vitamin doesn"t seem to help. It may turn out that vitamin E plays a role in prevention but cannot undo serious damage. Despite vitamin C"s great popularity, consuming large amounts of it still has not been positively linked to any great benefit. The body quickly becomes saturated with C and simply excretes any excess. The multivitamins question boils down to this: Do you need to wait until all the evidence is in before you take them, or are you willing to accept that there"s enough evidence that they don"t hurt and could help? If the latter, there"s no need to go to extremes and buy the biggest horse pills or the most expensive bottles. Large doses can cause trouble, including excessive bleeding and nervous system problems. Multivitamins are no substitute for exercise and a balanced diet, of course. As long as you understand that any potential benefit is modest and subject to further refinement, taking a daily multivitamin makes a lot of sense.

单选题 The differences in living standards around the world are vast. In 1993, the average American had an income of about ＄25,000. In the same year, the average Mexican earned ＄7,000, and the average Nigerian earned ＄1,500. Not surprisingly, this large variation in average income is reflected in various measures of the quality of life. Changes in living standards over time are also large. In the United States, incomes have historically grown about 2 percent per year (after adjusting for changes in the cost of living). At this rate, average income doubles every 35 years. In some countries, economic growth has been even more rapid. In Japan, for instance, average income has doubled in the past 20 years, and in South Korea it has doubled in the past 10 years. What explains these large differences in living standards among countries and over time? The answer is surprisingly simple. Almost all variation in living standards is attributable to differences in countries' productivity—that is, the amount of goods and services produced from each hour of a worker's time. In nations where workers can produce a large quantity of goods and services per unit of time, most people enjoy a high standard of living; in nations where workers are less productive, most people must endure a more meager existence. Similarly, the growth rate of a nation's productivity determines the growth rate of its average income. The fundamental relationship between productivity and living standards is simple, but its implications are far-reaching. If productivity is the primary determinant of living standards, other explanations must be of secondary importance. For example, people might think that labor unions or minimum-wage laws contributed to the rise in living standards of American workers over the past century. Yet the real hero of American workers is their rising productivity. The relationship between productivity and living standards also has great implications for public policy. When thinking about how any policy will affect living standards, the key question is how it will affect our ability to produce goods and services. To improve living standards, policymakers need to raise productivity by ensuring that workers are well educated, have the tools needed to produce goods and services, and have access to the best available technology.

单选题Menorca or Majorca? It is that time of the year again. The brochures are piling up in travel agents while newspapers and magazines bulge with advice about where to go. But the traditional packaged holiday, a British innovation that provided many timid natives with their first experience of warm sand, is not what it was. Indeed, the industry is anxiously awaiting a High Court ruling to find out exactly what it now is. Two things have changed the way Britons research and book their holidays: low-cost airlines and the Internet. Instead of buying a ready-made package consisting of a flight, hotel, car hire and assorted entertainment from a tour operator"s brochure, it is now easy to put together a trip using an online travel agent like Expedia or Travelocity, which last July bought Lastminute. corn for ￡577 million ($1 billion), or from the proliferating websites of airlines, hotels and car-rental firms. This has led some to sound the death knell for high-street travel agents and tour operators. There have been upheavals and closures, but the traditional firms are starting to fight back, in part by moving more of their business online. First Choice Holidays, for instance, saw its pre-tax profit rise by 16% to ￡114 million ($196 million) in the year to the end of October. Although the overall number of holidays booked has fallen, the company is concentrating on more valuable long-haul and adventure trips. First Choice now sells more than half its trips directly, either via the Internet, over the telephone or from its own travel shops. It wants that to reach 75% within a few years. Other tour operators are showing similar hustle. MyTravel managed to cut its loss by almost half in 2005. Thomas Cook and Thomson Holidays, now both German owned, are also bullish about the coming holiday season. High-street travel agents are having a tougher time, though, not least because many leading tour operations have cut the commissions they pay. Some high-street travel agents are also learning to live with the Internet, helping people book complicated trips that they have researched online, providing advice and tacking on other services. This is seen as a growth area. But if an agent puts together separate flights and hotel accommodation, is that a package, too? The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) says it is and the agent should hold an Air Travel Organisers Licence, which provides financial guarantees to repatriate people and provide refunds. The scheme dates from the early 1970s, when some large British travel firms went bust, stranding customers on the Costas. Although such failures are less common these days, the CAA had to help out some 30,000 people last year. The Association of British Travel Agents went to the High Court in November to argue such bookings are not traditional packages and so do not require agents to acquire the costly licences. While the court decides, millions of Britons will happily click away buying online holidays, unaware of the difference.

单选题"This is a really exciting time—a new era is starting," says Peter Bazalgette, the chief creative officer of Endemol, the television company behind "Big Brother" and other popular shows. He is referring to the upsurge of interest in mobile television, a nascent industry at the intersection of telecoms and media which offers new opportunities to device-makers, content producers and mobile-network operators. And he is far from alone in his enthusiasm. Already, many mobile operators offer a selection of television channels or individual shows, which are "streamed" across their third-generation (3G) networks. In Korea, television is also sent to mobile phones via satellite and terrestrial broadcast networks, which is far more efficient than sending video across mobile networks; similar broadcasts will begin in Japan in April. In Europe, the Italian arm of 3, a mobile operator, recently acquired Canale 7, a television channel, with a view to launching mobile-TV broadcasts in Italy in the second half of 2006. Similar mobile-TV networks will also be built in Finland and America, and are being tested in many other countries. Meanwhile, Apple Computer, which launched a video-capable version of its iPod portable music-player in October, is striking deals with television networks to expand the range of shows that can be purchased for viewing on the device , including "Lost", "Desperate Housewives" and "Law & Order". TiVo, maker of the pioneering personal video recorder (PVR), says it plans to enable subscribers to download recorded shows on to iPods and other portable devices for viewing on the move. And mobile TV was one of the big trends at the world"s largest technology fair, the Consumer Electronics Show, which took place in Las Vegas this week. Despite all this activity, however, the prospects for mobile TV are unclear. For a start, nobody really knows if consumers will pay for it, though surveys suggest they like the idea. Informa, a consultancy, says there will be 125 million mobile-TV users by 2010. But many other mobile technologies inspired high hopes and then failed to live up to expectations. And even if people do want TV on the move, there is further uncertainty in three areas: technology, business models and the content itself.

单选题How fortuitous that the state budget will undoubtedly preclude the building of yet another state prison. Nebraska can ill afford another one. Oh, it"s not that the state could not promptly fill one; Nebraska seems quite adept at filling prisons. The "new" 960-bed prison at Tecumseh, opened in 2001, is already near capacity—and that was the facility designed to alleviate overcrowding elsewhere in the state system. Overall, the Nebraska state prison system is 33 percent above capacity. Nor is that figure likely to drop in the near future. The Department of Corrections estimates the prison system will be 40 percent above capacity by 2006 and 61 percent by 2008. That"s only five years away. No, there would be no problem filling yet another state prison were it built. Indeed, these statistics suggest that building more prisons might well be an unending cycle of build-fill, build-fill, build-fill. Something"s amiss. While arguments can rage indefinitely regarding the efficacy of prisons to deter or rehabilitate offenders, the fact remains that Nebraska prisons continue to fill rapidly—and often with repeat offenders. Equally susceptible to argument are questions surrounding inmates" rights, prison amenities and work privileges. But the fact remains that in five years, Nebraska"s prison population could exceed capacity by 61 percent. Thus a severely restricted state budget promises to prompt legislators to examine more closely the system as a whole. The nature of a crime, alternative sentencing and judicial discretion are all areas that impact the current prison dilemma. For instance, violent or nonviolent crimes often translate to maximum or minimum security prisons. However, if an evolving hierarchy-of sentencing existed—especially for nonviolent crimes—that might well lead to more frequent and consistent use of alternative sentencing. To some degree, such alternative sentencing options as electronic monitoring, home incarceration, work camps, drug court, intense rehabilitation programs and educational opportunities already exist in the state. They are potentially less costly though equally valid options to prison sentences. Yet not all judges use them. What does such random and inconsistent use of these alternatives say about the alternatives themselves and about judges" awareness of or commitment to such options? If the bigger goal is to reduce crime and teach offenders a lesson, building prisons and warehousing inmates falls woefully short. Senators and judges alike need to do more than complete surveys and consult think tanks. They need to find the will to alter the system.

单选题Over the past decade, many companies had perfected the art of creating automatic behaviors—habits—among consumers. These habits have helped companies earn billions of dollars when customers eat snacks or wipe counters almost without thinking, often in response to a carefully designed set of daily cues. "There are fundamental public health problems, like dirty hands instead of a soap habit, that remain killers only because we can"t figure out how to change people"s habits," said Dr. Curtis, the director of the Hygiene Center at the London School of Hygiene Tropical Medicine. "We wanted to learn from private industry how to create new behaviors that happen automatically." The companies that Dr. Curtis turned to—Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Unilever—had invested hundreds of millions of dollars finding the subtle cues in consumers" lives that corporations could use to introduce new routines. If you look hard enough, you"ll find that many of the products we use every day—chewing gums, skin moisturizers, disinfecting wipes, air fresheners, water purifiers, health snacks, teeth whiteners, fabric softeners, vitamins—are results of manufactured habits. A century ago, few people regularly brushed their teeth multiple times a day. Today, because of shrewd advertising and public health campaigns, many Americans habitually give their pearly whites a cavity-preventing scrub twice a day, often with Colgate, Crest or one of the other brands. A few decades ago, many people didn"t drink water outside of a meal. Then beverage companies started bottling the production of far-off springs, and now office workers unthinkingly sip bottled water all day long. Chewing gum, once bought primarily by adolescent boys, is now featured in commercials as a breath freshener and teeth cleanser for use after a meal. Skin moisturizers are advertised as part of morning beauty rituals, slipped in between hair brushing and putting on makeup. "Our products succeed when they become part of daily or weekly patterns," said Carol Berning, a consumer psychologist who recently retired from Procter & Gamble, the company that sold $76 billion of Tide, Crest and other products last year. "Creating positive habits is a huge part of improving our consumers" lives, and it"s essential to making new products commercially viable." Through experiments and observation, social scientists like Dr. Berning have learned that there is power in tying certain behaviors to habitual cues through ruthless advertising. As this new science of habit has emerged, controversies have erupted when the tactics have been used to Sell questionable beauty creams or unhealthy foods.

单选题Some pessimistic experts feel that the automobile is bound to fall into disuse. They see a day in the not-too-distant future when all autos will be abandoned and allowed to rust. Other authorities, however, think the auto is here to stay. They hold that the car will remain a leading means of urban travel in the foreseeable future. The motorcar will undoubtedly change significantly over the next 30 years. It should become smaller, safer, and more economical, and should not be powered by the gasoline engine. The car of the future should be far more pollution-free than present types. Regardless of its power source, the auto in the future will still be the main problem in urban traffic congestion. One proposed solution to this problem is the automated highway system. When the auto enters the highway system, a retractable arm will drop from the auto and make contact with a rail, which is similar to those powering subway trains electrically. Once attached to the rail, the car will become electrically powered from the system, and control of the vehicle will pass to a central computer. The computer will then monitor all of the car"s movements. The driver will use a telephone to dial instructions about his destination into the system. The computer will calculate the best route, and reserve space for the car all the way to the correct exit from the highway. The driver will then be free to relax and wait for the buzzer that will warn him of his coming exit. It is estimated that an automated highway will be able to handle 10,000 vehicles per hour, compared with the 1,500 to 2,000 vehicles that can be carried by a present-day highway.

单选题Could a simple memory workout make you smarter? An intriguing new study by researchers at the University of Michigan suggests it can—a finding that adds a wrinkle to the prevailing notion that IQ is largely fixed by genes. The study involved 62 elementary- and middle-school children from southeast Michigan who were randomly assigned to train on one of two video game-like computer tasks. One group performed a mental-training exercise aimed at improving working memory, the ability to hold and retrieve information in the short term. The other group practiced general knowledge and vocabulary skills. Both groups trained for one month, five times a week for 15 minutes per session. At the end of the intervention, many of the kids who had engaged in the working memory task had boosted a key attribute of their intelligence—by some five points. Specifically, they improved their performance on tests of so-called fluid intelligence, the ability to solve new problems and reason abstractly. Researchers have long debated whether fluid intelligence—considered a significant predictor of educational success—could be reliably improved by training. Fluid intelligence is thought to be independent of learning, experience or education and, therefore, mainly governed by genes. By contrast, the other component of overall intelligence, crystallized intelligence, which involves the acquisition of discrete bits of knowledge, improves with learning. The Michigan researchers found that kids had not only enhanced their fluid intelligence after training on the working-memory tasks, but that they also maintained the gains for three months after training ended. There were several limitations to the findings, however. To start, the size of children"s improvements was inconsistent. It"s possible that kids who saw greater gains in fluid intelligence were those who started out at lower ability levels and simply had more room to improve. Further; not every child improved. The authors suggested that students who failed to benefit from the working-memory training found the task too difficult or boring, and became frustrated and disengaged. Indeed, the training task is a chore, even when dressed up in a video game. The job of the child is to press the space bar whenever the character returns to a spot where it has previously been, and to ignore the other irrelevant locations. As the children advance in the task, these locations move further back in time, forcing them to sort through an increasing amount of information. Perhaps more importantly, it"s not clear whether higher scores on tests of fluid intelligence have any real-world significance: whether they naturally translate to better grades or improvements in other abilities—or for that matter whether they predict better jobs or more life success down the line. For now, the Michigan researchers are planning to investigate whether the same training task could benefit children with deficits in working memory and attention. Lead author Susanne Jaeggi and her team are also working on an intervention that can be easily implemented in schools and other educational settings.

单选题If I could guarantee one thing in life it would be change—the fact that it will happen even when we resist it. It is the constant motion in our lives and its power should not be taken lightly or underestimated. Change is personal, change is powerful. Think about the magnitude of the word when we talk about changing ourselves. Your desire to change may come from wanting to improve yourself in some way from the inside out. I am certainly glad when I hear this from people, because at our very core there is always work to be done. Maybe it"s about healing ourselves from a broken heart or replenishing our soul when a painful situation has left us feeling mentally, physically or spiritually depleted. Maybe it"s just that deep-down desire to be kinder to ourselves, for ourselves to treat ourselves better. Things that sound easy to change can actually be the hardest things we"ve ever done, and because of this it"s important to internalize the changes we want to make by journaling and writing down our goals. We say we"re going to be more in touch with family or be more positive, but how many times have these regular conversations remained just that conversations, insignificant words that could have been powerful if we had backed up our talk with a timeline for change? I"m talking about living a life where our words become the framework for positive actions—a life in which we stop wishing for a better job or more time with our children or better bodies, and instead think about what we must do to spur the change for ourselves. The impact that change has on each of us is incredible. The mere one-syllable word causes many of us to become fearful—at just the thought of doing something differently, trying something new or challenging ourselves in ways we never have before. The prospect of changing behaviors and thoughts that have stifled our progress should be something that we welcome. In casual conversations many people tell me they welcome change—but behind closed doors they admit they"re terrified. They are afraid of the realization that what they are doing today could be altered dramatically in a mere twenty-four hours. I can say with confidence that change has such an impact on our lives simply because it is a universal element that we all must confront. Each moment of the day we are consciously and subconsciously taking in new information and reprocessing old information in our brains. This constant influx and exchange has the ability to alter the way we view situations in our lives. Perhaps we have changed a belief or come to terms with something, or maybe we now disagree with someone because, as they tell us, we"ve "changed." The transformation is brought on by something that resonates with us or encourages us to consider a new perspective. When this happens, it"s a real breakthrough, isn"t it!

单选题Ruth Simmons joined Goldman Sachs"s board as an outside director in January 2000: a year later she became president of Brown University. For the rest of the decade she apparently managed both roles without attracting much criticism. But by the end of 2009 Ms. Simmons was under fire for having sat on Goldman"s compensation committee; how could she have let those enormous bonus payouts pass unremarked? By February the next year Ms. Simmons had left the board. The position was just taking up too much time, she said. Outside directors are supposed to serve as helpful, yet less biased, advisers on a firm"s board. Having made their wealth and their reputations elsewhere, they presumably have enough independence to disagree with the chief executive"s proposals. If the sky, and the share price, is falling, outside directors should be able to give advice based on having weathered their own crises. The researchers from Ohio University used a database that covered more than 10,000 firms and more than 64,000 different directors between 1989 and 2004. Then they simply checked which directors stayed from one proxy statement to the next. The most likely reason for departing a board was age, so the researchers concentrated on those "surprise" disappearances by directors under the age of 70. They found that after a surprise departure, the probability that the company will subsequently have to restate earnings increased by nearly 20%. The likelihood of being named in a federal class-action lawsuit also increases, and the stock is likely to perform worse. The effect tended to be larger for larger firms. Although a correlation between them leaving and subsequent bad performance at the firm is suggestive, it does not mean that such directors are always jumping off a sinking ship. Often they "trade up." Leaving riskier, smaller firms for larger and more stable firms. But the researchers believe that outside directors have an easier time of avoiding a blow to their reputations if they leave a firm before bad news breaks, even if a review of history shows they were on the board at the time any wrongdoing occurred. Firms who want to keep their outside directors through tough times may have to create incentives. Otherwise outside directors will follow the example of Ms. Simmons, once again very popular on campus.

单选题Massive changes in all of the world"s deeply cherished sporting habits are underway. Whether it"s one of London"s parks full of people playing softball, and Russians taking up rugby, or the Superbowl rivaling the British Football Cup Final as a televised spectator event in Britain, the patterns of players and spectators are changing beyond recognition. We are witnessing a globalization of our sporting culture. That annual bicycle race, the Tour de France, much loved by the French is a good case in point. Just a few years back it was a strictly continental affair with France, Belgium and Holland, Spain and Italy taking part. But in recent years it has been dominated by Colombian mountain climbers, and American and Irish riders. The people who really matter welcome the shift toward globalization. Peugeot, Michelin and Panasonic are multi-national corporations that want worldwide returns for the millions they invest in teams. So it does them literally a world of good to see this unofficial world championship become just that. This is undoubtedly an economic-based revolution we are witnessing here, one made possible by communications technology, but made to happen because of marketing considerations. Sell the game and you can sell Coca Cola or Budweiser as well. The skilful way in which American football has been sold to Europe is a good example of how all sports will develop. The aim of course is not really to spread the sport for its own sake, but to increase the number of people interested in the major money-making events. The economics of the Superbowl are already astronomical. With seats at US $125, gate receipts alone were a staggering $10,000,000. The most important statistic of the day, however, was the $100,000,000 in TV advertising fees. Imagine how much that becomes when the eyes of the world are watching. So it came as a terrible shock, but not really as a surprise, to learn that some people are now suggesting that soccer change from being a game of two 45-minute halves, to one of four 25-minute quarters. The idea is unashamedly to capture more advertising revenue, without giving any thought for the integrity of a sport which relies for its essence on the flowing nature of the action. Moreover, as sports expand into world markets, and as our choice of sports as consumers also grows, so we will demand to see them played at a higher and higher level. In boxing we have already seen numerous, dubious world title categories because people will not pay to see anything less than a "World Title" fight, and this means that the. title fights have to be held in different countries around the world!

单选题Against a backdrop of drastic changes in economy and population structure, younger Americans are drawing a new 21 st-century road map to success, a latest poll has found. Across generational lines, Americans continue to prize many of the same traditional milestones of a successful life, including getting married, having children, owning a home, and retiring in their sixties. But while young and old mostly agree on what constitutes the finish line of a fulfilling life, they offer strikingly different paths for reaching it. Young people who are still getting started in life were more likely than older adults to prioritize personal fulfillment in their work, to believe they will advance their careers most by regularly changing jobs, to favor communities with more public services and a faster pace of life, to agree that couples should be financially secure before getting married or having children, and to maintain that children are best served by two parents working outside the home, the survey found. From career to community and family, these contrasts suggest that in the aftermath of the searing Great Recession, those just starting out in life are defining priorities and expectations that will increasingly spread through virtually all aspects of American life, from consumer preferences to housing patterns to politics. Young and old converge on one key point: Overwhelming majorities of both groups said they believe it is harder for young people today to get started in life than it was for earlier generations. While younger people are somewhat more optimistic than their elders about the prospects for those starting out today, big majorities in both groups believe those "just getting started in life" face a tougher climb than earlier generations in reaching such signpost achievements as securing a good-paying job, starting a family, managing debt, and finding affordable housing. Pete Schneider considers the climb tougher today. Schneider, a 27-year-old auto technician from the Chicago suburbs, says he struggled to find a job after graduating from college. Even now that he is working steadily, he said, "I can"t afford to pay my monthly mortgage payments on my own, so I have to rent rooms out to people to make that happen." Looking back, he is struck that his parents could provide a comfortable life for their children even though neither had completed college when he was young. "I still grew up in an upper middle-class home with parents who didn"t have college degrees," Schneider said. "I don"t think people are capable of that anymore."

单选题It came as something of a surprise when Diana, Princess of Wales, made a trip to Angola in 1997, to support the Red Cross"s campaign for a total ban on all anti-personnel landmines. Within hours of arriving in Angola, television screens around the world were filled with images of her comforting victims injured in explosions caused by landmines. "I knew the statistics," she said. "But putting a face to those figures brought the reality home to me; like when I met Sandra, a 13-year-old girl who had lost her leg, and people like her." The Princess concluded with a simple message: "We must stop landmines". And she used every opportunity during her visit to repeat this message. But, back in London, her views were not shared by some members of the British government, which refused to support a ban on these weapons. Angry politicians launched an attack on the Princess in the press. They described her as "very ill-informed" and a "loose cannon". The Princess responded by brushing aside the criticisms: "This is a distraction we do not need. All I"m trying to do is help." Opposition parties, the media and the public immediately voiced their support for the Princess. To make matters worse for the government, it soon emerged that the Princess"s trip had been approved by the Foreign Office, and that she was in fact very well-informed about both the situation in Angola and the British government"s policy regarding landmines. The result was a severe embarrassment for the government. To try and limit the damage, the Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, claimed that the Princess"s views on landmines were not very different from government policy, and that it was "working towards" a worldwide ban. The Defence Secretary, Michael Portillo, claimed the matter was "a misinterpretation or misunderstanding." For the Princess, the trip to this war-torn country was an excellent opportunity to use her popularity to show the world how much destruction and suffering landmines can cause. She said that the experience had also given her the chance to get closer to people and their problems.