翻译题Green space facilities are contributing to an important extent to the quality of the urban environment. Fortunately it is no longer necessary that every lecture or every book about this subject has to start with the proof of this idea. 46 At present it is generally accepted, although more as a self-evident statement than on the basis of a closely-reasoned scientific proof. The recognition of the importance of green space in the urban environment is a first step on the right way. 47 This does not mean, however, that sufficient details are known about the functions of green space in towns and about the way in which the inhabitants are using these spaces. As to this rather complex subject I shall, within the scope of this lecture, enter into one aspect only, namely the recreative function of green space facilities. 48 The theoretical separation of living, working, traffic and recreation which for many years has been used in town-and-country planning, has in my opinion resulted in disproportionate attention for forms of recreation far from home, whereas there was relatively little attention for improvement of recreative possibilities in the direct neighborhood of the home. 49 We have come to the conclusion that this is not right, because an important part of the time which we do not pass in sleeping or working, is used for activities at and around home. So it is obvious that recreation in the open air has to begin at the street door of the house. 50 The urban environment has to offer as many recreation activities as possible, and the design of these has to be such that more obligatory activities can also have a recreative _aspect. The very best standard of living is nothing if it is not possible to take a pleasant walk in the district, if the children cannot be allowed to play in the streets, because the risks of traffic are too great, if during shopping you can nowhere find a spot for enjoying for a moment the nice weather, in short, if you only feel yourself at home after the street-door of your house is closed after you.

翻译题 When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong. 46 Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit. The studies are analyzed in a new edition of a neurology book, Progress in Brain Research. Some brains do deteriorate with age. Alzheimer's disease, for example, strikes 13 percent of Americans 65 and older. 47 But for most aging adults, the authors say, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number. Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful. 'It may be that distractibility is not, in fact, a bad thing,' said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. 'It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind.' For example, in studies where subjects are asked to read passages that are interrupted with unexpected words or phrases, adults who are 60 and older work much more slowly than college students. 48 Although the students plow through the texts at a consistent speed regardless of what the out-of-place words mean older people slow down even more when the words are related to the topic at hand. That indicates that they are not just stumbling over the extra information, but are taking it in and processing it. 49 When both groups were later asked questions for which the out-of-place words might be answers, the older adults responded much better than the students. 'For the young people, it's as if the distraction never happened,' said an author of the review, Lynn Hasher, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute. 'But for older adults, because they've retained all this extra data they're now suddenly the better problem solvers. They can transfer the information they've soaked up from one situation to another.' 50 Such tendencies can yield big advantages in the real world where it is not always clear what information is important, or will become important. A seemingly irrelevant point or suggestion in a memo can take on new meaning if the original plan changes. Or extra details that stole your attention, like others, yawning and fidgeting, may help you assess the speaker's real impact.

翻译题 One of the hallmarks of our anxieties about the future is confusion over how to prepare young people for it. What is it that we are supposed to be educating students for? 46 We know that today's young people will, during their lifetimes, face multiple changes in jobs, and we assume that their future will be shaped by technologies that we cannot yet imagine. But when we try to translate these observations into what elementary and secondary schools should be doing, the result is usually a rehash of tired old complaints. If we are ever to break out of this cycle, we are going to need some very big ideas. Egan, a professor of education at Simon Fraser University, recognizes the temptation to place blame for schools' failures on incompetent teachers and simple-minded politicians, but he wants a deeper and more useful explanation. 47 The key to obtaining such an explanation lies in addressing the problematic yet unchallenged assumptions that trap today's debate in an endless cycle of frustration. Drawing on evolutionary psychology and cognitive science, Egan outlines three widely accepted schools of thought about the goals of education. The first takes education to be a matter of socializing humans into the membership of nations and other collectives. 48 'Governments are in the business of schooling' for this reason, but socialization is pursued at a cost because 'making requirements uniform will always be at odds with the ambitions of our imaginations.' Indeed, if the goal of socialization is pursued too assiduously, we call it indoctrination-at least when others do it. With the emergence of literacy in human history came a second big goal for education: Plato's academic ideal. 49 Mastering the new forms of coded knowledge that came with literacy has become the purpose of much of contempoary education and, for better or for worse, underlies much of the testing that now shapes it. The third is the 'developmental' idea, through which education is viewed as 'supporting the fullest achievement of the natural process of mental development.' Like the blind men who encounter an elephant, these ideas bring limited perspectives to the discussion. Worse yet, they bring views that often stand in direct contradiction to one another. 50 As he puts it: 'There is no mind in the brain until the brain interacts with the external symbolic stone of culture, ' and in such interaction, the possibilities for innovation live as well.

翻译题Take a cell, practically any cell, from your body, and through appropriate biological repairing, you can cause it to grow into a duplicate of yourself—identical from eyelashes to toenails. With this system, you can neatly reproduce yourself without any partner. Human cloning, it's called. Is this science fact or science fiction? 46 In the spring of 1996, a book was published telling the supposedly true story of an elderly millionaire who, at great expense, succeeded in producing a clone—an exact genetic copy of himself. According to the account, the cloned child, now 4 years old, is living with his father in California. The book caused a small uproar. Clone movies and clone jokes sprang up overnight. 47 A group of scientists demanded that the federal government reveal all the studies it has funded on cloning and related field of cell biology. But some distinguished biologists offered their opinion that the book was pure fantasy. They pointed out that cell researchers simply do not yet know enough to pull off such a feat, even if they are anxious to. Yet the cloning story touches a highly sensitive nerve. People began to realize that we are on the threshold of a new age in the biosciences. Knowledge of genetic engineering is emerging that allows scientists to tinker with, and change, the very stuff of life. 48 The assumption on which human cloning tests is that all genetic ceils, though now specialized, still contain exact copies of the original set of genetic instructions needed to make an entire individual and could do so if a way is found to switch them back on. If so, the recipe for cloning people should be quite simple, at least in theory. Although it may look simple on paper, it isn't in practice. To date scientists have succeeded in cloning some small animals. But it is still a far cry from the much more complicated experiment on the carbon copy of human beings. Even when technically possible, the potential of human cloning challenges our entire value system. We must talk about the implications now, before any crisis occurs. What would happen if human cloning became a reality? One favorite expectation is the creation of a new breed of Einstein's. But scientists quickly denied the possibility. It is more than genetic make-up that makes an individual. 49 People are all products of a particular historical time and of special environment, with so many minute things affecting the way they develop each and every day. A duplicate background—and therefore a duplicate individual—could never be created. Fortunately, cloning research is not a technique for reproductive purposes, but to cure human diseases. 50 Already biologists studying the cell's inner workings and the various methods of cloning have made exciting discoveries that may finally lead to breakthroughs in fighting against cancer. It may also be used to control the aging process, and conquer presently incurable human genetic diseases.

{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} An annual census of wolves at Yellowsto ne National Park has found a sharp drop in the population. But park biologists, who suspect a deadly disease, canine parvovirus, say they will let nature take its course. "Parvo can be vaccinated for and can be treated, but we wouldn't do it because we couldn't catch every animal," Daniel Stahler. a park waif biologist, said. "And this allows them to build up a natural resistance." The census found 22 pups, compared with 69 last year. The total count of wolves dropped m 118 from 171, the lowest since 2000. "It was somewhat devastating to have such poor pup survival," Mr. Stahler said. "But research shows that young pups can bounce back from it quite successfully." That pups have suffered the decline seems to suggest the culprit is parvo, said Ed Bangs, waif recovery coordinator for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service here. Nursing pups receive immunity from their mother's milk. but the immunity drops when nursing stops. The large number of wolves in the park might also be a factor. "When you have a big litter and adults are having trouble killing enough to feed all these pups, and the animals are stressed, parvo flares up," Mr. Bangs said. "If you have 15 brothers and sisters instead of 3, you don't get enough to eat; parvo kills you." Canine parvovirus was discovered in the United States in 1978. Extremely hardy, the disease spread rapidly to domestic dogs and then into wild animal populations. Biologists suspect that it was introduced to Yellowstone by a tourist's infected dog or a coyote. Because parvo is so hardy, it persists in the soil for months. A wolf could catch it from simply sniffing infectious soil. the biologists said. The disease has hit wolves on the northern range, the elk-filled meadows of the northern half of the park, especially hard. Out of 49 pups born there, 8 survived. Some scientists, including Mr. Bangs, theorize that the park may have overshot its capacity for wolves and that the numbers are naturally adjusting downward, with disease being one of the agents. The long-term carrying capacity of the park, he said, is probably 110 to 150 wolves. Wolves have been killed in other ways, too. Frequent encounters among competing wolf packs are the biggest cause of death among adults. In the first five years of their reintroduction to the park, one or two animals a year were killed by other wolves. That number has risen to four or five a year. Vehicles also take a toll, Fourteen wolves have been killed by vehicles in the last 10 years, eight of them near Mile Marker 30 on Route 191, a straight stretch on the western side of the park where motorists tend to speed and wolves are plentiful.

{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} The number of city schools put on a list for strict scrutiny by the state for poor academic performance went up slightly this year. and the number of city schools taken off the list by showing improvement dropped, the state's commissioner of education announced yesterday. Ten city schools—now at risk of being shut down—were added to the list of Schools Under Registration Review, known as SURR, bringing the total in the city m 40. Statewide. 61 schools are under review, said the commissioner, Richard Mills. The addition of 10 city schools reverses what had been a trend in the past few years: the number of schools on the list had been falling. There were 55 schools in 2003, 46 in 2004 and 35 last year, an all-time low. But this year a new factor was at work: The state raised the level of performance required to pass its standards. In addition, 6 of the 10 newly named schools are middle schools--and those schools have for years confounded educators by resisting the improvements that have worked in lower grades and even in high schools. Three city schools were removed from the list this year for improvement in academic performance, but that number was significantly lower than the number removed in each of the past several years. For instance, 16 schools were taken off the list last year. Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein observed that the number of endangered schools still remains at a near-record low. "Nevertheless. we cannot accept failing performance by any of our schools for any reason," he said. "If a school proves incapable of providing a high-quality education m our students despite efforts to improve it, it will be closed." He said 8 of the 40 schools that have been on the list were scheduled m be closed this year and 5 more will be closed next year. The state also expanded its review process for the first time this year m District 75, which covers special education schools, and one District 75 school, Public School 12 in the Bronx, was put on the list. Despite the additions, Mr. Mills said he was pleased. "I think it's impressive since we have been rinsing the bar," he said. "The city has essentially been staying ahead of a moving locomotive." Elsewhere in the state, three schools in Buffalo and two in Syracuse were added to the list. The 10 New York City schools on the list are Legacy School for Integrated Studies in Manhattan; P.S. 220, P.S. 12, Junior High School 123 and Middle School 302 in the Bronx; J.H.S. 265. J.H.S. 57, M.S. 143, Intermediate School 291 and P.S. 12 in Brooklyn. The three schools removed from the list are P.S. 140 in the Bronx. Repertory Company High School in Manhattan and EBC/ENY High School for Public Safety and Law in Brooklyn.

It is commonly supposed that the health of Long Island Sound is chiefly the responsibility of the shoreline communities in Long Island, Westchester County and Connecticut. This is largely true. It is also true, however, that New York City has long been a major contributor to the environmental ills that torture this noblest of American estuaries. The main reason is four old municipal sewage treatment plants on the East River. Every day of every year, these plants deposit hundreds of thousands of gallons of partly treated wastewater into the river, which then, with tidal certainty, propels the polluted water into the Sound itself The most damaging of the pollutants leaving the plants is nitrogen—useful as a fertilizer on land but, in sufficient quantities, fatal to bodies of water like the Sound, where it stimulates the growth of bacteria and algae and robs the water of oxygen. This condition is known as hypoxia, and it suppresses marine life. Roughly half the nitrogen comes from treatment plants and other sources in about 80 shoreline communities, the other half comes from the New York City plants. It is thus cause for great celebration that the city agreed last week to settle a longstanding legal action and spend at least $700 million to upgrade these four plants, cutting their nitrogen output by nearly 60 percent by 2017. Audubon New York, a leader among the environmental groups that helped shape the agreement and move it forward, when negotiations seemed to falter, called the agreement an historic moment in the struggle to restore the Sound to good health. In retrospect, the most important moment in that struggle the moment from which all else has flowed, including last week's agreement—came m 1994, when New York and Connecticut. after sustained pressure from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, approved a comprehensive plan to clean up the Sound. The city's main responsibility was to modernize its sewage treatment plants. The Giuliani administration left the bulk of the task to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Alarmed by the project's estimated $1.3 billion price tag, Mr. Bloomberg dispatched Christopher Ward, then the environmental commissioner, to Europe and elsewhere to find new, more cost-efficient waste treatment technologies. In due course, Mr. Ward and his counterpart in Albany, Erin Crotty, reached an agreement in principle to reform the plants at well under the original cost. Mr. Ward and Ms. Crotty left public service, but after further debating aimed partly at ensuring that future city administrations could not wiggle out of the deal, and after further prodding by Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, their successors. Emily Lloyd and Denise Sheehan, brought the matter to a close. This does not mean the Sound is no longer at risk. The Sound passes through the densest population corridor in the country, and will remain forever stressed by the 20 million people who live within 50 miles of its shores. Thus the shoreline communities in Long Island, Westchester and Connecticut must do more than ever to contain pollution.

{{B}}Directions:{{/B}}Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on ANSWER SHEET 1. Punishment depends as much on politics as it does on crime: crime rates have been stable in recent years but there' s been a striking increase in the prison population, And because populism is coming so much to{{U}} (1) {{/U}}the political agendas, politicians are advocating sharp increases in penalties to take{{U}} (2) {{/U}}of public unease. The question is how far this will get. In the 21st century weak governments might try to win legitimacy by being especially{{U}} (3) {{/U}}on crime. That could mean high prison populations and draconian{{U}} (4) {{/U}}such as those adopted in the United States in recent years. Luckily, there remain significant differences between the UK and the USA: social divisions are less extreme and racial{{U}} (5) {{/U}}are not as high.{{U}} (6) {{/U}}there is a great deal of minor violent crime here, rates of murder—{{U}} (7) {{/U}}particularly fuel public anxieties—are much{{U}} (8) {{/U}}because guns have not been so widely{{U}} (9) {{/U}}. It' s unlikely that this will change greatly: the{{U}} (10) {{/U}}to tighten up the gun laws in Britain will continue ,and all{{U}} (11) {{/U}}the toughest criminals will still have a view about what is and what isn't "acceptable violence. So I don' t believe we will see a huge{{U}} (12) {{/U}}in violent crime, but I{{U}} (13) {{/U}}rates of property crime and crimes of opportunity to remain high. There will also be much more electronic fraud because it' s so hard to{{U}} (14) {{/U}}and prevent. This is an important problem for business, but not one that{{U}} (15) {{/U}}much popular agitation. It' s unlikely we'll see the return of the death penalty: the police are{{U}} (16) {{/U}}about its effectiveness and its reintroduction would be highly problematic{{U}} (17) {{/U}}the recent Council of Europe protocol outlawing its use.{{U}} (18) {{/U}}punishment remains a pretty accurate temperature gauge, though:{{U}} (19) {{/U}}there is significant political pressure for the death penalty, it' s a{{U}} (20) {{/U}} of harsher attitudes towards crime generally.

Tuning in round the clock, via satellite or internet blog, to any bout of mayhem anywhere, you might not think the world was becoming a more peaceable place. But in some ways it is, and measurably so. A recent Human Security Report released by the Liu Institute at the University of British Columbia registers a 40% drop in the number of armed conflicts between 1992 and 2003, with the worst wars, those claiming more than a thousand lives in battle, down by 80%. While 28 armed struggles for self-determination ignited or reignited between 1991 and 2004, an encouraging 43 others were contained or doused. Yet measured in a different way, from the point of view of the half of the world"s population that is female, argues the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of the Armed Forces, the world is an awfully violent place, and not just in its war zones. Men still fill most of the body bags in wartime, including in civil wars, even on DCAF"s figures, but their sisters, mothers, wives and daughters, it argues in a new report entitled "Women in an Insecure World", face nothing short of a "hidden gendercide". Violence against women is nothing new. DCAF"s contribution is to collate the many figures and estimates—not all of them easily verifiable, it has to be said—on everything from infanticide to rape (in both war and peace), dowry deaths, sex trafficking and domestic violence (in richer countries as well as poorer ones). According to one UN estimate cited by DCAF, between 113m and 200m women are now demographically "missing". This gender gap is a result of the aborting of girl foetuses and infanticide in countries where boys are preferred; lack of food and medical attention that goes instead to brothers, fathers, husbands and sons; so-called "honour killings" and dowry deaths; and other sorts of domestic violence. It implies that each year between 1.5m and 3m women and girls are lost to gender-based violence. In other words, every two to four years the world looks away from a victim count on the scale of Hitler"s Holocaust. Women between the ages of 15 and 44 are more likely to be maimed or die from violence inflicted one way or another by their menfolk than through cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war combined. Poor health care means that 600,000 women are lost each year to childbirth (a toll roughly equal annually to that of the Rwandan genocide). The World Health Organisation estimates that 6,000 girls a day (more than 2m a year), mostly in the poor world, undergo genital mutilation. Other WHO figures suggest that, around the world, one woman in five is likely to be a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime.

This year the combined advertising revenues of Google and Yahoo! will rival the combined prime-time ad revenues of America's three big television networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, predicts Advertising Age. 41. ______. And this week online advertising made another leap forward. The latest innovation comes from Google, which has begun testing a new auction-based service for display advertising. It already provides a service called AdSense. It works rather like an advertising agency, automatically placing sponsored links and other ads on third-party websites. Google then splits the revenue with the owners of those websites, who can range from multinationals to individuals publishing blogs, as online journals are known. Google's new services extend AdSense in three ways. 42. ______ This provides both more flexibility and control, says Patrick Keane, Google's head of sales strategy. Companies trying to raise awareness of a brand often want a high level of control over where their ads appear. The second change involves pricing. 43. ______. Click-through marketing tends to be aimed at people who already know they want to buy something and are searching for product and price information, whereas display advertising is more often used to persuade people to buy things in the first instance. The third change is that Google will now offer animated ads--but nothing too flashy or annoying, insists Mr. Keane. Google has long been extremely conservative about the use of advertising; it still plans to use only small, text-based ads on its own search sites. 44. ______. This could fuel online ad-growth even further. Worldwide ad revenue on the internet grew by 21% in 2004, and it is expected to continue at that pace for the next few years, says ZenithOptimedia, a research firm. As Google and Yahoo! are two of the most widely visited sites, this greatly benefits them. 45. ______. Terry Semel, Yahoo!' s chief executive, believes there is a lot more growth to come as companies become more familiar with online advertising. Other innovations in online marketing are said to be in the pipeline. Local search and its associated advertising opportunities are one huge growth area. This week, Yahoo! appointed another top executive to its media group, fuelling industry speculation that the website may start to produce its own entertainment content. Television stations would then have a lot more to worry about than just losing ad revenue to the internet. [A] Instead of Google's software analyzing third-party websites to determine from their content what relevant ads to place on them, advertisers will instead be able to select the specific sites where they want their ads to appear. [B] Google recently announced a net profit of $ 369m in its first quarter from revenue that soared to $1.3 billion, up 93% compared with the same period a year earlier. Yahoo!'s first-quarter net profits more than doubled to $ 205m on revenue of $1.2 billion, up 55% from a year earlier. [C] Many big firms still allocate only 2-4% of their marketing budgets to the internet, although it represents about 15% of consumers' media consumption--a share that is growing. Many young people already spend more time online than they do watching TV. [D] It will, says the trade magazine, represent a "watershed moment" in the evolution of the internet as an advertising medium. A 30-second prime-time TV ad was once considered the most effective--and the most expensive--form of advertising. But that was before the internet got going. [E] But many of its AdSense partners might well be tempted by the prospect of earning a share of revenue from display and animated ads too, especially as such ads are likely to be more appealing to some of the big-brand advertisers.[F] Sites such as eBay, the leading online auctioneer, and Craigslist, which hosts local sites, are soaking up large amounts of spending that might otherwise have gone on classified advertising-and for everything from used cars to job vacancies. Yahoo! is expanding heavily into entertainment, with film and video clips providing another avenue for advertisers.[G] Potential internet advertisers must bid for their ad to appear on a "cost-per-thousand" (known as CPM) basis. CPM bids will have to compete against rival bids for the same ad space from those wanting to pay on a "cost-per-click" basis, the way search terms are presently sold.

Occasional self-medication has always been part of normal living. The making and selling of drugs has a long history and is closely linked, like medical practice itself, with the belief in magic. Only during the last hundred years or so has the development of scientific techniques made it possible for some of the causes of symptoms to be understood, so that more accurate diagnosis has become possible. The doctor is now able to follow up the correct diagnosis of many illnesses with specific treatment of their causes. In many other illnesses, of which the causes remain unknown, it is still limited, like the unqualified prescriber, to the treatment of symptoms. The doctor is trained to decide when to treat symptoms only and when to attack the cause—this is the essential difference between medical prescribing and self-medication. The advance of technology has brought about much progress in some fields of medicine, including the development of scientific drug therapy. In many countries public health organization is improving and people"s nutritional standards have risen. Parallel with such beneficial trends are two which have an adverse effect. One is the use of high-pressure advertising by the pharmaceutical industry, which has tended to influence both patients and doctors and has led to the overuse of drugs generally. The other is the emergence of the sedentary society with its faulty ways of life: lack of exercise, over-eat-ing, unsuitable eating, insufficient sleep, excessive smoking and drinking. People with disorders arising from faulty habits such as these, as well as from unhappy human relationships, often resort to self-medication and so add the taking of pharmaceuticals to the list. Advertisers go to great lengths to catch this market. Clever advertising, aimed at chronic sufferers who will try anything because doctors have not been able to cure them, can induce such faith in a preparation, particularly if steeply priced, that it will produce—by suggestion—a very real effect in some people. Advertisements are also aimed at people suffering from mild complaints such as simple colds and coughs, which clear up by themselves within a short time. These are the main reasons why laxatives, indigestion remedies, painkillers, tonics, vitamin and iron tablets and many other preparations are found in quantity in many households. It is doubtful whether taking these things ever improves a person"s health ; it may even make it worse. Worse because the preparation may contain unsuitable ingredients; worse because the taker may become dependent on them; worse because they might be taken in excess; worse because they may cause poisoning, and worse of all because symptoms of some serious underlying cause may be masked and therefore medical help may not be sought.

{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} It is commonly supposed that the health of Long Island Sound is chiefly the responsibility of the shoreline communities in Long Island, Westchester County and Connecticut. This is largely true. It is also true, however, that New York City has long been a major contributor to the environmental ills that torture this noblest of American estuaries. The main reason is four old municipal sewage treatment plants on the East River. Every day of every year, these plants deposit hundreds of thousands of gallons of partly treated wastewater into the river, which then, with tidal certainty, propels the polluted water into the Sound itself The most damaging of the pollutants leaving the plants is nitrogen—useful as a fertilizer on land but, in sufficient quantities, fatal to bodies of water like the Sound, where it stimulates the growth of bacteria and algae and robs the water of oxygen. This condition is known as hypoxia, and it suppresses marine life. Roughly half the nitrogen comes from treatment plants and other sources in about 80 shoreline communities, the other half comes from the New York City plants. It is thus cause for great celebration that the city agreed last week to settle a longstanding legal action and spend at least $700 million to upgrade these four plants, cutting their nitrogen output by nearly 60 percent by 2017. Audubon New York, a leader among the environmental groups that helped shape the agreement and move it forward, when negotiations seemed to falter, called the agreement an historic moment in the struggle to restore the Sound to good health. In retrospect, the most important moment in that struggle the moment from which all else has flowed, including last week's agreement—came m 1994, when New York and Connecticut. after sustained pressure from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, approved a comprehensive plan to clean up the Sound. The city's main responsibility was to modernize its sewage treatment plants. The Giuliani administration left the bulk of the task to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Alarmed by the project's estimated $1.3 billion price tag, Mr. Bloomberg dispatched Christopher Ward, then the environmental commissioner, to Europe and elsewhere to find new, more cost-efficient waste treatment technologies. In due course, Mr. Ward and his counterpart in Albany, Erin Crotty, reached an agreement in principle to reform the plants at well under the original cost. Mr. Ward and Ms. Crotty left public service, but after further debating aimed partly at ensuring that future city administrations could not wiggle out of the deal, and after further prodding by Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, their successors. Emily Lloyd and Denise Sheehan, brought the matter to a close. This does not mean the Sound is no longer at risk. The Sound passes through the densest population corridor in the country, and will remain forever stressed by the 20 million people who live within 50 miles of its shores. Thus the shoreline communities in Long Island, Westchester and Connecticut must do more than ever to contain pollution.

Culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and human feeling. 1 of information have nothing to do with it. A merely well-informed man is the most useless 2 on God"s earth. What we should 3 at producing is men who 4 both culture and expert knowledge in some special direction. Their expert knowledge will give them the ground to start 5 , and their culture will lead them as 6 as philosophy and as high as 7 We have to remember that the valuable 8 development is self-development, and that it 9 takes place between the ages of sixteen and thirty. As to training, the most important part is given by mothers before the age of twelve. In training a child to activity of thought, above all things we must 10 of what I will call "inert ideas"—— that is to say, ideas that are merely 11 into the mind without being 12 , or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations. In the history of education, the most 13 phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive with a craze for genius, in a 14 generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine. The reason is that they are overlade with inert ideas. Except at 15 intervals of intellectual motivation, education in the past has been radically 16 with inert ideas. That is the reason why 17 clever women, who have seen much of the world, are in middle life so much the most cultured part of the community. They have been saved from this horrible 18 of inert ideas. Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity 19 greatness has been a 20 protest against inert ideas.

Globally, recovery is going slightly better than expected, according to the IMF, which released its latest World Economic Outlook today. After shrinking by 0.6% last year, the global economy is likely to expand by 4.2% in 2010, 0.3% faster than the IMF projected in January. But economic performances will continue to vary widely around the world. Much of the upward revision to global growth can be attributed to a better outlook for the American economy. The IMF revised its forecast for American economic expansion in 2010 up 0.4%, to 3.1%. There was no change, by contrast, for the euro area, which already faced a poorer growth outlook. The Euro area economy may only grow by 1% in 2010 and 1.5% in 2011. And much of the job of expansion will be handled by Germany and France, while southern European growth continues to lag. Spain's economy will continue to shrink in 2010. But the outlook is brightening for many emerging economies, including those in central and eastern Europe, for which growth forecasts were revised up by 0.8%. Developing Asia is enjoying a strong recovery, and the IMF indicated that both India and Brazil are likely to perform much better this year than initially anticipated, notching (赢得) growth rates of 8.8% and 5.5%, respectively. The report suggested that planned stimulus measures for 2010 should be fully implemented, given the fragility of recovery, but it also noted that sovereign debt worries will become more severe as the year progresses. Debt issues are likely to prove especially problematic in Europe, which has the highest debt ratios and the slowest expected growth rates. The stressed southern European nations are in a damned-if-they-do-damned-if-they-don't position. If little action is taken on debt, rising debt costs will choke of an already weak recovery. If aggressive action is taken, the blow to aggregate demand will likewise undermine growth. Around the world, trade and production have recovered strongly, but employment remains well below prerecession levels in most countries. Labour market weakness is helping to keep inflation expectations in check; the IMF forecasts consumer price increases in developed nations of 1.5% in 2010 and 1.4% in 2011. But the return to strong growth is boosting commodity prices once more. Oil prices may increase by 30% in 2010, said the IMF, a rise 7% larger than projected in January. The overall picture is of a remarkable turnaround in global fortunes, given the depth of the recession. The year's performance is much better than many would have dared to hope early last year. But in parts of Europe, the future is somewhat less certain, and because that uncertain future could lead to sovereign debt crises that could potentially rattle financial markets, world leaders should remain vigilant.

My Space and other Web sites have unleashed a potent new phenomenon of social networking in cyberspace, 1 at the same time, a growing body of evidence is suggesting that traditional social 2 play a surprisingly powerful and under-recognized role in influencing how people behave. The latest research comes from Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, at the Harvard Medical School, and Dr. James H. Fowler, at the University of California at San Diego. The 3 reported last summer that obesity appeared to 4 from one person to another 5 social networks, almost like a virus or a fad. In a follow-up to that provocative research, the team has produced 6 findings about another major health 7 : smoking. In a study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, the team found that a person"s decision to 8 the habit is strongly affected by 9 other people in their social network quit—even people they do not know. And, surprisingly, entire networks of smokers appear to quit virtually 10 For 11 of their studies, they 12 of detailed records kept between 1971 and 2003 about 5,124 people who participated in the landmark Framingham Heart Study. Because many of the subjects had ties to the Boston suburb of Framingham, Mass. , many of the participants were 13 somehow—through spouses, neighbors, friends, co-workers—enabling the researchers to study a network that 14 12,067 people. Taken together, these studies are 15 a growing recognition that many behaviors are 16 by social networks in 17 that have not been fully understood. And 18 may be possible, the researchers say, to harness the power of these networks for many 19 , such as encouraging safe sex, getting more people to exercise or even 20 crime.