单选题 The question facing Swiss voters on March 3rd was called the "people's initiative against fat-cat pay". With a billing like that, who wouldn't vote yes? As it happened, 68% of the electorate did, passing a measure that requires listed companies to offer shareholders a binding vote on senior managers' pay and appointments at each annual general meeting. The penalty for bosses who fail to comply is up to three years in jail or the forfeit of up to six years' salary. Switzerland's penchant for direct democracy has trumped its tolerance for tycoons. Swiss business is shaken. It had backed a "counter-initiative" giving shareholders more voting powers without threatening criminal sanction. That was rejected by voters. The new law, which will be written into the constitution, endangers Switzerland as an investment destination, the business lobby claims. Economiesuisse, the Swiss Business Federation, now accepts the popular verdict but warns that such complex and highly charged changes must be implemented carefully. The laws needed to put the vote into practice will take ten years to write, some cynics suggest. The initiative is the brainchild of Thomas Minder, who runs his family's toiletries business. He has apparently never forgiven Swissair for backing out of a contract when it nearly went bankrupt 12 years ago and then awarding its former boss a big pay-off. Mr. Minder's campaign gained momentum last month on news that Novartis, a Swiss drug firm, intended to pay its departing chairman, Daniel Vasella, a severance package of SFr 72m ($76m). Mr. Vasella later refused the package. After Mr. Minder's victory it will become harder to extend such corporate generosity. Some of the new restrictions seem sensible. Shareholder votes on executive pay, hitherto ad hoe and advisory, will become routine and binding. Pension funds will be required to vote in the interests of their members and make their votes public. Board members will not be permitted to have consulting or other contracts with firms in the same group. But other provisions are more burdensome. The law will ban incentives that can be useful, such as "golden hellos" and severance packages for board members. It will also bar them from accepting rewards for buying or selling company divisions.

单选题In our contemporary culture, the prospect of communicating with—or even looking at—a stranger is virtually unbearable. Everyone around us seems to agree by the way they cling to their phones, even without a 1 on a subway. It"s a sad reality—our desire to avoid interacting with other human beings—because there"s 2 to be gained from talking to the stranger standing by you. But you wouldn"t know it, 3 into your phone. This universal protection sends the 4 : "Please don"t approach me." What is it that makes us feel we need to hide 5 our screens? One answer is fear, according to Jon Wortmann, an executive mental coach. We fear rejection, or that our innocent social advances will be 6 as "weird." We fear we"ll be 7 . We fear we"ll be disruptive. Strangers are inherently 8 to us, so we are more likely to feel 9 when communicating with them compared with our friends and acquaintances. To avoid this uneasiness, we 10 to our phones. "Phones become our security blanket," Wortmann says. "They are our happy glasses that protect us from what we perceive is going to be more 11 ." But once we rip off the band-aid, tuck our smartphones in our pockets and look up, it doesn"t 12 so bad. In one 2011 experiment, behavioral scientists Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder asked commuters to do the unthinkable: Start a 13 They had Chicago train commuters talk to their fellow 14 . "When Dr. Epley and Ms. Schroeder asked other people in the same train station to 15 how they would feel after talking to a stranger, the commuters thought their 16 would be more pleasant if they sat on their own," The New York Times summarizes. Though the participants didn"t expect a positive experience, after they 17 with the experiment, "not a single person reported having been embarrassed." 18 , these commutes were reportedly more enjoyable compared with those without communication, which makes absolute sense, 19 human beings thrive off of social connections. It"s that 20 : Talking to strangers can make you feel connected.

单选题While still in its early stages, welfare reform has already been judged a great success in many states—at least in getting people off welfare. It"s estimated that more than 2 million people have left the roils since 1994. In the past four years, welfare rolls in Athens County have been cut in half. But 70 percent of the people who left in the past two years took jobs that paid less than $6 an hour. The result: The Athens County poverty rate still remains at more than 30 percent—twice the national average. For advocates for the poor, that"s an indication much more needs to be done. "More people are getting jobs, but it"s not making their lives any better," says Kathy Lairn, a policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington. A center analysis of US Census data nationwide found that between 1995 and 1996, a greater percentage of single, female-headed households were earning money on their own, but that average income for these households actually went down. But for many, the fact that poor people are able to support themselves almost as well without government aid as they did with it is in itself a huge victory. "Welfare was a poison. It was a toxin that was poisoning the family," says Robert Rector, a welfare-reform policy analyst. "The reform is changing the moral climate in low-income communities. It"s beginning to rebuild the work ethic, which is much more important." Mr. Rector and others argued that once "the habit of dependency is cracked," then the country can make other policy changes aimed at improving living standards.

单选题 The "Hard Out Here" video has racked up (获胜) over 27 millions views to date on YouTube. But the market for a pop star making clever, difficult songs is narrow, and Allen's commercial prospects, at least in the U.S., aren't as promising as they were eight years ago. Without the mass-market distribution channel of radio behind her, it's tougher to get the message across. If Allen had it her way, she says, "Hard Out Here" would have been released to radio. "I think I'm justified in saying it would have {{U}}made a hit{{/U}}," she says. "Radio stations don't want to play any music that has a message. Everyone's worried they're going to get fired. If they had, they would have seen a triumph." Even though Alien uses top-notch producers—aside from Kurstin, the album makes use of hip-hop producer DJ Dahi and Shellback—her sensibilities are too English for superstar like that of Beyonce, who released her own feminist song. It's easy to dismiss Allen as the perpetual trash talker, criticizing the popular girls even as she aspires to be one of them, and yet there's real value in her social message and the wit with which she dispenses it. Allen may not be the most famous among her peers, but she's one of the more important—a cultural critic embedded within pop music, saying the things that her contemporaries won't. "I change with the way the world changes," Allen says. "My music is always social commentary. I don't know what the world is going to be like in five years' time, but as long as I'm not ashamed of what I'm putting out, then I'm happy."

单选题According to a recent Gallup World Poll, 1.1 billion people, or one-quarter of the earth"s adults, want to move temporarily to another country in the hope of finding more profitable work. An additional 630 million people would like to move abroad permanently. The global desire to leave home arises from poverty and necessity, but it also grows out of a conviction that such mobility is possible. People who embrace this cosmopolitan outlook assume that individuals can and should be at home anywhere in the world, that they need not be tied to any particular place. This outlook was once a strange and threatening product of the Enlightenment but is now accepted as central to a globalized economy. It leads to opportunity and profits, but it also has high psychological costs. In nearly a decade"s research into the emotions and experiences of immigrants and migrants, I"ve discovered that many people who leave home in search of better prospects end up feeling displaced and depressed. But today, explicit discussions of homesickness are rare, for the emotion is typically regarded as an embarrassing impediment to individual progress and prosperity. This silence makes mobility appear deceptively easy. Technology also seduces us into thinking that migration is painless. Ads from Skype suggest that "free video calling makes it easy to be together, even when you"re not." The comforting illusion of connection offered by technology makes moving seem less consequential, since one is always just a mouse click or a phone call away. Today"s technologies have failed to defeat homesickness even though studies by the Carnegie Corporation of New York show that immigrants are in closer touch with their families than before. A wealth of studies have documented that other newcomers to America also suffer from high rates of depression, despite constant contact with family. It is possible that these new technologies actually heighten feelings of displacement. Maria Elena Rivera, a psychologist in Tepic, Mexico, believes technology may magnify homesickness. Her sister, Carmen, had been living in San Diego for 25 years. With the rise of inexpensive long-distance calling, Carmen was able to phone home with greater frequency. Every Sunday she called Mexico and talked with her family, who routinely gathered for a large meal. Carmen always asked what the family was eating, who was there. Technology increased her contact with her family but also brought a regular reminder that she was not there with them. The persistence of homesickness points to the limitations of the cosmopolitan philosophy that undergirds so much of our market and society. The idea that we can and should feel at home anyplace on the globe is based on a worldview that celebrates the solitary, mobile individual and envisions men and women as easily separated from family, from home and from the past. But this vision doesn"t square with our emotions, for our ties to home, although often underestimated, are strong and enduring.

单选题Until last year, Alan Felzer was an energetic engineering professor who took the stairs to his classes two steps at a time. Now the 64-year-old grandfather sits strapped to a wheelchair, able to move little but his left hand, his voice a near-whisper. Felzer suffers from ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig"s disease. The fatal neurological disorder steals the body"s ability to move, speak and ultimately to breathe. But rather than succumb to despair along with his illness, Felzer turned to the Web to become his own medical researcher—and his own guinea pig. Dozens of ALS patients are testing treatments on their own without waiting on the slow pace of medical research. They are part of an emerging group of patients willing to share intimate health details on the Web in hopes of making their own medical discoveries. Some doctors caution that such patient-led research lacks rigor and may lead to unreliable results, false hopes and harm to patients. "The Internet is a wonderful tool, but you know, it"s buyer beware," said Dr. Edward Langston, immediate past chairman of the American Medical Association"s board. In Felzer"s case, the experiment"s results illustrate the obstacles that stand between patients and self-discovered breakthroughs. The drug he tried did no good. But he and his family felt they had little time and little to lose in trying. "ALS is such a short illness," said Felzer"s wife, Laura. She helps her husband communicate using sign language with his one good hand when his slow, halting words become difficult to understand. "You want to do what you can as fast as you can." The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved only one drug to treat ALS symptoms. It only works for some patients, and its effects are limited. As a result, Internet forums for ALS patients brim with links to the latest research offering any hint of promise. After Alan Felzer was diagnosed last year, his 33-year-old daughter, Karen, dived into the forums and found new hope. Working online, Karen Felzer and Macedo recruited nearly 200 patients worldwide to take a specific lithium dosage and answer standard surveys to gauge their symptoms. They began running their study through a Web site called PatientsLikeMe. com, using it to attract volunteers and track their progress. On the site, patients share detailed information about their symptoms and the drugs they are taking. The site focuses on conditions that have stubbornly resisted medical science, such as ALS, Parkinson"s and multiple sclerosis. The site"s founders hope professional and amateur researchers alike will dip into the resulting pool of data and emerge with insights that lead to better treatments. "My ultimate frustration that drove this site into existence was an overall feeling that there was a lack of transparency and speed or urgency" by the medical system, said Jamie Heywood, who co-founded PatientsLikeMe months before his own brother died of ALS.

单选题Space Shuttle Project is one of the first huge-typed spaceflight instruments used for many times in the world, organized by American National Aviation and Spaceflight Bureau, the main researches of 1 are researching and making the system of space shuttle, suggesting and choosing 2 and landing ports, deciding the scheme of reclaiming the roll booster of solid rocket, 3 the establishment of repairing the roll booster, and rebuilding and expanding the building of the 4 and controlling system. At the beginning of 1969, the United States set up a group that specially researched the development direction of spaceflight with 5 for the next stage, 6 by deputy president. After 7 and research, it suggested that an aerocraft with great benefits in 8 should be made, eg 9 the spaceflight being its leading stanchion. In this project, five orbit implements were prescribed to be made, 10 "Exploitation", "Columbia", "Challenger", "Discovery" and "Atlands". In 1970, spaceflight got into an all-round 11 of research and manufacture. The whole-project had to delay more than three years. Five orbit implements were 12 to be four and flight experiment for six times was also decreased for four, 13 the number of production was cut down, according to the original scheme. In April 1971 this 14 was decided that Kennedy Space Centre was used for the launching and landing port for space shuttles, and Edwards Air Base was used for the 15 landing port. In February 1977, "Exploitation" Orbit Implement started to have entering and landing experiments in Edwards Air Base. From May 12, 1981 to July 4, 1982, "Columbia" Space Shuttle successfully finished four flight experiments for research and manufacture, 16 meant that the 17 and manufactures were over in 18 form. It 19 about 12 years and cost more than 75 billion US dollars to finish the whole project. On November 11, 1990, space shuttles began to fly for 20 .

单选题Exercise is one of the few factors with a positive role in long-term maintenance of body weight. Unfortunately, that message has not gotten through to the average American, who would rather try switching to "light" beer and low-calorie bread than increase physical exertion. The Centers for Disease Control, for example, found that fewer than one-fourth of overweight adults who were trying to shed pounds said they were combining exercise with their diet. In rejecting exercise, some people may be discouraged too much by caloric- expenditure charts; for example, one would have to briskly walk three miles just to work off the 275 calories in one delicious Danish pastry. Even exercise professionals concede half a point here. "Exercise by itself is a very tough way to lose weight," says York Onnen, program director of the President"s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. Still, exercise"s supporting role in weight reduction is vital. A study at the Boston University Medical Center of overweight police officers and other public employees confirmed that those who dieted without exercise regained almost all their old weight, while those who worked exercise into their daily routine maintained their new weight. If you have been sedentary and decide to start walking one mile a day, the added exercise could burn an extra 100 calories daily. In a year"s time, assuming no increase in food intake, you could lose ten pounds. By increasing the distance of your walks gradually and making other dietary adjustments, you may lose even more weight.

单选题Last week 8,400 British students about to enter university received an e-mail from the Student Loans Company (SLC), a government body, reminding them to complete their application forms. It came with an attachment that listed all 8,400 e-mail addresses. The outfit later issued a sheepish apology and promised an "internal investigation". At best, such data breaches make a small dent in a firm"s reputation and the whole thing blows over, as it did SLC"s case; at worst, though, companies lose the trust of their customers and also have to pay large frees. Sony, an ailing Japanese electronics giant, may never quite recover from breach last year, when hackers stole the personal details of over 100m customers. The explosion of data in recent years was always going to make data breaches more common, as two recent reports make clear. The first is an annual publication commissioned by Symantec, a maker of security software, and carried out by the Ponemon Institute, a data-protection researcher, to look into the cost of data breaches in several countries. Now in its seventh year, the report had some good news for Americans. Calculating the costs of investigations, compensation, customer support and projected loss of revenue, it found that the average cost to a company per breached record declined for the first time since the numbers are tracked. The figure dropped from $214 in 2010 to $194 in 2011, suggesting that companies had become better both at preventing and responding to breaches. Europeans fared less well. The cost rose from ￡71 to ￡79 ($113 to $126) in Britain, from € 98 to € 122 ($130 to $162) in France and from € 138 to € 146 in privacy-conscious Germany. In all four countries, around two-thirds of all breaches were the result of technical faults and malicious attacks. But the remaining third was down to negligence. They could, in other words, never have happened. The second study goes some way to explaining why they did. Iron Mountain, a data-management company, commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consultancy, to assess the risk of information loss faced by mid-size European companies based on their attitudes to managing data. The report looks at 600 businesses in six European countries across different sectors. It found that businesses tend to regard data protection issues as the responsibility of IT departments. More than haft thought that technology can solve the problem. Only 1% of the businesses surveyed believed it concerned all employees—and thus required a change in behavior. Both reports conclude that is precisely what is needed. Symantec"s study found a correlation between having a senior executive in charge of information security and lower costs of data breaches. "It has to start at the top," says Marc Duale, Iron Mountain"s head. The best solution need not be the most expensive—employee-awareness programs and staff training can be more effective than pricey IT upgrades. Malicious attacks may be unavoidable but silly mistakes are unforgivable.

单选题We tend to think of the decades immediately following World War Ⅱ as a time of prosperity and growth, with soldiers returning home by the millions, going off to college on the G. I. Bill and lining up at the marriage bureaus. But when it came to their houses, it was a time of common sense and a belief that less could truly be more. During the Depression and the war, Americans had learned to live with less, and that restraint, in combination with the postwar confidence in the future, made small, efficient housing positively stylish. Economic condition was only a stimulus for the trend toward efficient living. The phrase "less is more" was actually first popularized by a German, the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who like other people associated with the Bauhaus, a school of design, emigrated to the United States before World War Ⅱ and took up posts at American architecture schools. These designers came to exert enormous influence on the course of American architecture, but none more so than Mies. Mies"s signature phrase means that less decoration, properly organized, has more impact than a lot. Elegance, he believed, did not derive from abundance. Like other modern architects, he employed metal, glass and laminated wood—materials that we take for granted today but that in the 1940s symbolized the future. Mies"s sophisticated presentation masked the fact that the spaces he designed were small and efficient, rather than big and often empty. The apartments in the elegant towers Mies built on Chicago"s Lake Shore Drive, for example, were smaller—two-bedroom units under 1,000 square feet—than those in their older neighbors along the city"s Gold Coast. But they were popular because of their airy glass walls, the views they afforded and the elegance of the buildings" details and proportions, the architectural equivalent of the abstract art so popular at the time. The trend toward "less" was not entirely foreign. In the 1930s Frank Lloyd Wright started building more modest and efficient houses—usually around 1,200 square feet—than the spreading two-story ones he had designed in the 1890s and the early 20th century. The "Case Study Houses" commissioned from talented modern architects by California Arts & Architecture magazine between 1945 and 1962 were yet another homegrown influence on the "less is more" trend. Aesthetic effect came from the landscape, new materials and forthright detailing. In his Case Study House, Ralph Rapson may have mispredicted just how the mechanical revolution would impact everyday life—few American families acquired helicopters, though most eventually got clothes dryers—but his belief that self-sufficiency was both desirable and inevitable was widely shared.

单选题Steve Jobs didn"t think that technology alone could fix what ails American education. It"s worth remembering that in the wake of last week"s coverage of Apple"s new iBooks platform, which the company promises will radically change how students use and experience textbooks. Under Apple"s plan, companies and individuals will be able to self-publish textbooks, ideally creating a wider array of content. Students will be able to download and use these books on their iPad much like they would use a regular textbook. Let"s slow down. Textbooks or tools that look a lot like textbooks aren"t going anywhere anytime soon. And since high quality educational material isn"t cheap to generate, simply tearing down distribution barriers will only go so far in reducing the costs of producing good content. Lost in the heated claims, however, is a more fundamental question: what have educational technology efforts accomplished to date and what should we expect? As a field, education is easily seduced by technological promises. Textbooks? Thomas Edison saw movies as way to replace them. These days, conservatives are in love with the idea that technology will not only shrink the number of in-classroom teachers but render the teachers" unions obsolete. The experience to date is less grandiose and more worrisome considering the billions that have been spent on technology in schools in the past few decades. Interactive whiteboards have been around since the early 1990s and done little to transform how teachers teach, and computers are often unaligned with classroom instruction, even though 90% of classrooms around the country have them. The reasons for the slow pace of change are as obvious as they are stubborn. Altering classroom and school practice in our wildly decentralized education system is always a slow process. Many teachers are not familiar with technology or how to use it in the classroom, and high-quality training programs—either in schools of education or as part of a teachers" professional development—are rare. Besides, even a top-shelf product can only augment live teaching. Likewise, technology is bringing back in vogue the idea of the "flipped classroom" with the teacher acting as a "guide on the side" rather than the primary source of instruction. I say back in vogue because, ironically, talk of devaluing the teacher as content provider has been a fixture of progressive education thought for a century. Another variation of the flipped-classroom idea is to use technology to explain concepts at home and use classroom time differently. But much of the online content available today merely replicates the lame instruction already available in too many of our nation"s schools. American education desperately needs an overhaul that goes far beyond upgrading computers in the classroom. Jobs was right: technology by itself won"t fix what ails our schools. He saw teachers" unions and archaic practices as the big barriers. Perhaps, but I"d argue they are symptoms of our larger inattention to instructional quality. The bells and whistles of technology, for all its promise, are distracting us from this mundane but essential reality.

单选题 The world is undergoing tremendous changes. The rise of globalization, both an economic and cultural trend that has swept throughout the world, has forged new ground as we enter the 21st century. But are the effects of globalization always positive? Some say no. Michael Tenet, head of the International Institute for Foreign Relations in Atlanta, is worried about current resentment throughout the world toward the rise of globalization. "Ever since the 1980s and the economic collapse of the Asian Tigers in the late 1990s, there has been a re-evaluation of the role of globalization as a force for good," he said. "Income in many countries has declined and the gap between 'the most rich' and 'the most poor' has been aggravated. Without further intervention by governments, we could see a tragedy expressed in an increased level of poverty throughout the Latin American and Asia." Yet George Frank, an influential economist who works on Wall Street, sees no such danger. "Economic liberalization, increased transparency and market-based reforms have positive effect in the long run, even if market mechanisms can produce short-term destabilization problems," He said. "What is most important is that barriers to trade continue to fall so that active competition for consumer goods reduces prices and in turn raises the average level of income." Others feel that globalization's cultural impact may be more important than its economic implications. Janice Yawee, a native of Africa, feels strongly that globalization is undermining her local culture and language. "Most of the world's dialects will become extinct under globalization. We are paving the world with McDonald's and English slang. It tears me up inside," she said. Governments of different countries have had mixed responses to the wave of globalization. The United States is generally seen as an active proponent of greater free trade, and it certainly has enormous cultural influence by virtue of its near monopoly on worldwide entertainment. But other countries, most notably in Europe and developing nations, have sought to reduce the impact that globalization has on their domestic affairs. "When I was a boy we had very little to speak of," says one Singaporean resident. "Now our country has developed into a booming hub for international finance." Others, however, are not so optimistic. "Globalization is an evil force that must be halted," a union official at a car plant in Detriot recently commented, "It's sucking away jobs and killing the spirit of our country."

单选题I, a mother of two girls, gave birth to a third girl one month ago. The pediatrician recommended a liquid multivitamin that contains 400 international units (IUs) of Vitamin D for the new born baby, which confused me a lot. When my first girl, who is now 4, was born, the doctor told us to simply get her out in the sun from time to time to let her body produce Vitamin D. When our second child was born two years ago, we were told to give her a multivitamin that had 200 IUs of Vitamin D. So there is a big change, and what do we really know about its risks and benefits? Turns out the debate about how much Vitamin D we need has intensified over the past 10 years. One part of the discourse focuses on the growing body of research that point to numerous health benefits of the chemical (actually a hormone): it can help prevent rickets in children and severe bone loss in adults and potentially lowers the risk of multiple sclerosis, juvenile diabetes, cancer, heart disease, colds and influenza. Amid all this new evidence, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has assembled a panel of experts to reevaluate just how much Vitamin D we really need and can safely tolerate. Current IOM recommendations, set in 1997, are 200 IUs a day from birth to age 50 and a bit more after that. The upper limit of safety, according to the institute, is 2,000 IUs daily—too much can lead to, among other things, nausea and kidney stones—yet some Vitamin D proponents are pushing for up to 4,000 IUs a day for adults. The IOM review won"t be completed until May 2010. In the meantime, Dr. Frank Greer, chairman of the Nutrition Committee at the American Academy of Pediatrics, is confident that the academy"s new guideline of 400 IUs is enough for kids under 2. But, he wonders, "What about adolescents? Do they need 800?" That remains to be seen. In addition to the question of how much Vitamin D, there is debate over the best way to get it. About 10 to 15 minutes spent outside in full sun will give a fair-skinned person dressed only in his skivvies 10,000 to 20,000 IUs. Some Vitamin D advocates point to the vigorous use of sunscreen as the reason studies show that so many Americans don"t get enough Vitamin D. But we don"t want taking advantage of the potential benefits of Vitamin D to mean increased risk of contracting skin cancer. In addition to supplements, there are foods that naturally contain Vitamin D (salmon, egg yolks, liver) and others that are fortified with it (milk, cereals, juices, breads). And, of course, there is always cod liver oil.

单选题The latest research on caloric restrictions shows that near-starvation diets may not be the Fountain of Youth. Decades ago, in the 1930s, researchers found that animals that had been deprived of food seemed to live longer than rodents that were fed to satisfaction, raising the intriguing idea that maybe near-starvation was a good, rather than bad thing, for health. But the latest research conducted on close human cousins, rhesus monkeys, shows that the connection may not be as solid as once hoped. Published in the journal Nature, the results suggest that dramatically cutting back on daily calories—by 30%—does not help monkeys to live longer than those who ate normally. The restriction did help older monkeys to lower their levels of triglycerides, a risk factor for heart disease, but otherwise conferred no significant health or longevity benefit. Caloric restriction may have its evolutionary roots as a survival mechanism, allowing species to survive on scraps when food is scarce in order to continue to reproduce. But that restriction only has lasting positive effects if the overall diet is a balanced one, which may not always be the case in conditions of famine. It"s possible the strategy developed as a way to protect species from consuming toxic plants or foods, when it wasn"t always obvious which sources were prohibited. The study, begun in 1987 and one of the longest running trials to investigate the effects of caloric restriction, contradicts the only prior research conducted with rhesus monkeys, which found the opposite effect, highlighting the complex relationship between caloric processing and metabolic functions that contribute to aging and health. For example, the study"s lead author, Rafael de Cabo of the National Institute on Aging, notes that the effects of caloric restriction on the immune system may not be all good: some studies show slower wound healing and increased risk for infectious disease. In young animals, restricting calories also reduces fertility. It"s not entirely clear why the two monkey studies had such varying results. Ricki Colman, a co-author of the first monkey study and an associate scientist at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, believes that the differences may reflect variance in the diets given to the animals in the two studies. "They may be modeling different things," she says, explaining that in her study, the control animals were allowed to eat freely while in the new research, both controls and those on the restricted diet were limited to specific maximum amounts. Her control animals, she says, may reflect more of a typical American diet, while the controls in the new research are more like people who already eat healthy amounts. Indeed, the NIA study implies that the benefits of simply eating a balanced, healthy diet may provide as much life extension as dietary restrictions can produce. Even with the findings, however, some experts are still holding out hope that restricting calories may prove beneficial for certain health outcomes, specifically in combating cancer and heart disease. The question, of course, is how much restriction can you get away with in order to still get these benefits.

单选题It is hardly necessary for me to cite all the evidence of the depressing state of literacy. These figures from the Department of Education are sufficient: 27 million Americans cannot read at all, and a further 35 million read at a level that is less than sufficient to survive in our society. But my own worry today is less that of the overwhelming problem of elemental literacy than it is of the slightly more luxurious problem of the decline in the skill even of the middle-class reader, of his unwillingness to afford those spaces of silence, those luxuries of domesticity and time and concentration, that surround the image of the classic act of reading. It has been suggested that almost 80 percentof America"s literate, educated teenagers can no longer read without an accompanying noise (music) in the background or a television screen flickering at the corner of their field of perception. We know very little about the brain and how it deals with simultaneous conflicting input, but every common-sense intuition suggests we should be profoundly alarmed. This violation of concentration, silence, solitude goes to the very heart of our notion of literacy; this new form of part-reading, of part-perception against background distraction, renders impossible certain essential acts of apprehension and concentration, let alone that most important tribute any human being can pay to a poem or a piece of prose he or she really loves, which is to learn by heart. Not by brain, by heart; the expression is vital. Under these circumstances, the question of what future there is for the arts of reading is a real one. Ahead of us lie technical, psychic, and social transformations probably much more dramatic than those brought about by Gutenberg, the German inventor in printing. The Gutenberg revolution, as we now know it, took a long time; its effects are still being debated. The information revolution will touch every facet of composition, publication, distribution, and reading. No one in the book industry can say with any confidence what will happen to the book as we"ve known it.

单选题In most people"s mind, growth is associated with prosperity. We judge how well the economy is doing by the size of the Gross National Product (GNP), a measure, supposedly, of growth. Equally self-evident, however, is the notion that increased pressure on dwindling natural resources must inevitably lead to a decline in prosperity, especially when accompanied by a growth in population. So, which is correct? What growth advocates mean, primarily, when they say growth is necessary for prosperity is that growth is necessary for the smooth functioning of the economic system. In one arena the argument in favor of growth is particularly compelling and that is with regard to the Third World. To argue against growth, other than population growth, in light of Third World poverty and degradation, seems callous. But is it? Could it be that growth, especially the growth of the wealthier countries, has contributed to the impoverishment, not the advancement, of Third World countries? If not, how do we account for the desperate straits these countries find themselves in today after a century of dedication to growth? To see how this might be the case we must look at the impact of growth on Third World countries—the reality, not the abstract stages-of-economic-growth theory advocated through rose-colored glasses by academicians of the developed world. What good is growth to the people of the Third World if it means the conversion of peasant farms into mechanized agri-businesses producing commodities not for local consumption but for export, if it means the stripping of their land of its mineral and other natural treasures to the benefit of foreign investors and a handful of their local collaborators, if it means the assumption of a overwhelming foreign indebtedness, the earnings of which go not into the development of the country but into the purchase of expensive cars and the buying of luxurious residence in Miami? Admittedly, this is an oversimplification. But the point, I believe, remains valid. that growth in underdeveloped countries cannot simply be judged in the abstract; it must be judged based on the true nature of growth in these societies, on who benefits and who is harmed, on where growth is leading these people and where it has left them. When considered in this way, it just might be that in the present context growth is more detrimental to the well-being of the wretched of the earth than beneficial. So, do we need growth for prosperity? Only the adoption of zero growth can provide the answer. But that is a test not easily undertaken. Modern economies are incredibly complex phenomena, a tribute to man"s ability to organize and a challenge to his ability to understanding. Anything that affects their functioning, such as a policy of zero growth, should not be proposed without a cautiousness and a self-doubting humility. But if the prospect of leaping into the economic unknown is fear-inspiring, equally so is the prospect of letting that fear prevent us from acting when the failure to act could mean untold misery for future generations and perhaps environmental catastrophes which threaten our very existence.

单选题There is no question that the academic enterprise has become increasingly global, particularly in the sciences. Nearly three million students now study outside their home countries—a 57% increase in the last decade. Foreign students now dominate many U.S. Doctoral programs, accounting for 64% of Ph. Ds in computer science for example. Faculty members are on the move, too. Half of the world"s top physicists no longer work in their native countries. And major institutions such as New York University are creating branch campuses in the Middle East and Asia. There are now 162 satellite campuses worldwide, an increase of 43% in just the past three years. At the same time, growing numbers of traditional source countries for students, from South Korea to Saudi Arabia, are trying to improve both the quantity and quality of their own degrees, engaging in a fierce and expensive race to recruit students and create world-class research universities of their own. Such competition has led to considerable hand-wringing in the West. During a 2008 campaign stop, for instance, then-candidate Barack Obama expressed alarm about the threat that such academic competition poses to U.S. competitiveness. Such concerns are not limited to the United States. In some countries worries about educational competition and brain drains have led to academic protectionism. India, for instance, places legal and bureaucratic barriers in front of Western universities that want to set up satellite campuses to enroll local students. Perhaps some of the anxiety over the new global academic enterprise is understandable. Particularly in a period of massive economic uncertainty. But educational protectionism is as big a mistake as trade protectionism is. The globalization of higher education should be embraced, not feared—including in the United States. There is every reason to believe that the worldwide competition for human talent, the race to produce innovative research, the push to extend university campuses to multiple countries, and the rush to train talented graduates who can strengthen increasingly knowledge-based economics will be good for the United States, as well.

单选题 Manners nowadays in metropolitan cities like London are practically non-existent. It is nothing for a big, strong schoolboy to elbow an elderly woman aside in the dash for the last remaining seat on the tube or bus, much less stand up and offer his seat to her, as he ought to. In fact, it is saddening to note that if a man does offer his seat to an older woman, it is nearly always a Continental man or one from the older generation. This question of giving up seats in public transport is much argued about by young men, who say that, since women have claimed equality, they no longer deserve to be treated with courtesy, and that those who go out to work should take their turn in the rat race like anyone else. Women have never claimed to be physically as strong as men. Even if it is not agreed, however, that young men should stand up for younger women, the fact remains that courtesy should be shown to the old, the sick and the burdened. Conditions in travel are really very hard on everyone, we know, but hardship is surely no excuse. Sometimes one wonders what would have been the behavior of these stout young men in a packed refugee train or a train on its way to a prisoner-camp during the war. Would they have considered it only right and their proper due to keep the best places for themselves then? Older people, tired and irritable from a day's work, are not angels, either — far from it. Many a brisk argument or an insulting quarrel breaks out as the weary queues push and shove each other to get on buses and tubes. One cannot commend this, of course, but one does feel there is just a little more excuse. If cities are to remain pleasant places to live in at all, however, it seems urgent, not only that communications in transport should be improved, but also that communication between human beings should be kept smooth and polite. All over cities, it seems that people are too tired and rushed to be polite. Shop assistants won't bother to assist, taxi drivers shout at each other as they dash dangerously round corners, bus conductors pull the bell before their desperate passengers have had time to get on or off the bus, and so on and so on. It seems to us that it is up to the young and strong to do their small part to stop such deterioration.

单选题Sport is not only physically challenging, but it can also be mentally challenging. Criticism from coaches, parents, and other teammates, as well as pressure to win can create an excessive amount of anxiety or stress for young athletes. Stress can be physical, emotional, or psychological, and research has indicated that it can lead to burnout. Burnout has been described as dropping or quitting of an activity that was at one time enjoyable. The early years of development are critical years for learning about oneself. The sport setting is one where valuable experiences can take place. Young athletes can, for example, learn how to cooperate with others, make friends, and gain other social skills that will be used throughout their lives. Coaches and parents should be aware, at all times, that their feedback to youngsters can greatly affect their children. Youngsters may take their parents" and coaches" criticisms to heart and find a flaw in themselves. Coaches and parents should also be cautious that youth sport participation does not become work for children. The outcome of the game should not be more important than the process of learning the sport and other life lessons. In today"s youth sport setting, young athletes may be worrying more about who will win instead of enjoying themselves and the sport. Following a game, many parents and coaches focus on the outcome and find fault with youngsters" performances. Positive reinforcement should be provided regardless of the outcome. Research indicates that positive reinforcement motivates and has a greater effect on learning than criticism. Again, criticism can create high levels of stress, which can lead to burnout.

单选题Many Americans regard the jury system as a concrete expression of crucial democratic values, including the principles that all citizens who meet minimal qualifications of age and literacy are equally competent to serve on juries; that jurors should be selected randomly from a representative cross section of the community; that no citizen should be denied the right to serve on a jury on account of race, religion, sex, or national origin; that defendants are entitled to trial by their peers; and that verdicts should represent the conscience of the community and not just the letter of the taw. The jury is also said to be the best surviving example of direct rather than representative democracy. In a direct democracy, citizens take turns governing themselves, rather than electing representatives to govern for them. But as recently as in 1968, jury selection procedures conflicted with these democratic ideals. In some states, for example, jury duty was limited to persons of supposedly superior intelligence, education, and moral character. Although the Supreme Court of the United States had prohibited intentional racial discrimination in jury selection as early as the 1880 case of Strauder v. West Virginia, the practice of selecting so-called elite or blue-ribbon juries provided a convenient way around this and other antidiscrimination laws. The system also failed to regularly include women on juries until the mid-20th century. Although women first served on state juries in Utah in 1898, it was not until the 1940s that a majority of states made women eligible for jury duty. Even then several states automatically exempted women from jury duty unless they personally asked to have their names included on the jury list. This practice was justified by the claim that women were needed at home, and it kept juries unrepresentative of women through the 1960s. In 1968, the Congress of the United States passed the Jury Selection and Service Act, ushering in a new era of democratic reforms for the jury. This law abolished special educational requirements for federal jurors and required them to be selected at random from a cross section of the entire community. In the landmark 1975 decision Taylor v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court extended the requirement that juries be representative of all parts of the community to the state level. The Taylor decision also declared sex discrimination in jury selection to be unconstitutional and ordered states to use the same procedures for selecting male and female jurors.