单选题 The domestic economy in the United States expanded in a remarkably vigorous and steady fashion. The revival in consumer confidence was reflected in the higher proportion of incomes spent for goods and services and the marked increase in consumer willingness to take on installment debt. A parallel strengthening in business psychology was manifested in a stepped-up rate of plant and equipment spending and a gradual pickup in expenses for inventory. Confidence in the economy was also reflected in the strength of the stock market and in the stability of the bond market. For the year as a whole, consumer and business sentiment benefited from the ease in East-West tensions. The bases of the business expansion were to be found mainly in the stimulative monetary and fiscal policies that had been pursued. Moreover, the restoration of sounder liquidity positions and tighter management control of production efficiency had also helped lay the groundwork for a strong expansion. In addition, the economic policy moves made by the President had served to renew optimism on the business outlook while boosting hopes that inflation would be brought under more effective control. Finally, of course, the economy was able to grow as vigorously as it did because sufficient leeway (余地) existed in terms of idle men and machines. The United States balance of payments (国际收支差额) deficit declined sharply. Nevertheless, by any other test, the deficit remained very large. While the overall trade performance proved disappointing, there are still good reasons for expecting the delayed impact of devaluation to produce in time a significant strengthening in our trade picture. Given the size of the Japanese component of our trade deficit, however, the outcome will depend importantly on the extent of the corrective measures undertaken by Japan. The underlying task of public policy for the year ahead—and indeed for the longer run—remained a familiar one: to strike the right balance between encouraging healthy economic growth and avoiding inflationary pressures. With the economy showing sustained and vigorous growth, and with the currency crisis highlighting the need to improve our competitive posture internationally, the emphasis seemed to be shifting to the problem of inflation. The Phase Three Program of wage and price restraint can contribute to reducing inflation.

单选题 A self-described socialist and former shop steward, Sir Alex was an odd fit with the centrist Mr. Blair. Yet he was much less impressed by Blair's successor, Gordon Brown—though he was also born in Glasgow and is a lifelong football fan. Nor could Sir Alex quarrel with New Labour's embrace of the market. English football has become the world's best because it pays the most: the average weekly wage in the premiership rose by 1,500% between 1992 and 2010. Sir Alex was well rewarded, too; he named his mansion Fairfields, after the ship-making factory where his father once laboured. Sir Alex's success was based on his enthusiastic embrace of globalisation, something too many people in Labour are still uncomfortable with. He inherited a team that contained 2 Danes, 4 Irishmen and 18 Britons. He leaves a squad with players from a dozen countries, including Serbia, Ecuador and Japan. In public-policy terms, United runs both a superb domestic education system and a liberal immigration policy. This is a lesson Labour's current leader, Ed. Miliband, badly needs to learn—having expressed regret, in a vague but toe-curling (令人厌恶的) way, that his New Labour forebears let so many foreigners in. Oddly, perhaps the politician Sir Alex most resembles was not of Labour at all; but rather its Tory female, Margaret Thatcher. He claimed to dislike her. Yet they are similar. Both won global successes through a combination of simple truths and constant drive. Both shared aspiration and opportunity. Both made Britain great. Sir Alex would now do well to avoid Lady Thatcher's biggest mistake: by lingering at the scene of his triumph. He plans to stay on at United as a director and perhaps instructor to his successor, David Moyes, another able manager and working-class Scot. But such arrangement rarely work. It would be better, after such a glorious career, if he conceded that Fergie time is now over.

单选题 In Jonathan Swift's 1726 novel, "Gulliver's Travels", the Yahoos are a degraded band of humanoids kept tied in stalls by their captors. It is therefore appropriate that a recent, widely leaked memo from Yahoo's human-resources manager, Jackie Reses, began with the toe-curling salutation with which managers at the company normally address underlings: "Yahoos". "We can all feel the energy and buzz in our offices," the memo went on. Presumably, though, while some Yahoos are feeling it, others are hanging around at home in their pajamas, for the memo went onto say that from June all Yahoos will be required to turn up in the office unless they have a good excuse. "The best is yet to come," the memo ended—a claim which may sound implausible to the employees of a company whose market capitalisation has fallen from $125 billion in 2000 to $25 billion now. It is understandable that Marissa Mayer, Yahoo's recently appointed chief executive, should want to extract some more value from the employees she leads. Google's workers each generate $931,657 revenue, 160% more than the $353, 657 produced by each of Yahoo's employees. And it is also reasonable for a company to want to discourage its employees from behaving like freelances. After all, firms exist largely because people are more productive together than apart. But tying the Yahoos to their stalls in the company's offices does not seem like the right way to go about boosting their output. Plenty of evidence suggests that letting employees work from home is good for productivity. It allows them to use their time more efficiently and to spend more time with their families and less fuming in traffic jams or squashed on trains. It can reduce companies' costs. Cisco claimed in 2009 that it was saving $277m a year by allowing its people to telecommute. A study by researchers at Stanford and Beijing Universities of a large Chinese travel company compared the performance of employees allowed to work from home with those who were stuck in the office: among the home-workers, job satisfaction rose, staff turnover fell by half and productivity went up by 13%. Hardly surprising, since a lot of people don't seem to work while they are at work: last year J.C. Penney, an American retailer, discovered that a third of its headquarters's bandwidth was taken up by employees watching YouTube videos.

单选题I"m usually fairly skeptical about any research that concludes that people are either happier or unhappier or more or less certain of themselves than they were 50 years ago. While any of these statements might be true, they are practically impossible to prove scientifically. Still, I was struck by a report which concluded that today"s children are significantly more anxious than children in the 1950s. In fact, the analysis showed, normal children ages 9 to 17 exhibit a higher level of anxiety today than children who were treated for mental illness 50 years ago. Why are America"s kids so stressed? The report cites two main causes: increasing physical isolation—brought on by high divorce rates and less involvement in community, among other things—and a growing perception that the world is a more dangerous place. Given that we can"t turn the clock back, adults can still do plenty to help the next generation cope. At the top of the list is nurturing a better appreciation of the limits of individualism. No child is an island. Strengthening social ties helps build communities and protect individuals against stress. To help kids build stronger connections with others, you can pull the plug on TVs and computers. Your family will thank you later. They will have more time for face-to-face relationships, and they will get more sleep. Limit the amount of virtual violence your children are exposed to. It"s not just video games and movies; children see a lot of murder and crime on the local news. Keep your expectations for your children reasonable. Many highly successful people never attended Harvard or Yale. Make exercise part of your daily routine. It will help you cope with your own anxieties and provide a good model for your kids. Sometimes anxiety is unavoidable. But it doesn"t have to ruin your life.

单选题A pair of dice, rolled again and again, will eventually produce two sixes. Similarly, the virus that causes influenza is constantly changing at random and, one day, will mutate in a way that will enable it to infect billions of people, and to kill millions. Many experts now believe a global outbreak of pandemic flu is overdue, and that the next one could be as bad as the one in 1918, which killed somewhere between 25m and 50m people. Today however, advances in medicine offer real hope that another such outbreak can be contained —if governments start preparing now. New research published this week suggests that a relatively small stockpile of an anti-viral drug—as little as 3m doses—could be enough to limit sharply a flu pandemic if the drugs were deployed quickly to people in the area surrounding the initial outbreak. The drug"s manufacturer, Roche, is talking to the World Health Organisation about donating such a stockpile. This is good news. But much more needs to be done, especially with a nasty strain of avian flu spreading in Asia which could mutate into a threat to humans. Since the SARS outbreak in 2003 a few countries have developed plans in preparation for similar episodes. But progress has been shamefully patchy, and there is still far too little international co-ordination. A global stockpile of drugs alone would not be of much use without an adequate system of surveillance to identify early cases and a way of delivering treatment quickly. If an outbreak occurred in a border region, for example, a swift response would most likely depend on prior agreements between different countries about quarantine and containment. Reaching such agreements is rarely easy, but that makes the task all the more urgent. Rich countries tend to be better prepared than poor ones, but this should be no consolation to them. Flu does not respect borders. It is in everyone"s interest to make sure that developing countries, especially in Asia, are also well prepared. Many may bridle at interference from outside. But if richer nations were willing to donate anti-viral drugs and guarantee a supply of any vaccine that becomes available, poorer nations might be willing to reach agreements over surveillance and preparedness. Simply sorting out a few details now will have lives (and recriminations) later. Will there be enough ventilators, makes and drugs? Where will people be treated if the hospitals overflow? Will food be delivered as normal? Too many countries have no answers to these questions.

单选题It"s a cliche—but true—that a huge obstacle to a stronger economic recovery is the lack of confidence in a strong recovery. If consumers and businesses were more confident, they would be spending, hiring and lending more freely. Instead, we"re submerged with reports suggesting that, because the recession was so deep, it will take many years to regain anything like the pre-crisis prosperity. Just last week, for example, the McKinsey Global Institute released a study estimating that the country needs 21 million additional jobs by 2020 to reduce the unemployment rate to 5 percent. The study was skeptical that this would happen. Pessimism and slow growth become a vicious cycle. Frustrated confidence most obviously reflects the intensity and shock of the financial collapse and the ensuing recession, including the devastating housing collapse. But there"s another, less appreciated cause: disillusion with modern economics. Probably without realizing it, most Americans had accepted the fundamental promises of contemporary economics. These were: First, we know enough to prevent another Great Depression; second, although we can"t prevent every recession, we know enough to ensure sustained and, for the most part, strong recoveries. These propositions, approved by most economists, had worked themselves into society"s belief structure. Embracing them does not rule out economic disappointments, setbacks, worries or risks. But for most people most of the time, it does prevent economic disaster. People felt protected. If you stop believing them, then you act differently. You begin shielding yourself, as best you can, against circumstances and dangers that you can"t foresee but that you fear are there. You become more cautious. You hesitate more before making a big commitment—buying a home or car, if you"re a consumer; hiring workers, if you"re an employer; starting a new business, if you"re an entrepreneur; or making loans, if you"re a banker. One disturbing fact from the McKinsey report is this. The number of new businesses, a traditional source of jobs, was down 23 percent in 2010 from 2007; the level was the lowest since 1983, when America had about 75 million fewer people. Large corporations are not doing anything. They have about $2 trillion of cash and securities, which could be used for hiring and investing in new products. It"s not that economics achieved nothing. The emergency measures taken against the crisis in many countries—exceptionally low interest rates, "stimulus" programs of extra spending and tax cuts—probably avoided another Depression. But it"s also true that there"s now no consensus among economists as to how to strengthen the recovery. Economists suffer from what one of them calls "the pretense-of-knowledge syndrome." They act as if they understand more than they do and presume that their policies, whether of the left or right, have benefits more predictable than they actually are. It"s worth remembering that the recovery"s present slowdown is occurring despite measures taken to speed it up. So modern economics has been oversold, and the public is now disbelieving. The disillusion feeds stubbornly low confidence.

单选题Like other academic institutions, business schools are judged by the quality of the research carried out by their faculties. At the same time they mean to equip their students for the real world, however that is defined. Whether academic research actually produces anything that is useful to the practice of business, or even whether it is its job to do so, are questions that can provoke vigorous arguments on campus. The debate, which first became intense during the 1950s, was reignited in August, when AACSB International, the most widely recognised global evaluating agency for business schools, announced it would consider changing the way it evaluates research. The news followed rather grave criticism in 2002 from Jeffrey Pfeffer, a Stanford professor, and Christina Fong of Washington University, which questioned whether business education in its current guise was sustainable. The most controversial recommendation in AACSB"s draft report (which was sent round to administrators for their comment) is that the schools be required to demonstrate the value of their faculties" research not simply by listing its citations in journals, but by demonstrating the impact it has in the ordinary world. AACSB justifies its stance by saying that it wants schools and faculty to play to their strengths, whether they be in pedagogy, in the research of practical applications, or in scholarly endeavour. And research of any kind is expensive—AACSB points out that business schools in America alone spend more than $320m a year on it. So it seems legitimate to ask for what purpose it is undertaken. On one level, the question is simple to answer. Research in business schools, as anywhere else, is about expanding the boundaries of knowledge. But it is also about cementing schools"—and professors"—reputations. Schools gain kudos from their faculties" record of publication. In some cases, such as with government-funded schools in Britain, it can affect how much money they receive. For professors, their careers depend on being seen in the right journals. Part of the trouble is that the journals labour under a similar ethos. They publish more than 20,000 articles each year. Most of the research is highly quantitative, hypothesis- driven and esoteric. As a result, it is almost universally unread by real-world managers. Much of the research criticises other published research. A paper in a 2006 issue of Strategy no matter what they may say, they care intensely about their rankings. If they find they can improve their positions by pursuing more practical research programmes, their administrators" attitudes may yet change. Whatever the defenders of academic purity may wish, there is hope for the real world yet.

单选题Where do good ideas come from? For centuries, all credit for these mysterious gifts went to faith, fortune and some fair muses. But to assume creativity is some lofty trait enjoyed by the few is both foolish and unproductive, argues Jonah Lehrer in "Imagine", a smart new book about "how creativity works". Drawing from a wide array of scientific and sociological research—and everything from the poetry of W. H. Auden to the films of Pixar—he makes a convincing case that innovation cannot only be studied and measured, but also numbed and encouraged. Just outside St Paul, Minnesota, sits the corporate headquarters of 3M. The company sells more than 55,000 products, from streetlights to computer touch-screens, and is ranked as the third-most innovative in the world. But when Mr. Lehrer visits, he finds employees engaged in all sorts of frivolous activities, such as playing pinball and wandering about the campus. These workers are actually pushed to take regular breaks, as time away from a problem can help spark a moment of insight. This is because interrupting work with a relaxing activity lets the mind turn inward, where it can subconsciously puzzle over subtle meanings and connections. "That"s why so many insights happen during warm showers," says Joydeep Bhattacharya, a psychologist at Goldsmiths, University of London. But this is just one reason for 3M"s creative output. The company also encourages its employees to take risks, not only by spending masses on research (nearly 8% of gross revenue), but also by expecting workers to spend around 15% of their time pursuing speculative ideas. Most of these efforts will fail, but some will generate real profit for the company. The reason why this approach works—and why it has been imitated by other crafty companies such as Google—is because many breakthroughs come when people venture beyond their area of expertise. This is why young people tend to be the most innovative thinkers in nearly any field, from physics to music. The ignorance of youth "comes with creative advantages," writes Mr. Lehrer, as the young are less jaded by custom and experience. Still, he reassures readers that anyone can stay creative as long as he works "to maintain the perspective of the outsider". This can be done by considering new problems at work, travelling to new countries or simply spending more time staring "at things we don"t fully understand." This is an inspiring and engaging book that reveals creativity as less a sign of rare genius than a natural human potential. Mr. Lehrer points to William Shakespeare, for example, as someone who was largely a man of his time; the culture of Elizabethan London nurtured quite a few poets—much like ancient Athens gave rise to a glut of thinkers and Renaissance Florence inspired many fine artists. Shakespeare knew his way with a pen, but he also lived in a culture that put a premium on ideas, spread education, introduced new patents for inventions and did not always rigorously enforce censorship laws. Mr. Lehrer concludes with a call for better policy to "increase our collective creativity". He suggests allowing more immigration, inviting more risk and enabling more cultural borrowing and adaptation. He also warns that the work demands a lot of time, sweat and gut. Or as Albert Einstein put it: "creativity is the residue of time wasted."

单选题Imagine a classroom where the instructors speak a foreign language and the students can"t take notes, turn to a textbook, or ask any questions. Yet at the end of the final exam, one participant may face life in jail or even death. That"s the task handed to American jurors, briefly thrown together to decide accused criminals" fate. In "A Trial by Jury," Princeton history professor D. Graham Burnett offers a rare glimpse inside jury deliberations at a New York murder trial where he served as foreman last year. According to the prosecutor, the case seems clear cut: a sexual encounter between two men went wrong. The defendant stabbed his victim 26 times, but claims he acted in self-defense, killing a man who was attempting to rape him. Burnett opens with a detailed description of the crime. He then introduces the characters and walks readers through the 10-day trial. You hear the testimony of witnesses dressed in strange clothes and find yourself put off by a growling prosecutor and the judge"s indifference. Once retreated in the jury room, confusion reigns. Most jurors don"t understand the charges or the meaning of self-defense. Uninterested jurors seem more concerned about missing appointments. On the third day, one juror runs to a bathroom in tears after exchanging curses. By the final day, nearly everyone cries. Though he"s no more familiar with the law than the other jurors, who include a vacuum-cleaner repairman and a software developer, it"s fitting that Burnett is a teacher. For us, he serves as a patient instructor, illustrating with his experience just what a remarkable and sometimes remarkably strange duty serving on a jury can be. For many citizens, jury duty is their first exposure to our justice system. Jurors discover first hand the gap between law and justice. They face two flawed versions of the same event, offered by witnesses they may not believe. We assume jurors will take their job seriously. We expect them to digest complicated definitions that leave lawyers confused. But as Burnett quickly discovers, jurors receive little help. The judge offers them no guidance about how to conduct themselves and races through his delivery of the murder charges. Only within the past decade have we finally abandoned the misconception that jurors naturally reach the right decision without any assistance. Led by Arizona, states have instituted jury reforms as simple as letting jurors take notes or obtain written copies of their instructions. It"s not clear whether these changes improve the quality of justice, but the reforms certainly ensure that jurors leave their tour of duty with better feelings about the experience. Unfortunately, such reforms hadn"t come yet to New York at the time of this trial. Nonetheless, Burnett and his fellow jurors grope toward their own solution, ultimately reaching what he describes as an "avowedly imperfect" result.

单选题Of all the cuts to public services, few have provoked such loud protests as proposals to close libraries. Petitions and curses have been followed by legal challenges. On November 16th a judge in London rifled against plans to close 21 libraries in Gloucestershire and Somerset. Campaigners in Brent, in north-west London, have taken their fight against closures to the Court of Appeal. Local politicians are startled. Keith Mitchell, leader of Oxfordshire county council, which was forced by public pressure to abandon plans to close many libraries, complained that protesters seemed much less upset by cuts to social care and rubbish collection. Visits to libraries have declined by 6.7% in the past five years, according to the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA). But this is to underestimate the symbolic role libraries play as a visible public good. A 2010 poll found that 69% of people had been to a library in the past year. More than 80% view libraries as "essential" or "very important". Yet savings have to be made somewhere. If library closures cause protests, cuts must be done stealthily. In the 2010-11 fiscal year libraries acquired 7.4% fewer adult fiction books and 13.7% fewer non-fiction books than they had the year before. An older, less appealing stock could speed the decline in library visits. Yet hard times are also forcing innovations that may help libraries in the long run. In a quiet success for David Cameron"s "Big Society", the number of volunteer librarians has risen from 12,708 to 21,642 in the past five years. That trend has its critics, especially among professional librarians. But staff account for at least half the cost of running a library. Other savings could probably be made by consolidating England"s 151 library authorities, and by making better use of technology. "London has 32 library authorities but just one police authority," marvels Desmond Clarke, a library campaigner. An entirely different option is to pour money into a single edifice in the hope that it will have a benign effect on the neighborhood. England"s most popular library is the Norfolk & Norwich Millennium, a multi-storey space in a sparkling new building with a restaurant and gallery, which lured nearly 1.5m people last year. As the anchor of the development, the library attracts users who then linger and spend money nearby. Birmingham is building a new ￡188.8m library, the flagship of a development in the city centre that is due to open in 2013. Many of the city"s other 39 libraries could face cuts in service, including shorter opening hours and fewer staff. Libraries are not dead—just a little dusty.

单选题The employment situation in the United States is much worse than even the dismal numbers from last week"s jobless report would indicate. The nation is facing a full blown employment crisis and policy makers are not responding with anything like the sense of urgency that is needed. Government workers were walking the plank from coast to coast. About 143,000 temporary Census workers were let go, and another 48,000 government employees at the budget-strapped state and local levels lost their jobs. But the worst news, with the most worrying long-term implications, was that the reason the unemployment rate was not higher was because 181,000 workers left the labor force. With many of them beaten down by the worst jobs situation since the Great Depression, they just stopped looking for work. And given the Alice-in-Wonderland way in which we compile our official jobless statistics, they are no longer counted as unemployed. Charles McMillion, the president and chief economist of MBG Information Services in Washington, is an expert on employment and has been looking closely for years at the issue of labor force participation. "Over the past three months," he said, "1,155,000 unemployed people dropped out of the active labor force and were not counted as unemployed. Even ignoring population growth, if these unemployed had not dropped out of the labor force, simple arithmetic shows that the official unemployment rate would have risen from 9.9 percent in April to 10.2 percent in July, rather than—as it has—fallen to 9.5 percent." Because of normal growth in the working-age population, the labor force increases by roughly 150,000 to 200,000 people per month. If those folks were factored in, said Mr. McMillion, "unemployment now would be even higher than 10.2 percent." We are not even beginning to cope with this crisis, which began long before the onset of the so-called Great Recession. The economy is showing absolutely no sign of countering the nation"s shocking jobs deficit. They may be thinking about this in Washington, but they sure aren"t doing much about it. The politicians" approach to the jobs crisis has been like passing out umbrellas in a hurricane. Millions are suffering and the entire economy is being undermined, and what are they doing? They"re appropriating more and more money for warfare while frantically talking about balancing the budget. We"re not heading toward the danger zone. We"re there. The U.S. will not remain a stable society if this great employment crisis is not addressed directly—and soon. You cannot allow joblessness on this scale to aggravate. It"s wrong, and the adverse effect will be as destructive and intolerable as it is inevitable.

单选题Navigation computers, now sold by most car-makers, cost $2,000 and up. No surprise, then, that they are most often found in luxury cars, like Lexus, BMW and Audi. But it is a developing technology—meaning prices should eventually drop—and the market does seem to be growing. Even at current prices, a navigation computer is impressive. It can guide you from point to point in most major cities with precise turn-by-turn directions—spoken by a clear human—sounding voice, and written on a screen in front of the driver. The computer works with an antenna that takes signals from no fewer than three of the 24 global positioning system (GPS) satellites. By measuring the time required for a signal to travel between the satellites and the antenna, the car"s location can be pinned down within 100 meters. The satellite signals, along with inputs on speed from a wheel-speed sensor and direction from a meter, determine the car"s position even as it moves. This information is combined with a map database. Streets, landmarks and points of interest are included. Most systems are basically identical. The differences come in hardware—the way the computer accepts the driver"s request for directions and the way it presents the driving instructions. On most systems, a driver enters a desired address, motorway junction or point of interest via a touch screen or disc. But the Lexus screen goes a step further: you can point to any spot on the map screen and get directions to it. BMW"s system offers a set of cross hairs that can be moved across the map (you have several choices of map scale) to pick a point you"d like to get to. Audi"s screen can be switched to TV reception. Even the voices that recite the directions can differ, with better systems like BMW"s and Lexus"s having a wider vocabulary. The instructions are available in French, German, Spanish, Dutch and Italian, as well as English. The driver can also choose parameters for determining the route: fastest, shortest or no freeways, for example.

单选题Of the world"s 774m illiterate adults two-thirds are women, a share that has remained unchanged for the past two decades. But girls everywhere are beginning to catch up. Across the emerging world, 78% of them are now at primary school, an only slightly smaller proportion than boys (82%). At secondary level enrolment remains lower and girls are further behind, but things are getting better there too. The big surprise of the past few decades has been women"s huge advance into tertiary education. Across rich countries the share of those aged over 25 who have had some form of higher education is now 33%, against 28% of men in the same age group. Even in many developing regions they make up a majority of students in higher education. It is too soon to feel sorry for men. Although women now earn more first degrees, they mostly still get fewer PhDs, and if they stay on in academia they are promoted more slowly than men. Many of them are put off by the way the academic promotion system works, explains Lotte Bailyn, a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management. To get ahead, young hopefuls have to put in a huge amount of time and effort just when many women start to think about having a family, so they do not apply for senior posts. Ms Bailyn approvingly notes the recent decision by America"s National Science Foundation, which funds a big chunk of the universities" basic research, to allow grant recipients to take a break. Crucially, women"s lead at first-degree level does not so far seem to have translated into better job opportunities. In a paper published earlier this year Ina Ganguli of Harvard"s Kennedy School of Government concluded that the achievement of educational parity is a "cheque in the mail" that may presage more women joining the labor force, but lots of other factors—such as cultural attitudes and the availability of child care—also play a part. On its own, educational parity—even superiority—is not enough. Women may not be helping themselves by concentrating heavily on subjects that set them apart from men. In rich countries they account for over 70% of degrees in humanities and health, whereas the vast majority of degrees in mathematics and engineering go to men. Women with humanities degrees are less likely to be in demand for jobs in high-tech industries, which tend to pay well. At postgraduate level the gap between subjects gets even bigger. And on MBA courses, the classic avenue to senior corporate jobs, women make up only about a third of the students. Such differences between males and females show up quite early in life, but not nearly big enough to explain the huge differences in the choice of subject at university level. The OECD"s PISA researchers conclude that the choices have little to do with ability and may well be influenced by ingrained stereotypes. That would help to explain why they vary so much from country to country. In Japan women are awarded only 11% of all degrees in engineering, manufacturing and construction; in Indonesia their share is exactly half.

单选题The term "formal learning" refers to all learning which takes place in the classroom regardless of whether such learning is informed by conservative or progressive ideologies. "Informal learning", on the other hand, is used to refer to learning which takes place outside the classroom. These definitions provide the essential difference between the two modes of learning. Formal learning is separated from daily life and may actually promote ways of learning and thinking which often run counter to those obtained from practical daily life. A characteristic feature of formal learning is the centrality of activities which can prepare for the challenges of adult life outside the classroom, but it cannot, by its nature, consist of these challenges. In doing this, language plays a critical role as the major channel for information exchange. The language of the classroom is more similar to the language used by middle-class families than that used by working-class families. Middle-class children thus find it easier to acquire the language of the classroom than their working-class classmates. Informal learning, in contrast, occurs in the setting to which it relates, making learning immediately relevant. In this context, language does not occupy such an important role. the child"s experience of learning is more direct, involving sight, touch, taste, and smell—senses that are under-utilised in the classroom. Whereas formal learning is transmitted by teachers selected to perform this role, informal learning is acquired as a natural part of a child"s socialization. Adults or older children who are proficient in the skill or activity provide—sometimes unintentionally—target models of behaviour in the course of everyday activity. Informal learning, therefore, can take place at any time and place. The motivation of the learner provides another critical difference between the two models of learning. The formal learner is generally motivated by some kind of external goal such as parental approval, social status, and potential financial reward. The informal learner, however, tends to be motivated by successful completion of the task itself and the partial acquisition of adult status. Given that learning systems develop as a response to the social and economic contexts in which they are embedded, it is understandable that modern, highly urbanized societies have concentrated almost exclusively on the establishment of formal education systems. What these societies have failed to recognize are the ways in which formal learning inhibits the child"s multi-sensory acquisition of practical skills. The failure to provide a child with a direct education may in part account for many of the social problems which trouble our societies.

单选题Seven years ago, a group of female scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology produced a piece of research showing that senior women professors in the institute"s school of science had lower salaries and received fewer resources for research than their male counterparts did. Discrimination against female scientists has cropped up elsewhere. One study—conducted in Sweden, of all places—showed that female medical-research scientists had to be twice as good as men to win research grants. These pieces of work, though, were relatively small-scale. Now, a much larger study has found that discrimination plays a role in the pay gap between male and female scientists at British universities. Sara Connolly, a researcher at the University of East Anglia"s school of economics, has been analyzing the results of a survey of over 7,000 scientists and she has just presented her findings at this year"s meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Norwich. She found that the average pay gap between male and female academics working in science, engineering and technology is around ￡1,500 ($2,850) a year. That is not, of course, irrefutable proof of discrimination. An alternative hypothesis is that the courses of men"s and women"s lives mean the gap is caused by something else; women taking "career breaks" to have children, for example, and thus rising more slowly through the hierarchy. Unfortunately for that idea, Dr. Connolly found that men are also likely to earn more within any given grade of the hierarchy. Male professors, for example, earn over ￡4,000 a year more than female ones. To prove the point beyond doubt, Dr. Connolly worked out how much of the overall pay differential was explained by differences such as seniority, experience and age, and how much was unexplained, and therefore suggestive of discrimination. Explicable differences amounted to 77% of the overall pay gap between the sexes. That still left a substantial 23% gap in pay, which Dr. Connolly attributes to discrimination. Besides pay, her study also looked at the "glass-ceiling" effect—namely that at all stages of a woman"s career she is less likely than her male colleagues to be promoted. Between postdoctoral and lecturer level, men are more likely to be promoted than women are, by a factor of between 1.04 and 2.45. Such differences are bigger at higher grades, with the hardest move of all being for a woman to settle into a professorial chair. Of course, it might be that, at each grade, men do more work than women, to make themselves more eligible for promotion. But that explanation, too, seems to be wrong. Unlike the previous studies, Dr. Connolly"s compared the experience of scientists in universities with that of those in other sorts of laboratory. It turns out that female academic researchers face more barriers to promotion, and have a wider gap between their pay and that of their male counterparts, than do their sisters in industry or research institutes independent of universities. Private enterprise, in other words, delivers more equality than the supposedly egalitarian world of academia does.

单选题Gravity is one of those things we take completely for granted. And there are two things about it that we take for granted: the fact that it is always there, and the fact that it never changes. If the earth"s gravity were ever to change significantly, it would have a huge effect on nearly everything because so many things are designed around the current state of gravity. Gravity is an attractive force between any two atoms. Let"s say you take two golf balls and place them on a table. There will be an incredibly slight gravitational attraction between the atoms in those two golf balls. If you use two massive pieces of lead and some amazingly precise instruments, you can actually measure an infinitesimal attraction between them. It is only when you get a gigantic number of atoms together, that the force of gravitational attraction is significant. The reason why gravity on Earth never changes is the mass of the Earth never changes. A change in mass great enough to result in a change in gravity isn"t going to happen anytime soon. But let"s ignore the physics and imagine that, suddenly there was no force of gravity on planet Earth. This would turn out to be a pretty bad day. We depend on gravity to hold so many things down—cars, people, furniture, pencils and papers on your desk, and so on. Everything would start floating. What"s more, two of the more important things held on the ground by gravity are the atmosphere and the water in the oceans, lakes and rivers. Without gravity, the air in the atmosphere would immediately leap into space. This is the problem the moon has— the moon doesn"t have enough gravity to keep an atmosphere around it, so it"s in a near vacuum. Without an atmosphere, any living thing would die immediately and anything liquid would boil away into space. In other words, no one would last long if the planet didn"t have gravity. If gravity were to suddenly double, it would be almost as bad, because everything would be twice as heavy. There would be big problems with anything structural. Houses, bridges, skyscrapers, table legs and so on are all sized for normal gravity. Most structures would collapse fairly quickly if you doubled the load on them, What this answer shows you is just how integral gravity is to our world. We can"t live without it. It is one of the true constants in our lives.

单选题A recent study, published in last week"s Journal of the American Medical Association, offers a picture of how risky it is to get a lift from a teenage driver. Indeed, a 16-year-old driver with three or more passengers is three times as likely to have a fatal accident as a teenager driving alone. By contrast, the risk of death for drivers between 30 and 59 decreases with each additional passenger. The authors also found that the death rates for teenage drivers increased dramatically after 10 p.m. and especially after midnight. With passengers in the car, the driver was even more likely to die in a late- night accident. Robert Foss, a scientist at the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center, says the higher death rates for teenage drivers have less to do with "really stupid behavior" than with just a lack of driving experience." The basic issue" he says, "is that adults who are responsible for issuing licenses fail to recognize how complex and skilled a task driving is." Both he and the author of the study believe that the way to mitigate the problem is to have states institute so-called graduated licensing systems, in which getting a license is a multistage process. A graduated license requires that a teenager first prove himself capable of driving in the presence of an adult, followed by a period of driving with night or passenger restrictions, before graduating to full driving privileges. Graduated licensing systems have reduced teenage driver crashes, according to recent studies. About half of the states now have some sort of graduated licensing system in place, but only 10 of those states have restrictions on passengers. California is the strictest, with a novice driver prohibited from carrying any passenger under 20(without the presence of an adult over 25) for the first six months.

单选题In department stores and closets all over the world, they are waiting. Their outward appearance seems rather appealing because they come in a variety of styles, textures, and colors. But they are ultimately the biggest deception that exists in the fashion industry today. What are they? They are high heels—a woman"s worst enemy (whether she knows it or not). High heel shoes are the downfall of modern society. Fashion myths have led women to believe that they are more beautiful or sophisticated for wearing heels, but in reality, heels succeed in posing short as well as long term hardships. Women should fight the high heel industry by refusing to use or purchase them in order to save the world from unnecessary physical and psychological suffering. For the sake of fairness, it must be noted that there is a positive side to high heels. First, heels are excellent for aerating lawns. Anyone who has ever worn heels on grass knows what I am talking about. A simple trip around the yard in a pair of those babies eliminates all need to call for a lawn care specialist, and provides the perfect-sized holes to give any lawn oxygen without all those messy chunks of dirt lying around. Second, heels are quite functional for defense against oncoming enemies, who can easily be scared away by threatening them with a pair of these sharp, deadly fashion accessories. Regardless of such practical uses for heels, the fact remains that wearing high heels is harmful to one"s physical health. Talk to any podiatrist, and you will hear that the majority of their business comes from high-heel-wearing women. High heels are known to cause problems such as deformed feet and torn toenails. The risk of severe back problems and twisted or broken ankles is three times higher for a high heel wearer than for a flat shoe wearer. Wearing heels also creates the threat of getting a heel caught in a sidewalk crack or a sewer-grate and being thrown to the ground—possibly breaking a nose, back, or neck. And of course, after wearing heels for a day, any woman knows she can look forward to a night of pain as she tries to comfort her swollen, aching feet.

单选题Directions: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on the ANSWER SHEET. It sounds like a real-life version of Lost: a 272-ton Boeing 777 {{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}from Kuala Lumpur International Airport and {{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}less than an hour into a flight to Beijing, disappearing from air-craft radar screens and triggering a massive search {{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}high-tech warships, nimble supersonic jets, all-seeing satellites—the combined technological resources of 26 countries. Days {{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}without a trace of the airliner. Big Brother looks high and low—and finds {{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}}. The world lost {{U}} {{U}} 6 {{/U}} {{/U}}with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the early hours of March 8, somewhere in no-man's-sky {{U}} {{U}} 7 {{/U}} {{/U}}Malaysia and Vietnam. Every day that followed brought new theories of what might have happened as dark turned to dawn. Was the plane hijacked to some remote landing strip and, if so, where are the passengers? {{U}} {{U}} 8 {{/U}} {{/U}}had the jet malfunctioned and {{U}} {{U}} 9 {{/U}} {{/U}}into the ocean-and if so, where was the debris? As search team looked for answers to these questions, the millions of people worldwide who were {{U}} {{U}} 10 {{/U}} {{/U}}for updates about MH370 were left wondering how, in 2014, technology could come up so short, {{U}} {{U}} 11 {{/U}} {{/U}}a 209-ft. (64m) airliner carrying 239 people to {{U}} {{U}} 12 {{/U}} {{/U}}for the longest period of time in modern commercial aviation history. The {{U}} {{U}} 13 {{/U}} {{/U}}story of MH370 doesn't fit into the narrative of our omniscient (无所不知的) era. The world's intelligence agencies can watch and {{U}} {{U}} 14 {{/U}} {{/U}}to millions of us as we go about our lives. {{U}} {{U}} 15 {{/U}} {{/U}}we nonspies have plenty of tracking technology at our disposal. Pull up a web browser and with a few keystrokes we can {{U}} {{U}} 16 {{/U}} {{/U}}our lost iPhones, track satellites as they circle the earth, use Google Maps to explore far-off lands. How, then, with our {{U}} {{U}} 17 {{/U}} {{/U}}infrastructure of bits and bytes, did we fail to {{U}} {{U}} 18 {{/U}} {{/U}}a jumbo jet? The answers are disturbing. For all the post-9/11 security protocols we submit to every time we get on a plane, much of the basic {{U}} {{U}} 19 {{/U}} {{/U}}that is meant to track our progress through the sky is full of holes. And even our most modern {{U}} {{U}} 20 {{/U}} {{/U}}can be rendered invisible by the human hand.

单选题A dependent audit comes from your employer, who wants proof that the people you"re carrying on the company health plan really are your dependents. If you can"t prove they are, the company will drop them. The goal is to ferret out children who are over age 18 and not in school, ex-spouses, sometimes even nieces or nephews—people, in short, who do not meet an employer"s definition of dependent. If your company does not already conduct these audits, chances are it eventually will. And while it may strike you as an annoyance, do not ignore this task. Otherwise, eligible dependents could lose their health coverage. From an employer"s perspective, audits make good business sense. Health care costs have been rising by 5 to 10 percent a year for over a decade, and employers want to contain those costs. An audit of a 10,000-person employer will typically uncover 200 to 500 ineligible dependents, said John Fazio, a senior consultant with the employee benefits firm Towers Watson. Removing these people, who cost a company an average of $2,100 a head, translates into annual savings of $420,000 to $1.05 million a year for the employer. Dependent audits have been around for more than a decade. But they have become popular in the last few years, as employers desperately sought ways to trim their health care budgets. This year 69 percent of large companies plan to conduct a dependent audit, up from the 55 percent that planned to do so in 2008, according to a March survey by Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health, a nonprofit organization of large employers. From the employees" perspective, such audits are at best an annoyance, forcing them to gather paper work proving, say, that a child who had been covered for years remains eligible. At worst, an audit can be a wrenching and costly experience when a worker"s dependent is found to be ineligible and has to get insurance elsewhere. What is more, a worker could be liable for the money that an employer paid out for a spouse or child who should not have been on the plan. And, as audits have become more common, the process for employees has become more onerous. "It used to be the honor system," says Michael Smith, the chief executive of ConSova, a dependent auditing company. Just five years ago, employers typically asked that you sign an affidavit stating that your dependent was eligible to be on your plan. "Now, they want documentation," Mr. Fazio said. "It"s a more diligent process." That means you may have to dig up birth and marriage certificates, bank statements, divorce agreements and other documents that prove your child or spouse are legal dependents.