Bernard Bailyn has recently reinterpreted the early history of the United States by applying new social research findings on the experiences of European migrants. In his reinterpretation, migration becomes the organizing principle for rewriting the history of pre-industrial North America. His approach rests on four separate propositions. The first of these asserts that residents of early modern England moved regularly about their countryside: migrating to the New World was simply a "natural spillover". Although at first the colonies held little positive attraction for the English—they would rather have stayed home—by the eighteenth century people increasingly migrated to America because they regarded it as the land of opportunity. Secondly, Bailyn holds that, contrary to the notion that used to flourish in American history textbooks, there was never a typical New World community. For example, the economic and demographic character of early New England towns varied considerably. Bailyn"s third proposition suggests two general patterns prevailing among the many thousands of migrants: one group came as indentured servants, another came to acquire land. Surprisingly, Bailyn suggests that those who recruited indentured servants were driving forces of transatlantic migration. These colonial entrepreneurs helped determine the social character of people who came to pre-industrial North America. At first, thousands of unskilled laborers were recruited; by the 1730"s, however, American employers demanded skilled workers. Finally, Bailyn argues that the colonies were a half-civilized hinterland of the European culture system. He is undoubtedly correct to insist that the colonies were part of the Anglo-American empire. But to divide the empire into English core and colonial periphery, as Bailyn does, devalues the achievements of colonial culture. It is true, as Bailyn claims, that high culture in the colonies never matched that in England. But what of seventeenth-century New England, where the settlers created effective laws, built a distinguished university, and published books? Bailyn might respond that New England was exceptional. However, the ideas and institutions developed by New England Puritans had powerful effects on North American culture. Although Bailyn goes on to apply his approach to some thousands of indentured servants who migrated just prior to the revolution, he fails to link their experience with the political development of the United States. Evidence presented in his work suggests how we might make such a connection. These indentured servants were treated as slaves for the period during which they had sold their time to American employers. It is not surprising that as soon as they served their time they gave up good wages in the cities and headed west to ensure their personal independence by acquiring land. Thus, it is in the west that a peculiarly American. political culture began, among colonists who were suspicious of authority and intensely anti-aristocratic.Notes: spillover n.外流。indentured servant合同工。hinterland n.内地。Anglo-American英裔美国人的。periphery n.边缘。anti-aristocratic反贵族的。demographics 人口统计(特点)

Studythefollowingpiechartscarefullyandwriteanessayinwhichyoushould1)describethepiecharts,2)analyzetheirmeaningand3)suggestcounter-measures.Youshouldwriteabout160—200wordsneatly.

There is nothing unusual there.

This eye on the consumer approach is known as the marketing concept, which simply means that instead of trying to sell whatever is easiest to produce or buy for resale, the makers and dealers first endeavor to find out what the consumer wants to buy and then go about making it available for purchase.

What does the future hold for the problem of housing? A good (1)_____ depends, of course, on the meaning of" future". If one is thinking in (2)_____ of science fiction and the space age (3)_____ at least possible to assume that man will have solved such trivial and earthly problems as housing. Writers of science fiction have (4)_____ the suggestion that men will live in great comfort, with every (5)_____ device to make life smooth, healthy and easy, (6)_____ not happy. But they have not said what his house will be made of. The problems of the next generation or two can more readily be imagined. Scientists have already pointed out that (7)_____ something is done either to restrict the world"s rapid growth in population or to discover and develop new sources of food (or both), millions of people will be dying of starvation or, (8)_____, suffering from under feeding before this (9)_____ is out. But nobody has worked out any plan for housing these growing populations. Admittedly the worse situations will occur in the (10)_____ parts of the world, where housing can be of light structure, or in backward areas where standards are (11)_____ low. But even the minimum shelter requires materials of (12)_____ kind, and in the crowded, bulging towns the low-standard" housing" of flattened petrol mans and dirty canvas is far more wasteful (13)_____ ground space than can be tolerated. Since the war, Hong Kong has suffered the kind of crisis which is likely to (14)_____ in many other places during the next generation. (15)_____ millions of refugees arrived to (16)_____ the already growing population and emergency steps had to be taken to prevent squalor and disease and the (17)_____ of crime. Hong Kong is only one small part of what will certainly become a vast problem and not (18)_____ a housing problem, because when population grows at this rate there are (19)_____ problems of education, transport, water supply and so on. Not every area may have the same resources as Hong Kong to (20)_____ and the search for quicker and cheaper methods of construction must never cease.

A key reason the news media exists with special privileges is to be our watchdogs. Reporters" charge is to alert us when something is wrong, when human or natural disasters are about to threaten our welfare. When it comes to natural disasters, the news media do a praisable job of reporting the obvious, but not a very good one of preparing the public for what might happen, for alerting us to potential difficulties. When it comes to human disasters, especially problems in government and economic matters, the press has failed miserably. For example, Time magazine finally told the public in a recent cover story what only the most quick observers already knew: "The Great Retirement Ripoff(偷窃): Millions of Americans who think they will retire with benefits are going be shocked. How corporations are picking people"s pockets—with the help of Congress...How can this legal?" Where was the media when each piece of corporate-biased legislation was being passed? Why wasn"t Congress afraid to pass such legislation? Because the media has decided that news concerning Congress is of little interest to its audience. TV news managers have believed that economic and social issues are too complicated for the public to grasp. Newspaper editors occasionally print such stories, but mostly they concentrate on human-interest features, consumer health sections and entertainment. Hard news holes are shrinking and investigative journalism is carried out only on occasion. It is too difficult and costly. Besides, it antagonizes advertisers while seldom increasing circulation. Magazines that would look into such subjects seem to be dying out. The result is that no one is watching the rich and powerful so they can do almost anything with impunity(不受惩罚). Millions of Americans have been robbed in broad daylight while the news media has busied itself with celebrity trials and sensational crime stories. Corporations steal the public blind under legislation authorized by government officials. Companies file for bankruptcy protection, cutting off medical and life-insurance benefits for retirees. It isn"t a new phenomenon. For the most part, today"s press has let down the American public time and time again. If it seems to be getting worse, it"s because there are so many segments of the media that should be telling us, in an accurate and fair manner, what our elected officials are doing before it"s too late to take action. It"s harder to blame corporations because they make no bones about their mission: make as much money as possible at all costs. Those in Congress are supposed to protect us and look out for our interests. Yet, it appears they constantly help their powerful supporters who often buy their offices for them. No one is doing the right thing. The joke apparently is on all of us—the old and the sick who will have no help in the future and the young burdened with the debt of caring for their impoverished elders for the rest of their lives.

Imagine the U.S. economic gains of the 1990s, and what comes to mind? Perhaps it was how the stock market ruled: All those initial public offerings that raked in unprecedented billions for venture capitalists. And wasn"t it a great time to be a top manager, with productivity gains boosting the bottom line and igniting executive pay? While it was going on, venture capitalist L. John Doerr called the boom the "largest single legal creation of wealth in history." Well, yes and no. With the recession apparently over, it"s now possible to make a more realistic assessment of the entire business cycle of the 1990s: The sluggish recovery that started in March, 1991, the extraordinary boom, the tech bust, and the downturn of 2001. And guess what? A lot of things happened that defy the conventional beliefs about the decade. Over this 10-year period, productivity rose at a 2.2% annual rate, roughly half a percentage point faster than in the 1980s—a significant gain. But the real stunner is this: The biggest winners from the faster productivity growth of the 1990s were workers, not investors. In many ways, the most tangible sign of worker gains in the 1990s was the home-buying boom. This revelation helps us understand why consumer spending stayed so strong in the recession—and why businesses may still struggle in the months ahead. By contrast, the return on the stock market in the 1990s business cycle was actually lower than it was in the business cycle of the 1980s. Adjusted for inflation and including dividends, average annual returns on the S&P—500 index from March, 1991, to the end of 2001 were 11.1%, compared with 12.8% in the previous business cycle. Overall, Business Week calculates that U.S. workers received 99% of the gains from faster productivity growth in the 1990s at nonfinancial corporations. Corporate profits did rise sharply, but much of that gain was fueled by lower interest rates rather than increased productivity. Why did workers fare so well in the 1990s? The education level of many Americans made an impressive leap in the 1990s, putting them in a better position to qualify for the sorts of jobs that the New Economy created. Low unemployment rates drove up wages. And a torrent of foreign money coming into the U.S. created new jobs and financed productivity-enhancing equipment investment. As it turns out, the original perceptions of who benefited most from the productivity gains of the 1990s was flipped on its head. Looking ahead, the economic pie is growing bigger all the time, but it"s still up for grabs who will get the largest piece in the future. And in the end, that"s the real lesson of the 1990s.

You are going to read a text about Gold-Medal Workouts, followed by a list of examples. Choose the best example from the list for each numbered subheading. There is one extra example which you do not need to use. Drawing on biomechanics and other sports science, Olympic hopefuls target just the right muscles and moves. Olympians of yesteryear shared the same goal, but they would hardly recognize today"s training techniques. To achieve to Olympian ideal of "faster, higher, stronger", coaches now realize, athletes don"t have to train more but they do have to, train smarter. That"s why, these days, cross-country (Nordic) skiers kneel on skateboards and tug on pulleys to haul themselves up a ramp. By analyzing every motion that goes into a ski jump or a luge run, the science of biomechanics breaks down events into their component parts and determines which movements of which muscles are the key to a superlative performance. Knowing that is crucial for a simple but, to many coaches and trainers, unexpected reason: it turns out that although training for general conditioning improves fitness, the best way to boost performance is by working the muscles and practicing the moves that will be used in competition. It"s called sport-specific training. (41) Ways to work the right muscles and train the right patterns of movement. Sport-specific training doesn"t have to mean running the actual course or performing the exact event. There are other ways to work the right muscles and train the right pattern of movement. Doing situps on a Swiss ball, for instance, develops torso control as well as strength. The Finnish ice-hockey team recently added acrobatics to its training regime because it helps players to balance on the ice, says head coach Raimo Summanen. Performance-enhancing strategies. The advances in physiology that have revolutionized training are giving sports scientists a better under-standing of how to improve strength, power, speed and both aerobic and anaerobic fitness: (42) Training the start-up. Speed is partly genetic. A star sprinter is probably born with a preponderance of fast-twitch muscle fibers, which fire repeatedly with only microsecond rests in between. Speed training therefore aims to recruit more fast-twitch fibers and increase the speed of nerve signals that command muscles to move. (43) Strength reflects the percentage of muscle fibers the body can recruit for a given movement. "Someone with pure strength can recruit 90 percent of these fibers, while someone else recruits only 50 percent", says the USOC"s Davis. (44) Developing anaerobic fitness. Anaerobic fitness keeps the muscles moving even when the heart can"t provide enough oxygen. To postpone the point when acid begins to accumulate, or at least train the body to tolerate it, Jim Walker has the speed skaters he works with push themselves beyond what they need to do in competition. Power is strength with speed. "One of the biggest changes in strength training is that we"re getting away from pure strength and emphasizing power, or explosive strength", says USOC strength-and-conditioning coordinator Kevin Ebel. (45) Difficulties under way. It"s still difficult to persuade coaches to let sports scientists mess with their athletes. To overcome such resistance, the USOC"s Peter Davis has set up "performance-enhancing teams" where coaches and scientists put their heads together and apply the best science to training. Come February, the world will see how science fared in its attempt to mold athletic excellence.A. Zach Lund races skeleton (a head-first, belly-down sled race), in which the start is crucial. He has to sprint in a bent-over position (pushing his sled along the track), then hop in without slowing the sled. "You have to go from a hard sprint to being really calm in order to go down the track well", says Lund. To improve his speed he does leg presses while lying on his back, or leg curls on his stomach (bringing his foot to his backside).B. Despite the finding that drafting reduces the demand on the heart of a speed skater and generally improves performance, for instance, most skaters still prefer to go out fast and first.C. Sprinters who skate 500 meters in the Olympics, for instance, power through multiple 300 meters, and do it faster than they Skate the 500. By raising the anaerobic threshold, the training gives skaters a better shot at exploding with a sprint at the finish.D. Luge, for instance, requires precise control of infinitesimal muscle movements: "Overcorrect on a turn", says driver Mark Grimmette, "and you"re dead". To achieve that precise control, he and his doubles partner, Brian Martin, devote a good chunk of their training time to exercises on those squishy rubber spheres called Swiss balls.E. Aerobic fitness is hockey star Cammi Granato"s goal one autumn morning as she pedals a stationary bike with sweaty fury at the USOC training center in Lake Placid, New York. When Granato finally staggers off the bike and crumples onto the padded platform, she"s had a tougher workout than in any hockey period which is exactly the point.F. The thigh"s quadriceps, for instance, consist of millions of fibers organized into what are called motor units. When a speed skater pushes off the ice, he recruits a certain percentage of them to fire; the others are relaxing and so do not contribute to the movement.

What makes a city good for business? Employers usually list a skilled workforce, good transport links, low property costs and good communications networks as top priorities. (46) As computer and telephone networks become increasingly sophisticated, businesses no longer have to be tied to one place or run all their operations on one site. Most of the country now has access to broadband. Insurance giant Norwich Union is one company which now operates from 1,200 sites nationwide, all linked up through a single network. (47) Call centres can operate as easily from Liverpool as from London and employees can be scattered across the country, working from home and keeping in touch with the office via e-mail and voice messaging systems. Businesses are global rather than local. Relocating businesses are welcomed with open arms by regional development agencies (RDAs), set up to co-ordinate strategic planning, channel funding and work with local organisations to bring in new businesses. (48) "We are about supporting existing businesses and jobs but we also want to bring new employers into areas and encourage organic growth and entrepreneurs," says a spokesman for the National Secretariat of Regional Development Agencies. RDAs are also helping to tackle problems holding some cities back. (49) Unskilled or elderly workforces, lack of technological knowledge, poor facilities, inadequate infrastructure and gaps in broadband availability can all combine to put businesses off relocating. On current form, the best place in the UK to do business is Leeds, according to specialist research consultancy OMIS, which advises companies on relocation. (50) OMIS"s latest Britain"s Best Cities report gives Leeds high marks for its skilled and educated workforce, availability of office space and regenerated city centre full of new shops and restaurants.

This election year, the debate over cloning technology has become a circus—and hardly anybody has noticed the gorilla hiding in the tent. Even while President Bush has, endorsed throwing scientists in jail to stop "reckless experiments", it"s just possible the First Amendment will protect researchers who want to perform cloning research. Dr. Leon Kass, the chairman of the President"s Council on Bioethics, would like to keep that a secret. "I don"t want to encourage such thinking," he said. But the notion that the First Amendment creates a "right to research" has been around for a long time, and Kass knows it. In 1977, four eminent legal scholars—Thomas Emerson, Jerome Barton, Walter Berns and Harold P. Green—were asked to testify before the House Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space. At the time, there was alarm in the country over recombinant DNA. Some people feared clones, designer babies, a plague of superbacteria. The committee wanted to know if the federal government should, or could, restrict the science. "Certainly the overwhelming tenor of the testimony was in favor of protecting it," Barron, who now teaches at George Washington University, recalls. Berns, a conservative political scientist, was forced to agree. He didn"t like this conclusion, be muse he feared the consequences of tinkering with nature, but even after consulting with Kass before his testimony, he told Congress that "the First Amendment protected this kind of research." Today, he believes it protects cloning experiments as well. Law-review articles written at the time supported Berns, and so would a report issued by Congress"s Office of Technology Assessment (O. T.A). But the courts never got the chance to face the fight-to-research issue squarely. An oversight body called the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, formed by the National Institutes of Health, essentially allowed science to police itself. So the discussion was submerged. Until now. Why legal scholars would defend the right to research is hardly mysterious. The founding fathers passionately defended scientific and academic freedom, and the Supreme Court has traditionally had a high regard for it. But why would the right to read, write and speak as you please extend to the right to experiment in the lab? Neoconservatives like Kass have emphasized the need to maintain a fixed conception of human nature. But the O.T.A. directly addressed this in a 1981 report. "Even if the rationale.., were expanded to include situations where knowledge threatens fundamental cultural values about the nature of man, control of research for such a reason probably would not be constitutionally permissible." The government can restrict speech if it can prove a "compelling interest," like public safety or national security. But courts have set that bar very high. Unlike, say, an experiment that releases smallpox into the wind to study how it spreads, which could be banned, embryo research presents no readily apparent danger to public health or security. And if that"s the case, scientists who wish to create stem cells by cloning might have a new source of succor: the U.S. Constitution.

The planets seemed like pretty small places. At the same time, Earth seemed a lot larger than it does now. No one had ever seen our planet as a planet: a blue marble on black velvet, coated with water and air. No one knew that the moon was born in an impact. No one fully appreciated that humanity was becoming a geologic force in its own right, capable of changing the environment on a global scale. Whatever else the Space Age has done, it has enriched our view of the natural world and given us a perspective. National Research Council(NRC)panels periodically ask whether the world' s planetary exploration programs are on track. The list of goals that follows synthesizes their priorities. 1. Monitor Earth' s Climate The venerable Landsat series, which has monitored the surface since 1972, has been on the fritz for years, and the U. S. has Department of Agriculture has already had to buy data from Indian satellites to monitor crop productivity. For some types of data, no other nation can fill in. 2. Prepare an Asteroid Defense Like climate monitoring, guarding the planet from asteroids always seems to fall between the cracks. Neither NASA nor the European Space Agency(ESA)has a mandate to stave off human extinction. It would take 15 years or longer to mount a defense against an incoming body, assuming that the technology were ready to go. 3. Seek Out New Life Before Spotnik, scientists thought the solar system might be a veritable Garden of Eden. Earth's sister worlds proved to be hellish, even when the Mariner probes revealed a cratered moonscape and the Viking landers failed to find even a single organic molecule. But lately the plausible venues for life have multiplied. 4. Explain the Genesis of the Planets Studies of the origin of the planets overlap quite a bit with studies of the origins of life. Jakosky puts it thus: "Venus sits at the inner edge of the habitable zone. Mars sits at the outer edge. Earth sits in the middle. And understanding the differences between those planets is central to asking about life beyond our solar system." 5. Break Out of the Solar System A solar sail 200 meters across could carry a 500-kilogram spacecraft. After launch from Earth, it would first swoop toward the sun, going as it dared—just inside Mercury's orbit—to get flung out by the intense sunlight. "Such a mission, be it ESA-or NASA-led, is the next logical step in our exploration of space, " Wim mer-Schweingruber says. "After all, there is more to space than exploring our very, very local neighborhood." The estimated price tag is about $2 billion including three decades' operating expenses. [A]Like the origin of life, the origin of the planets was a complex, multistage process. Jupiter was the first-born. Did it build up slowly, like the other planets? Did it form farther from the sun and move inward? [B]Like a windsurfer, the spacecraft would steer by leaning to one side or the other. Just before pass ing Jupiter's orbit, it would cast off the sail and glide outward. To get ready, engineers need to design a sufficiently lightweight sail and test it on first. [C]So NRC prepares to take some action plans. Extend asteroid search to smaller bodies, perhaps using a dedicated infrared space telescope. Deflect an asteroid in a controlled way as a trial run. Develop an official system for evaluating potential threats. [D]The NRC panel called for restoring the lost funding, which pay for 17 new missions over the coming decade, such as ones to keep tabs on ice sheets and carbon dioxide levels—essential for predicting climate change and its effects. People sometimes take the mundane yet urgent task of looking after our own planet for granted. [E]Mars is looking hopeful again. Outer-planet moons, notably Europa and Enceladus, appear to have vast underground seas and plenty of life' s raw materials. Even Venus might have been covered in oceans once. The research is not just about finding companionship in the cosmos. It is about divining our own origins. [F]This past spring ESA completed a set of feasibility studies—and promptly shelved them for lack of money. It would take a joint effort with NASA or the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency(JAXA), or both, to make the plan happen.

In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list (A、B、C、D、E、F、G……) to fit into each of the numbered blank. There are several extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. (10 points) Until about two million years ago Africa"s vegetation had always been controlled by the interactions of climate; geology, soil, and groundwater conditions; and the activities of animals. The addition of humans to the latter group, however, has increasingly rendered unreal the concept of a fully developed "natural" vegetation—i.e., one approximating the ideal of a vegetational climax. (41)______. Early attempts at mapping and classifying Africa"s vegetation stressed this relationship: sometimes the names of plant zones were derived directly from climates. In this discussion the idea of zones is retained only in a broad descriptive sense. (42)______. In addition, over time more floral regions of varying shape and size have been recognized. Many schemes have arisen successively, all of which have had to take views on two important aspects: the general scale of treatment to be adopted, and the degree to which human modification is to be comprehended or discounted. (43)______. Quite the opposite assumption is now frequently advanced. An intimate combination of many species—in complex associations and related to localized soils, slopes, and drainage—has been detailed in many studies of the African tropics. In a few square miles there may be a visible succession from swamp with papyrus,, the grass of which the ancient Egyptians made paper and from which the word "paper" originated, through swampy grassland and broad-leaved woodland and grass to a patch of forest on richer hillside soil, and finally to juicy fleshy plants on a nearly naked rock summit. (44)______. Correspondingly, classifications have differed greatly in their principles for naming, grouping, and describing formations: some have chosen terms such as forest, woodland, thorn bush, thicket, and shrub for much of the same broad tracts that others have grouped as wooded savanna (treeless grassy plain) and steppe (grassy plain with few trees). This is best seen in the nomenclature, naming of plants, adopted by two of the most comprehensive and authoritative maps of Africa"s vegetation that have been published: R.W.J. Keay"s Vegetation Map of Africa South of the Tropic of Cancer and its more widely based successor, The Vegetation Map of Africa, compiled by Frank White. In the Keay map the terms "savanna" and "steppe" were adopted as precise definition of formations, based on the herb layer and the coverage of woody vegetation; the White map, however, discarded these two categories as specific classifications. Yet any rapid absence of savanna as in its popular and more general sense is doubtful. (45)______. However, some 100 specific types of vegetation identified on the source map have been compressed into 14 broader classifications.A. As more has become known of the many thousands of African plant species and their complex ecology, naming, classification, and mapping have also become more particular, stressing what was actually present rather than postulating about climatic potential.B. In regions of higher rainfall, such as eastern Africa, savanna vegetation is maintained by periodic fires. Consuming dry grass at the end of the rainy season, the fires burn back the forest vegetation, check the invasion of trees and shrubs, and stimulate new grass growth.C. Once, as with the scientific treatment of African soils, a much greater uniformity was attributed to the vegetation than would have been generally accepted in the same period for treatments of the lands of western Europe or the United States.D. The vegetational map of Africa and general vegetation groupings used here follow the White map and its extensive annotations.E. African vegetation zones are closely linked to climatic zones, with the same zones occurring both north and south of the equator in broadly similar patterns. As with climatic zones, differences in the amount and seasonal distribution of precipitation constitute the most important influence on the development of vegetation.F. Nevertheless, in broad terms, climate remains the dominant control over vegetation. Zonal belts of precipitation, reflection latitude and contrasting exposure to the Atlantic and Indian oceans and their currents, give some reality to related belts of vegetation.G. The span of human occupation in Africa is believed to exceed that of any other continent. All the resultant activities have tended, on balance, to reduce tree cover and increase grassland; but there has been considerable dispute among scholars concerning the natural versus human-caused development of most African grasslands at the regional level.

Appealing for a Donation Write a letter of about 100 words based on the following situation: There was a terrible earthquake in Taiwan last week, and people there suffered a lot. Now write a letter to your schoolmates to appeal them to donate money to the disaster-stricken area. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "The Student Union" instead. Do not write the address.

Some countries are more populous; some have more crime. But in no other country are crime fighters quite so knowledgeable about citizens as in Britain. On January 4th a boastful Home Office detailed the triumphs of the world"s biggest forensic DNA database, which holds samples from more than 5% of the entire population of England and Wales. Recent changes to the rules governing the database mean that it may eventually hold profiles from more than a fifth of all adults. Once a country starts storing DNA samples from criminals it is hard to resist the urge to expand the collection. When the National DNA Database (NDNAD) was set up, in 1995, samples could only be taken from those charged with "recordable" offences. If a suspect was not tried, or was freed, the sample had to be destroyed and the profile removed from the database. That law was abandoned in 2001, after two men who had been convicted of murder and rape had their cases overturned on appeal—the DNA evidence against them related to crimes they had not beep convicted of, and so ought to have been removed from the database. The change has led to the retention of around 200,000 samples that world previously have been destroyed. Some 7,591 of these were subsequently matched with samples from crime scenes, including those from 88 murders and 116 rapes. And since April 2004, police have been able to take and keep samples from anyone arrested for a recordable offence, even if charges do not ensue. The main reason the NDNAD is larger than databases in other countries is that Britain was first to start using DNA as an investigative tool. So not only has it had time to collect more DNA samples, but it has also had longer to appreciate the sheer power of a large database. "Every other country that does databasing will get to where Britain is now," says Chris Asplen, a consultant to law enforcement agencies and governments on DNA technology. The increased use of DNA evidence has given rise to intriguing new courtroom defences. DNA tests are now so sensitive that they can detect if a person has sneezed or sweated near an object. John Swain, a barrister with a background in biochemistry, recently defended a man charged with armed robbery. The defendant"s DNA was on the gun that was used, but the defence argued that he might just have been near it after he had been to the gym, and that an errant bead of sweat could account for the presence of his DNA on a weapon he had never handled. He was declared not guilty.

Your friend has been taking care of your house for a year while you were on business at abroad. Write a letter to him/her which should include the following points: (1) the purpose of writing the letter; (2) express your appreciation of his care; (3) invite him to a dinner as a reward. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. You do not need to write the address.

For the past several years, the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade has featured a column called "Ask Marilyn." People are invited to query Marilyn vos Savant, who at age 10 had tested at a mental level of someone about 23 years old; that gave her an IQ of 228—the highest score ever recorded. IQ tests ask you to complete verbal and visual analogies, to envision paper after it has been folded and cut, and to deduce numerical sequences, among other similar tasks. So it is a bit confusing when vos Savant fields such queries from the average Joe (whose IQ is 100) as, what"s the difference between love and fondness? Or what is the nature of luck and coincidence? It"s not obvious how the capacity to visualize objects and to figure out numerical patterns suits one to answer questions that have eluded some of the best poets and philosophers. Clearly, intelligence encompasses more than a score on a test. Just what does it mean to be smart? How much of intelligence can be specified, and how much can we learn about it from neurology, genetics, computer science and other fields? The defining term of intelligence in humans still seems to be the IQ score, even though IQ tests are not given as often as they used to be. The test comes primarily in two forms: the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale and the Wechsler Intelligence Scales (both come in adult and children"s version). Generally costing several hundred dollars, they are usually given only by psychologists, although variations of them populate bookstores and the World Wide Web. Superhigh scores like vos Savant"s are no longer possible, because scoring is now based on a statistical population distribution among age peers, rather than simply dividing the mental age by the chronological age and multiplying by 100. Other standardized tests, such as the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) and the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), capture the main aspects of IQ tests. Such standardized tests may not assess all the important elements necessary to succeed in school and in life, argues Robert J. Sternberg. In his article "How Intelligent Is Intelligence Testing?", Sternberg notes that traditional test best assess analytical and verbal skills but fail to measure creativity and practical knowledge, components also critical to problem solving and life success. Moreover, IQ tests do not necessarily predict so well once populations or situations change. Research has found that IQ predicted leadership skills when the tests were given under low-stress conditions, but under high-stress conditions, IQ was negatively correlated with leadership—that is, it predicted the opposite. Anyone who has toiled through SAT will testify that test-taking skill also matters, whether it"s knowing when to guess or what questions to skip.

You are going to read a list of headings and a text about human daily cycle of activity. Choose the most suitable heading from the list for each numbered paragraph. The first and last paragraphs of the text are not numbered. There is one extra heading which you do not need to use. (41) We all know that normal human daily cycle of activity is of some 7-8 hours" sleep alternating with some 16-17 hours" wakefulness and that, broadly speaking, the sleep normally coincides with the hours of darkness. Our present concern is with how easily and to what extent this normality can be modified. (42) The question is no more an academic one. The case, for example, with which people can change from working in the day to working at night is a question of growing importance in industry where automation calls insistently for round-the-clock working of machine. It normally takes from five days to one week for a person to adapt to a reversed routine of sleep and wakefulness sleeping during the day and working at night. Unfortunately, it is often the case in industry that shifts are changed every week, a person may work from 12 midnight to 8 a.m. one week, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. the next, and 4 p.m. to 12 midnight the third and so on. This means that no sooner has he got used to one routine than he was to change to another, so that much of his time is spent neither working or sleeping efficiently. (43) One answer would seem to be longer periods on each shift, a month, or even three months. Recent research, however, has shown that people on such systems will get back into their normal habits of sleep and wakefulness during the weekend and that this is quite enough to harm any adaptation to night work built up during the week. (44) The only real solution appears to be to hand over the night shift to a gang of permanent night workers whose adaptation to night work may persist through all weekends and holidays. An interesting study of the domestic life and health of night shift workers was carried out by Brown in 1967. She found a high incidence of disturbed sleep, digestive disorder and domestic disruption among those on alternating day and night shifts, but no abnormal occurrence of these symptoms among those on permanent night work. (45) This latter system then appears to be the best long term policy, but, for the time being, something may be done to relieve the strains of alternate day and night work by selecting those people who can adapt most quickly, to the changes of routine.A. Normality is difficult to be modified especially in industryB. The only real solutionC. The normal human daily cycleD. Weekends add the difficulty to adaptation to sleep and wakefulnessE. The present work to be doneF. To work on weekends can help the adaptation

Why has crime in the U.S. declined so dramatically since the 1990s? Economists and sociologists have offered a bounty of reasons, including more police, more security technology, more economic growth, more immigration, more imprisonment, and so on. The "real" answer is almost certainly a combination of these factors, rather than one of them to the exclusion of the rest. But a new paper adds a surprising variable to the mix. What if the decline of crime in America started with the decline of cash? Cash is critical to the health of an underground economy, because it"s anonymous, nearly untraceable, and easily stolen. This makes it the lifeblood of the black market. But Americans are rapidly abandoning cash thanks to credit cards, debit cards, and mobile payments. Half a century ago, cash was used in 80 percent of U.S. payments. Now that figure is about 50 percent, according to researchers. In the 1980s, the federal government switched from paper money to electronic benefit transfers. They didn"t switch all at once. They switched one county at a time within states. This created a kind of randomly controlled environment for the researchers, who studied Missouri"s counties to establish whether the areas that switched from welfare cash to electronic transfers saw a concurrent decline in crime. The results were striking: The shift away from cash was associated with "a significant decrease in the overall crime rate and the specific offenses of burglary and assault in Missouri and a decline in arrests." In other words, the counties saw a decline in specific crimes when they switched away from cash welfare. Perhaps most interestingly, they found that the switch to electronic transfers reduced robbery but not rape, suggesting that the move away from cash only had an impact on crime related to getting and spending cash. The move toward cashlessness in the U.S. continues quickly. Google now lets you attach money to e-mails to send to friends, which means that for some shoppers, pulling out your credit card could become as rare as finding exact change in your coin purse. It might seem absurd to imagine Visa, Square, and Google Wallet as crime-fighting technologies. But with a better understanding of how cash" s availability affects crime, perhaps the government should consider killing more than just the penny.

For the first time, more women than men in the United States received doctoral degrees last year, the climax of decades of change in the status of women at colleges nationwide. The number of women at every level of academia has been【C1】______for decades. Women now hold a nearly 3-to-2【C2】______in undergraduate and graduate education. Doctoral study was the last【C3】______—the only remaining area of higher education that still had a(n) 【C4】______male majority. According to an annual【C5】______report from the Council of Graduate Schools, based in Washington, of the doctoral degrees【C6】______in the last academic year, 28,962 went to women and 28,469 to men. Doctoral degrees, which require a(n) 【C7】______of seven years" study, are【C8】______the last to show the【C9】______of long-term changes. "It is a【C10】______that has been snaking its way through the educational pipeline," said Nathan Bell, the report"s author and the【C11】______of research and policy analysis for the council. "It was【C12】______to happen." Women have long outnumbered men in【C13】______master"s degrees, especially in education. According to the new report, which is based on an【C14】______survey of graduate【C15】______, women earned nearly six in ten graduate degrees in the last academic year. But women who【C16】______to become college professors, a common path for those with doctorates, were【C17】______by the particular demands of faculty life. Studies have found that the tenure clock often conflicts with the【C18】______clock: The busiest years of the【C19】______career are the years that well-educated women【C20】______to have children. Many women feel they have to choose between having a career in academics and having a family.

Americans have many reasons for gloom. The war in Iraq has yet to turn around, and we can t agree on a solution for illegal immigration. We also have one reason to be happy: the economy. But right now, we"re in the middle of a good funk , and we don"t want to let any sunshine spoil it. When it comes to the economy, the national mood is a combination of dissatisfaction and fear. A recent Gallup poll found that 66 percent of Americans think national economic conditions are "only fair" or "poor". In the midst of a recession, a depression or our morose outlook would make sense. But at the moment, it seems to have no basis in reality. Unemployment stands at 4. 5 percent, down from the peak rate of 6. 3 percent four years ago. The stock market is near record levels. Economic growth, which slowed in the first quarter, has since rebounded. Inflation is running below 3 percent. It"s true that not all the economic news is golden. Some people are out of work or drowning in debt. Gas prices are painfully high. People who expected their home values to keep climbing, no matter what, are learning the definition of the term "bubble". Health care and college costs, however, seem permanently immune to the law of gravity. But even in the best of times, some trends fall below average. Taken as a whole, the economy is plenty healthy. So why do we insist on seeing it as sickly? One reason is that we"ve gotten so accustomed to prosperity that we take it for granted. From 1971 through 1997, the unemployment rate never once fell to the level we now enjoy. In the 1970s, annual inflation was frequently in double-digits. Another reason for the pessimism is that we mistake the few bad indicators for a broad trend. When gas prices soar, it"s tempting to conclude that we"re on the verge of economic turmoil so awful that we will soon be eating tree bark to stay alive. Never mind that other prices are reasonably stable, and that the national economy has absorbed higher fuel costs without too much strain. In one sector where prices have been dropping, of course, the trend is taken as cause for panic: home sales. But what is bad for home sellers is good for home buyers. Most of us are both, which makes the whole phenomenon pretty much a wash. For a variety of reasons, we just can"t be happy with our current prosperity. When things eventually change, trust me: We will really miss the good times.