The Best Media to Use There are plenty of options available for spreading news, such as newspapers, radio, TV, the Internet and so on. According to your option what is the best media to use? Why? Write a composition of 160-200 words.

It was inevitable that any of President George W. Bush"s fans had to be very disappointed by his decision to implement high tariffs on steel imported to the U.S. The president"s defense was pathetic: He argued that the steel tariffs were somehow consistent with free trade, that the domestic industry was important and struggling, and that the relief was a temporary measure to allow time for restructuring. One reason that this argument is absurd is that U.S. integrated steel companies ("Big Steel") have received various forms of government protection and subsidy for more than 30 years. Instead of encouraging the industry to restructure, the long-term protection has sustained inefficient companies and cost U.S. consumers dearly. As Anne O. Krueger, now deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said in a report on Big Steel: "The American Big Steel industry has been the champion lobbyist and seeker of protection.... It provides a key and disillusioning example of the ability to lobby in Washington for measures which hurt the general public and help a very small group". Since 1950s, Big Steel has been reluctant to make the investments needed to match the new technologies introduced elsewhere. It agreed to high wages for its unionized labor force. Hence, the companies have difficulty in competing not only with more efficient producers in Asia and Europe but also with technologically advanced U.S. mini-mills, which rely on scrap metal as an input. Led by Nucor Cor., these mills now capture about half of overall U.S. sales. The profitability of U.S. steel companies depends also on steel prices, which, despite attempts at protection by the U.S. and other governments, are determined primarily in world markets. These prices are relatively high as recently as early 2000 but have since declined with the world recession to reach the lowest dollar values of the last 20 years. Although these low prices are unfortunate for U.S. producers, they are beneficial for the overall U.S. economy. The low prices are also signal that the inefficient Big Steel companies should go out of business even faster than they have been. Instead of leaving or modernizing, the dying Big Steel industry complains that foreigners dump steels by selling at low prices. However, it is hard to see why it is bad for the overall U.S. economy if foreign producers wish to sell us their goods at low prices. After all, the extreme case of dumping is one where foreigners give us their steel for free and why would that be a bad thing?

I seldom, if ever, saw such a fine sight.

The day of terror at the Virginia Polytechnic and State University in Blacksburg began at about 7:15 a. m., with the shooting of a woman and a male resident adviser on the fourth floor of a dorm building on campus, Kristen Bensley, a freshman who lived below the floor where the shooting occurred, told TIME, "There were minors going on about the assailant was fighting with his girlfriend or something of that nature". Bensley notes that only residents can get into the building, using a specific "passport", that is, a card that one has to swipe in order to open doors before 10 a.m. If he was an outsider, someone would have had to let him in. Or more likely, he was a resident of the dorm himself. If so, how did be keep so much ammunition unnoticed? Unlike high schools, most universities can"t beef up security with a metal detector or two. So what can be done to protect students? Other questions remain unanswered. Why was there a two-hour gap between the incident at the dorm and a far more fatal one across campus? At one point, that led to theorizing that more than one gunman was involved. The gunman who killed at least 30 people at Norris Hall shortly after 9 a.m. was described by some sources as an Asian man. It has been a surreal time for the students. Brandon Stiltner, a senior aerospace engineering student, and Jonathan Hess, a senior mechanical engineer, were watching TV all day but by noon they"d had enough. "We decided we needed to do something", Stiltner said. "We were worthless sitting around". So they took their six-foot Virginia Tech sign off the wall and logged into Facebook. Within the next few hours 100 people replied to their e-mail request for a vigil. By 8 p.m. hundreds bf students began filing down the steps of the War Memorial Chapel toward the drill field. Clusters of two and three students stood together in silence. Slowly they began to line up to sign the board. "I"m still really in disbelief", says Stiltner. The shock of the day"s shootings sank in, Hess said, as he carried the sign across campus for the vigil. "It hit me", Hess said, "to know that it was in these buildings". The media crews that swarmed campus were also surreal to Hess and Stiltner. "We could look out our window and see exactly what"s on TV", Stiltner says. He watched his sign crowded with initials and prayers, awaiting the names of the victims, He shuddered. "I hope I don"t have any nasty surprises".

For most people Britain's bouncing economy, now growing at its fastest for three years, is cause for cheer. Not,【C1】______for those who manage the country's electricity power system. For them【C2】______growth means faster progress towards a critical situation. Ofgem, the energy regulator, has long【C3】______that the margin between peak electricity demand and【C4】______supply is falling. In June it said the margin would【C5】______from 14% in 2014 to just 4% in the winter of 2018, increasing the risk of blackouts【C6】______the weather turn cold or a power station or two【C7】______. Since that report Britain's economy has grown fast. Ofgem's assessment【C8】______that Britain would grow by about 1.6% in 2017. The Bank of England now【C9】______2.8% growth. This will【C10】______consumption. Over the past decade an increase in peak electricity demand of 0.5%【C11】______each additional percentage point of economic growth. John Feddersen of Aurora Energy Research thinks the capacity margin will therefore【C12】______to 2.6% by 2018 unless action is taken. That【C13】______into a one-in-seven chance of shortages, up from the one-in-twelve chance【C14】______was thought most likely last summer. Falling coal prices have kept Britain's coal-fired power stations running at full【C15】______. That means many will have to close sooner than was【C16】______because European environmental laws【C17】______the total number of operating hours left to them. At the same time cheap coal has made electricity from gas uncompetitive,【C18】______operators to put some gas-fired plants into long-term【C19】______. Renewable capacity cannot yet make up the【C20】______.

Opportunities for water companies are flowing around the world because of looming shortages and decades of underinvestment. Saudi Arabia and Algeria, where water shortages have become acute, are placing billions of dollars of contracts out to bid to improve water supplies for their growing populations. The trend is expected to grow, as 40% of the world"s population will suffer water shortages by 2050, according to the United Nations Development Program. Global warming is expected to exacerbate the problem. Saudi Arabia began privatizing water services after shortages sparked riots last November in Jeddah. Loay Ahmed Musallam, the deputy water minister, said the first contract to manage water supplies for Riyadh would be awarded this year. By 2010, private companies will provide water for half the population, he added. Saudi Arabia plans to invest $37 billion over five years to improve water pipelines. Leaks cost 1 million cubic meters of water a day—the output of seven desalination plants—the minister said. Even after putting contracts out to bid, governments still face politically sensitive decisions. In Saudi Arabia, for example, water tariffs are among the lowest in the world. Musallam said Saudis consumed twice as much water as Britons in spite of living in one of the driest parts of the globe. The government is introducing measures to encourage water conservation. Even in the US, the shortfall between actual investment and the industry"s real needs is estimated to be $122 billion for waste water treatment and $100 billion for drinking water over the next 12 years, said Michael Dean of the Environmental Protection Agency. "People take for granted clean, safe, inexpensive water, but the old ways of paying for water in the US no longer meet our needs", Dean said. Water services in the US are mainly owned by municipalities, which fiercely resist privatization. Gasson says decades of underinvestment are catching up with the water industry. "Either tariffs or subsidies will have to rise. We are at an inflection point. Investment now is unavoidable", he said. David Lloyd Owen, a British consultant, estimated the investment shortfall for the global water industry at $1.2 trillion over the next 20 years. "The question is how to overcome political resistance to the involvement of the private sector", he said. "The water industry is one of the most conservative in the world. By and large, it is still run by bureaucrats and engineers", Owen said. "There is also a passionate and well-organized lobby against privatization". He sees more room for the private sector as technology for desalination and recycling come to play an increasing role in the industry. Banks are also becoming more creative in matching the financing of capital outlays in the industry with the long lives of water treatment facilities.

Man and Computer Write an essay entitled Man and Computer by commenting on the saying, "The real danger is not that the computer will begin to think like man, but that man will begin to think like the computer." You should write 160-200 words.

It may be just as well for Oxford University"s reputation that this week"s meeting of Congregation, its 3,552-strong governing body, was held in secret, for the air of civilized rationality that is generally supposed to pervade donnish conversation has lately turned fractious. That"s because the vice-chancellor, the nearest thing the place has to a chief executive, has proposed the most fundamental reforms to the university since the establishment of the college system in 1249; and a lot of the dons and colleges don"t like it. The trouble with Oxford is that it is unmanageable. Its problems—the difficulty of recruiting good dons and of getting rid of bad ones, concerns about academic standards, severe money worries at some colleges—all spring from that. John Hood, who was recruited as vice-chancellor from the University of Auckland and is now probably the most hated antipodean in British academic life, reckons he knows how to solve this, and has proposed to reduce the power of dons and colleges and increase that of university administrators. Mr. Hood is right that the university"s management structure needs an overhaul. But radical though his proposals seem to those involved in the current row, they do not go far enough. The difficulty of managing Oxford stems only partly from the nuttiness of its system of governance; the more fundamental problem lies in its relationship with the government. That"s why Mr. Hood should adopt an idea that was once regarded as teetering on the lunatic fringe of radicalism, but these days is discussed even in polite circles. The idea is independence. Oxford gets around ￡5,000($9,500) per undergraduate per, year from the government. In return, it accepts that it can charge students only ￡1,150 (rising to ￡3,000 next year) on top of that. Since it probably costs at least ￡10,000 a year to teach an undergraduate, that leaves Oxford with a deficit of ￡4,000 or so per student to cover from its own funds. If Oxford declared independence, it would lose the ￡52m undergraduate subsidy at least. Could it fill the hole? Certainly. America"s top universities charge around ￡20,000 per student per year. The difficult issue would not be money alone: it would be balancing numbers of not-so-brilliant rich people paying top whack with the cleverer poorer ones they were cross subsidizing. America"s top universities manage it: high fees mean better teaching, which keeps competition hot and academic standards high, while luring enough donations to provide bursaries for the poor. It should be easier to extract money from alumni if Oxford were no longer state-funded.

Naturalism is the view that the "natural" universe, the universe of matter and energy, is all that there really is. By ruling out a spiritual part of the human person which might survive death and a God who might resurrect the body, naturalism also rules out survival after death. In addition, naturalism denies human freedom on the grounds that every event must be explainable by deterministic natural laws. It denies any absolute values because it can find no grounds for such values in a world made up only of matter and energy. And finally, naturalism denies that the universe has any meaning or purpose because there is no God to give it a meaning or purpose, and nothing else which can give it a meaning or purpose. Anyone who accepts the first three denials, of God, spiritual beings, and immortality, might be called a naturalist in the broad sense, and anyone who adds to these the denial of freedom, values, and purpose might be labeled a naturalist in the strict sense, or a strict naturalist. Some opponents of naturalism would argue that naturalists in the broad sense are at least somewhat inconsistent and that naturalism in the broad sense leads logically to strict naturalism. Many strict naturalists would agree with this. Those who reject naturalism in both the strict and broad sense do so for a variety of masons. They may have positive arguments for the existence of some of what naturalists deny, or they may have what seem to be decisive refutations of some or all of the arguments for naturalism. But, in addition to particular arguments against naturalist tenets or their grounds of belief, some opponents of naturalism believe that there is a general argument which holds against any form of naturalism. These opponents hold that naturalism has a "fatal flaw" or, to put it more strongly, that naturalism is self-destroying. If naturalism is true, then human reason must be the result of natural forces. These natural forces are not, on the naturalistic view, rational themselves, nor can they be the result of a rational cause. So human reason would be the result of nonrational causes. This, it can be argued, gives us a strong reason to distrust human reach, especially in its less practical and more theoretical exercises. But the theory of naturalism is itself such an exercise of theoretical reason. If naturalism is true, we would have strong reasons to distrust theoretical reasoning. If we distrust theoretical reasoning, we distrust particular applications of it, such as the theory of naturalism. Thus, if naturalism is true, we have strong reasons to distrust naturalism.

Old stereotypes die hard. Picture a video-game player and you will likely imagine a teenage boy, by himself, compulsively hammering away at a game involving rayguns and aliens that splatter when blasted. Ten years ago that might have borne some relation to reality. But today a gamer is as likely to be a middle-aged commuter playing "Angry Birds" on her smartphone. In America, the biggest market, the average game-player is 37 years old. Two-fifths are female. Over the past ten years the video-game industry has grown from a small business to a huge, mainstream one. With global sales of $56 billion in 2010, it is more than twice the size of the recorded-music industry. Despite the downturn, it is growing by almost 9% a year. Is this success due to luck or skill? The answer matters, because the rest of the entertainment industry has tended to treat gaming as being a lucky beneficiary of broader technological changes. Video gaming, unlike music, film or television, had the luck to be born digital. In fact, there is plenty for old media to learn. Video games have certainly been swept along by two forces: demography and technology. The first gaming generation—the children of the 1970s and early 1980s—is now over 30. Many still love gaming, and can afford to spend far more on it now. Meanwhile rapid improvements in computing power have allowed game designers to offer experiences that are now often more cinematic than the cinema. But even granted this good fortune, the game-makers have been clever. They have reached out to new customers with new methods. They have branched out into education, corporate training and even warfare, and have embraced digital downloads and mobile devices with enthusiasm. Though big-budget games are still popular, much of the growth now comes from "casual" games that are simple, cheap and playable in short bursts on mobile phones or in web browsers. The industry has excelled in a particular area—pricing. In an era when people are disinclined to pay for content on the web, games publishers were quick to develop "freemium" models, where you rely on non-paying customers to build an audience and then extract cash only from a fanatical few. As gaming comes to be seen as just another medium, its tech-sawy approach could provide a welcome shot in the arm for existing media groups.

Say the word bacteria, and most folks conjure up images of a nasty germ like staphylococcus or salmonella that can make you really sick. But most bacteria aren"t bad for you. In fact, consuming extra amounts of some bacteria can actually promote good health. These beneficial bacteria are available without a prescription in drug and health-food stores and in foods like yogurt. So far, the best results have been seen in the treatment of diarrhea, particularly in children. But re searchers are also looking into the possibility that beneficial bacteria may thwart vaginal infections in women, prevent some food allergies in children and lessen symptoms of Crohn"s disease, a relatively rare but painful gastrointestinal disorder. So where have these good germs been lurking all your life? In your intestines, especially the lower section called the colon, which harbors at least 400 species of bacteria. Which ones you have depends largely on your environment and diet. An abundance of good bacteria in the colon generally crowds out stray bad bacteria in your food. But if the bad outnumber the good—for example, after antibiotic treatment for a sinus or an ear infection, which kills normal intestinal germs as well—the result can be diarrhea. For generations, people have restored the balance by eating yogurt, buttermilk or other products made from fermented milk. But nowadays, you can also down a few pills that contain freeze-dried germs. These preparations are called probiotics to distinguish them from antibiotics. Unfortunately, you can"t always be sure that the bacteria in the products you buy are the same strains as those listed on the label or even that they"re still alive. Probiotics are usually sensitive to both heat and moisture. Among the most promising and most thoroughly researched probiotics is the GG strain of Laetobacillus, discovered by Dr. Sherwood Gorbach and biochemist Barry Goldin, both at Tufts University School of Medicine. L-GG, as it"s called, has been used to treat traveler"s diarrhea and intestinal upsets caused by antibiotics. Even more intriguing, L-GG also seems to work against some viruses, including rotavirus, one of the most common causes of diarrhea in children in the U.S. and around the world. Here the effect is indirect. Somehow L-GG jump-starts the immune system into recognizing the threat posed by the virus. Pediatricians at Johns Hopkins are studying a different bug, the Bb-12 strain of Bifidobacterium, which was discovered by researchers at CHR Hansen Biosystems. Like L-GG, Bb-12 stimulates the immune system. For reasons that are not dear, infants who are breast-fed have large amounts of bifidobacteria in their intestines. They also have fewer intestinal upsets. Dr. Jose Saavedra and colleagues at Hopkins have shown that Bb-12 prevents several types of diarrhea, including that caused by rotavirus, in hospitalized infants as young as four months. It has also been used to cure diarrhea in children of all ages.

[A]Set a good example for your kids [B]Build your kids' work skills [C]Place time limits on leisure activities [D]Talk about the future on a regular basis [E]Help kids develop coping strategies [F]Help your kids figure out who they are [G]Build your kids' sense of responsibility Mothers and fathers can do a lot to ensure a safe landing in early adulthood for their kids. Even if a job's starting salary seems too small to satisfy an emerging adult's need for rapid content, the transition from school to work can be less of a setback if the started-up adult is ready for the move. Here are a few measures, drawn from my book Ready or Not, Here Life Comes, that parents can take to prevent what I call "work-life uneasiness". 【R1】______ You can start this process when they are 11 or 12. Periodically review their emerging strengths and weaknesses with them and work together on any shortcomings, like difficulty in communicating well or collaborating. Also, identify the kinds of interests they keep coming back to, as these offer clues to the careers that will fit them best. 【R2】______ Kids need a range of authentic role models—as opposed to members of their clique, pop stars and vaunted athletes. Have regular dinner-table discussions about people the family knows and how they got where they are. Discuss the joys and downsides of your own career and encourage your kids to form some ideas about their own future. When asked what they want to do, they should be discouraged from saying "I have no idea." They can change their minds 200 times, but having only a foggy view of the future is of little good. 【R3】______ Teachers are responsible for teaching kids how to learn:parents should be responsible for teaching them how to work. Assign responsibilities around the house and make sure homework deadlines are met. Encourage teenagers to take a part time job. Kids need plenty of practice delaying gratification and deploying effective organizational skills, such as managing time and setting priorities. 【R4】______ Playing video games encourages immediate content. And hours of watching TV shows with canned laughter only teaches kids to process information in a passive way. At the same time, listening through earphones to the same monotonous beats for long stretches encourages kids to stay inside their bubble instead of pursuing other endeavors. All these activities can prevent the growth of important communication and thinking skills and make it difficult for kids to develop the kind of sustained concentration they will need for most jobs. 【R5】______ They should know how to deal with setbacks, stresses and feelings of inadequacy. They should also learn how to solve problems and resolve conflicts, ways to brainstorm and think critically. Discussions at home can help kids practice doing these things and help them apply these skills to everyday life situations. What about the son or daughter who is grown but seems to be struggling and wandering aimlessly through early adulthood? Parents still have a major role to play, but now it is more delicate. They have to be careful not to come across as disappointed in their child. They should exhibit strong interest and respect for whatever currently interests their fledging adult(as naive or ill conceived as it may seem)while becoming a partner in exploring options for the future. Most of all, these new adults must feel that they are respected and supported by a family that appreciates them.

The journal Science is adding an extra round of statistical checks to its peer-review process,editor-in-chief Marcia McNutt announced today. The policy follows similar efforts from other journals, after widespread concern that basic mistakes in data analysis are contributing to the irreproducibility of many published research findings. "Readers must have confidence in the conclusions published in our journal," writes McNutt in an editorial. Working with the American Statistical Association, the journal has appointed seven experts to a statistics board of reviewing editors(SBoRE). Manuscript will be flagged up for additional scrutiny by the journal"s internal editors, or by its existing Board of Reviewing Editors or by outside peer reviewers. The SBoRE panel will then find external statisticians to review these manuscripts. Asked whether any particular papers had impelled the change, McNutt said: "The creation of the "statistics board" was motivated by concerns broadly with the application of statistics and data analysis in scientific research and is part of Science"s overall drive to increase reproducibility in the research we publish." Giovanni Parmigiani, a biostatistician at the Harvard School of Public Health, a member of the SBoRE group, says he expects the board to "play primarily an advisory role." He agreed to join because he "found the foresight behind the establishment of the SBoRE to be novel, unique and likely to have a lasting impact. This impact will not only be through the publications in Science itself, but hopefully through a larger group of publishing places that may want to model their approach after Science." John Ioannidis, a physician who studies research methodology, says that the policy is "a most welcome step forward" and "long overdue." "Most journals are weak in statistical review, and this damages the quality of what they publish. I think that, for the majority of scientific papers nowadays,statistical review is more essential than expert review," he says. But he noted that biomedical journals such as Annals of Internal Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet pay strong attention to statistical review. Professional scientists are expected to know how to analyze data, but statistical errors are alarmingly common in published research, according to David Vaux,a cell biologist. Researchers should improve their standards, he wrote in 2012, but journals should also take a tougher line, "engaging reviewers who are statistically literate and editors who can verify the process." Vaux says that Science"s idea to pass some papers to statisticians "has some merit,but a weakness is that it relies on the board of reviewing editors to identify "the papers that need scrutiny" in the first place."

In applying the Optimum Currency Area (OCA) framework, the consensus that East Asia presents as good a candidate for monetary integration as Europe is generally arrived at. However, it can be observed that OCA framework had only an insignificant part to play in the decision to pass the Europe Monetary Union (EMU), it tends to be overshadowed by political sentiments. Thus, the central question on the possibility of an Asian Monetary Union lies not in its satisfaction of the OCA criteria, but whether the political resolve to achieve such a union is existent. Unfortunately, it appears that the political climate of East Asia is not favorable towards such a union at present, and is unlikely to undergo much positive alteration in the near future. Thus the manifestation of an Asian Monetary Union is unlikely in the foreseeable future, as the political resolve to bring this about is evidently lacking. However, to dismiss outright the possibility of creation of an East Asian monetary union would be presumptuous. Even though the political climate in East Asia does not appear to be ready for such an undertaking as yet, it cannot be denied that integrative and cooperative initiatives have indeed made much positive progress. Although the state of pan-Asian institutions is nowhere comparable with needed to engineer the EMU, however East Asia is taking definite steps towards regional cooperation. Thus, it would be hasty to simply write off the prospects of such a union. The road to East Asia may be long and fraught with obstacles, but it is not impossible. Only with visionary leadership, which looks beyond regional political sensitivities and rivalries, to recognize the economic imperative and promise of such a monetary union, can it have hopes of materialization. East Asian leaders, unwilling to undertake monetary unification due to fears of the loss of political sovereignty which it would entail should be more farsighted and recognize that in the present age, sovereignty is no longer absolute as globalization accelerates and increasingly blurs the lines of national boundaries. Sovereignty is not completely lost as nations will still be able to influence decision-making through the union, but as one voice amongst all other members. Furthermore, misgivings about the prospects of Asian monetary unification based on the grounds that East Asian nations are at very different stages of economic development with diverse structure of economy should look towards the monetary union between Singapore and Brunei, which has endured despite its members" vast dissimilarity. Thus, current economic disparities should not prove insurmountable to an East Asian monetary union, provided regulatory and fiscal reforms critical to sound and sustainable economic growth are developed alongside monetary unification. In the previous section, a proposal which suggests gradual steps towards Asian monetary unification is mapped out, by first achieving smaller monetary unions instead of an Asian-wide monetary union. In this way, the vast economic disparity across Asia is breached gradually, as opposed to tackling it in its entirety, with the ultimate aim of an East Asian wide monetary union.

BSection III Writing/B

Scientists Johan Feenstra and Rob Hayes think they"ve figured out how a process called electrowetting can make paper that can do anything a videoscreen does. So far, though, all they"ve got to show for their efforts is a tiny piece of e-paper one centimeter square—only 225 pixels, or picture elements. That won"t be nearly enough for headlines and news videos. The only hint of the technology"s potential is a laptop presentation the inventors have set up. It features Professor Shape, Harry Potter"s teacher, holding an electronic newspaper with an embedded video clip. "That"s what we want," says Hayes. They"re likely to get it. Late last month in Tokyo, Sony took an important leap in this direction by introducing Librie, an e-book reader. Although it"s available only in black and white, Librie has the most important characteristic of paper: it reflects natural light. That means it can be read on sunny days or viewed from any angle. You can even choose your own font size. Is this finally the beginning of the end of paper? The answer is closer to "yes" than you may think. The holdup so far has been user-unfriendly screens, but now e-paper no longer relies on back-lit displays. A reflective display is easy on the eyes, with twice the contrast of computer screens and up to six times the brightness. It uses power only when changing the page, so a battery can last 300 hours. Several firms are competing for leader ship. The Philip"s display on Librie uses technology from Massachusetts-based E-Ink Corp. An electric charge moves either black or white capsules to the surface of the page in patterns that form images. Gyricon Media uses rotating balls with one black side and one white side for signs and bill boards. Other companies are focusing on improvements in liquid-crystal displays. The next challenge is to add color. One option for books would be a simple color filter, but that would block two thirds of the light. Guofu Zhou, who runs the E-Ink project for Philips, thinks products with colored ink can be ready for the market within seven years. He"s now focusing on e-paper that can display 16 or more gradations of gray, which would come in handy in medical imaging or to display black-and-white photographs at home. Labs around the world are also racing to design a robust yet flexible backing. Philips researchers are working on a technology for laminating E-Ink on a plastic layer instead of glass, which would then roll into a pen-sized tube. A flexible product for mobile phones and digital cameras can be ready in three to five years.

Old stereotypes die hard. Picture a video-game player and you will likely imagine a teenage boy, by himself, compulsively hammering away at a game involving rayguns and aliens that splatter when blasted. Ten years ago that might have borne some relation to reality. But today a gamer is as likely to be a middle-aged commuter playing "Angry Birds" on her smartphone. In America, the biggest market, the average game-player is 37 years old. Two-fifths are female. Over the past ten years the video-game industry has grown from a small business to a huge, mainstream one. With global sales of $56 billion in 2010, it is more than twice the size of the recorded-music industry. Despite the downturn, it is growing by almost 9% a year. Is this success due to luck or skill? The answer matters, because the rest of the entertainment industry has tended to treat gaming as being a lucky beneficiary of broader technological changes. Video gaming, unlike music, film or television, had the luck to be born digital. In fact, there is plenty for old media to learn. Video games have certainly been swept along by two forces: demography and technology. The first gaming generation—the children of the 1970s and early 1980s—is now over 30. Many still love gaming, and can afford to spend far more on it now. Meanwhile rapid improvements in computing power have allowed game designers to offer experiences that are now often more cinematic than the cinema. But even granted this good fortune, the game-makers have been clever. They have reached out to new customers with new methods. They have branched out into education, corporate training and even warfare, and have embraced digital downloads and mobile devices with enthusiasm. Though big-budget games are still popular, much of the growth now comes from "casual" games that are simple, cheap and playable in short bursts on mobile phones or in web browsers. The industry has excelled in a particular area—pricing. In an era when people are disinclined to pay for content on the web, games publishers were quick to develop "freemium" models, where you rely on non-paying customers to build an audience and then extract cash only from a fanatical few. As gaming comes to be seen as just another medium, its tech-savvy approach could provide a welcome shot in the arm for existing media groups.

A tiny but powerful new lightweight drill has been developed by space scientists and engineers. It expands the fields in which drilling has been difficult in the past. The new drill could be used in the drilling required during surgical or diagnostic procedures involving bones, or when extracting heart pacemaker leads. Future space missions could include drilling for rock and soil samples, using only lightweight landing vehicles with robotic arms. The color photo shows the new driller penetrating a sandstone while the drill is held only from its power cord. Relatively small vertical force is used in this application—a factor that will be useful when the drill is used in future space missions and weight needs to be kept to a minimum. The drill is driven by piezoelectric devices, which have only two moving parts but no gears or motors. Piezoelectrics are materials that change their shape under the application of an electrical field. The drill can be adapted easily to operations in a range of temperatures from extremely cold to very hot. Unlike conventional rotary drills, the drill can drill even the hardest rocks without significant weight on the drilling bit. "The drill is a device that offers exciting new capabilities for space exploration in future NASA missions," said Dr. Yoseph Bar-Cohen, who leads NASA"s Jet Propulsion laboratory"s Nondestructive Evaluation and Advanced Actuator Technologies unit. "Besides the immediate benefits of the technology to NASA, it is paving the way for other unique mechanisms that are being developed in our laboratory and elsewhere," he said. The demonstration unit pictured in the color photograph weighs about 0.7 kilograms, which is sufficient to drill 12 millimeter diameter holes in rocks using less than 10 watts of power. Comparable rotary drills usually require the application of 20 to 30 times greater pushing force and more than three times the power. Other advantages to the drill are no drill noise and no drill movement across the surface on start-up. The drill body will not rotate, the speed does not decrease with time and the bit does not require sharpening. The bit can be guided by hand safely during operation. The drill can drill holes in different cross-sections, such as square and round. Said Dr. Yoseph Bar-Cohen, "Thanks to the development of technology associated with this drill, new devices can be made to be small and lightweight, to consume little power and to exhibit a high standard of reliability."

BPart ADirections: Write a composition/letter of no less than 100 words on the following information./B

Many signs point to a growing historical consciousness among the American people. I trust that this is so. It is useful to remember that history is to the nation as memory is to the individual.【F1】 As persons deprived of memory become disoriented and lost, not knowing where they have been and where they are going, so a nation denied a conception of the past will be disabled in dealing with its present and its future. "The longer you look back," said Winston Churchill, "the farther you can look forward." Conceptions of the past are far from stable. They are continuously revised by the urgencies of the present.【F2】 When new urgencies arise in our own times and lives, the historian ' s spotlight shifts, probing at last into the darkness, throwing into sharp relief things that were always there but that earlier historians had carelessly erased from the collective memory. New voices ring out of the historical dark and demand to be heard.【F3】 One has only to note how in the last half-century the movements for women's rights and civil rights have reformulated and renewed American history. Thus the present endlessly reinvents the past. In this sense, all history, as Benedetto Croce said, is contemporary history. It is these adjustments of consciousness that make history so endlessly fascinating an intellectual adventure. "The one duty we owe to history," said Oscar Wilde, "is to rewrite it." 【F4】 We are the world's dominant military power, and I believe a consciousness of history is a moral necessity for a nation possessed of overwhelming power. History verifies John F. Kennedy's proposition, stated in the first year of his thousand days: "We must face the fact—that we are only 6 percent of the world' s population; that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind; that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity; and therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem." History is the best cure for illusion.【F5】 Self-knowledge is the indispensable beginning of self-control, for the nation as well as for the individual, and history should forever remind us of the limits of our passing perspectives. History is a doomed enterprise that we happily pursue because of the thrill of the hunt, because exploring the past is such fun, because of the intellectual challenges involved, because a nation needs to know its own history. Or so we historians insist. Because in the end, a nation's history must be both the guide and the domain not so much of its historians as its citizens.