Studythefollowingpicturecarefullyandwriteanessayto1)describethepicture,2)illustratetheproblemitreveals,and3)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwrite160-200wordsneatly.

Today, at the push of a button, you can download and print the whole of Dante"s Divine Comedy, using only a computer, an Internet connection, a paving stone of paper and a small bucket of ink. Technically, the service is free, although it would be easier and cheaper simply to buy the book, which could then be read in the bath, while saving on printer cartridges and trees. The new service is the latest step in the stated goal of Google, the Internet search engine, "to organize the world"s information and make it universally accessible and useful" and, although few may be rushing to print out the Digitized Dante, it marks an important development in world literature. For some, making books available online for free download represents a paradise found; others, including a number of worried publishers and writers, fear it may point the way to the ninth circle of hell. Google"s Book Search service is just one part of the Library Project, in which the Internet engine has teamed up with libraries around the world, including the Bodleian in Oxford, to digitize collections and make millions of books available and searchable online. At first sight, the notion of a limitless digital library seems irresistible, a single, free repository accessible from every corner of the globe. Partners in the Library Project say the system will enable users to access not just the classics, but also much more obscure works: forgotten novels, scientific accounts, illustrations and neglected poetry. Moribund books may be brought back to life. Librarians are often frustrated at the unseen gems in their collections gathering dust. Now the whole lot can be digitally stacked on an endless virtual shelf, to be browsed by anyone with a computer mouse. The problem lies not with digitalizing dead or undead books, but the potential danger to those that still have commercial life in them in the form of copyright Google is quick to point out that the books available for download through Book Search are all out of copyright. Indeed, while European law allows copyright to expire 70 years after an author"s death, the new service does not offer anything published later than the mid-19th century. Some publishers, however, see the availability of free books for digital download as the thin end of a very large wedge that could split literature by undernuning copyright itself. Last year the Association of American Publishers filed suit against Google claiming that by scanning 100 per cent of a book(to make it searchable by word)the company is infringing copyright, even if only a small excerpt is then available for free. Silence is golden in a library; but the law of copyright is beyond price.

English speaking country

All over the earth"s surface is a layer of air which extends upwards for many miles. This air (1)_____ the oxygen without which neither plants nor animals (2)_____ live. Its movements, temperature and pressure (3)_____ the weather, and it is a vehicle (4)_____ the clouds of water vapor (5)_____ condense and fall as rain. It forms a blanket which (6)_____ us from the extreme heat of the sun during the day and (7)_____ the extreme cold when the sun has (8)_____ It is chiefly (9)_____ air that sound travels, so that if there were no air we should (10)_____ practically nothing. The atmosphere is held (11)_____ the earth"s surface by the gravitational pull of the earth—that is, it has weight. High up it is thin (12)_____ near the surface it is compressed by the (13)_____ of air above, and is more dense. The weight of air pressing (14)_____ each square inch of surface at sea-level is nearly (15)_____ pounds, which means that the total force (16)_____ the skin of an average man is about 30,000 pounds. He is not, (17)_____ this because the pressure is equal in all directions and the pressure inside him is equal (18)_____ -that without, but should he go up in a balloon to a height at which the outside- pressure is (19)_____ he would suffer acutely. It is (20)_____ this reason that the cabins of aeroplanes are "pressurized".

For Tony Blair, home is a messy sort of place, where the prime minister"s job is not to uphold eternal values but to force through some unpopular changes that may make the country work a bit better. The area where this is most obvious, and where it matters most, is the public services. Mr. Blair faces a difficulty here which is partly of his own making. By focusing his last election campaign on the need to improve hospitals, schools, transport and policing, he built up expectations. Mr. Blair has said many times that reforms in the way the public services work need to go alongside increases in cash. Mr. Blair has made his task harder by committing a classic negotiating error. Instead of extracting concessions from the other side before promising his own, he has pledged himself to higher spending on public services without getting a commitment to change from the unions. Why, given that this pledge has been made, should the health unions give ground in return? In a speech on March 20th, Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer, said that "the something-for-nothing days are over in our public services and there can be no blank cheques." But the government already seems to have given health workers a blank cheque. Nor are other ministries conveying quite the same message as the treasury. On March 19th, John Hutton, a health minister, announced that cleaners and catering staff in new privately funded hospitals working for the National Health service will still be government employees, entitled to the same pay and conditions as other health-service workers. Since one of the main ways in which the government hopes to reform the public sector is by using private providers, and since one of the main ways in which private providers are likely to be able to save money is by cutting labor costs, this move seems to undermine the government"s strategy. Now the government faces its hardest fight. The police need reforming more than any other public service. Half of them, for instance, retire early, at a cost of ￡1 billion ($1.4 billion) a year to the taxpayer. The police have voted 10-1 against proposals from the home secretary, David Blunkett, to reform their working practices. This is a fight the government has to win. If the police get away with it, other public-service workers will reckon they can too. And, if they all get away with it, Mr. Blair"s domestic policy—which is what voters are most likely to judge him on the next election—will be a failure.

Jeffrey Sachs is a macroeconomist by training, an expert in the vagaries of business cycles and international finance. But give the man l0 minutes onstage, and a scholarly symposium starts to feel like a revival meeting. "Let me take you to Malawi," he urges a typical audience, leaning into the microphone and lowering his voice. Like most countries in southern Africa, Malawi has Seen ravaged by AIDS for two decades. One adult in seven is HIV-positive, and some 2 million children have been orphaned. But instead of hurling numbers at his listeners, Sachs transports them to Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre, a site he visited this year while traveling with the rock star Bono. At one end of the facility is a small outpatient clinic where people who can pay $1 a day receive life-sustaining AIDS drugs. "They take the medicine and they get better," Sachs declares. "They return to work. They go back to care for their children." Unfortunately, $1 a day is nearly twice what a typical Malawian lives on. So most AIDS patients end up in wards like the one just down the hall from the outpatient clinic. "ladies and gentlemen", Sachs tells the now hushed hall, "this plague is exploding. Its consequences will make the world quake. Rich countries could stop the devastation. And most are still looking away." Sachs is not the first to sound this alarm, but he speaks with special authority. As the newly appointed director of Columbia University"s Earth Institute, he heads a huge, interdisciplinary effort to help poor countries build sustainable economies. Instead of treating climate change, epidemic disease and social upheaval as distinct phenomena, the institute"s 800 scientists study the links among such problems—and work to translate their insights into action. Sachs also chairs blue-ribbon panels for the World Health Organization, advises U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on development issues and circles the globe pleading with policymakers to support the Global Fund to Fight AIDS. In the coming year he"ll help seed new treatment-and-prevention programs throughout Asia and Africa. From Sachs"s perspective, controlling AIDS is not only a moral imperative but also a practical necessity. As he is forever trying to convince political leaders, disease can perpetuate poverty, ruin economies and undermine civic order. As a Sachs-led WHO commission concluded last year, "The burden of disease in some low-income regions...stands as a barrier to economic growth and must be addressed frontally and centrally in any comprehensive development strategy." As a group, the world"s richest countries now spend just $6 billion a year in health-related development assistance. The Sachs commission concluded that by raising the commitment to $27 billion by 2007 and $38 billion by 2015, we would save 8 million lives every year while improving a third of the world"s prospects for prosperity.

WHERE do the world's poor live? The obvious answer: in poor countries. But in a recent series of articles Andy Sumner of Britain's Institute of Development Studies showed that the obvious answer is wrong. Four-fifths of those surviving on less than $2 a day, he found, live in middle-income countries with a gross national income per head of between $1,000 and $12,500, not poor ones. His finding reflects the fact that a long but inequitable period of economic growth has lifted many developing countries into middle-income status but left a minority of their populations mired in poverty. Since the countries involved include giants like China and India, even a minority amounts to a very large number of people. That matters because middle-income countries can afford to help their own poor. If most of the poverty problem lies within their borders, then foreign aid is less relevant to poverty reduction. A better way to help would be to make middle-income countries' domestic policies more "pro-poor". Now Mr. Sumner's argument faces a challenge. According to Homi Kharas of the Brookings Institution and Andrew Rogerson of Britain's Overseas Development Institute, "by 2025 most absolute poverty will once again be concentrated in low-income countries." They argue that as middle-income countries continue to make progress against poverty, its incidence there will fall. However, the number of poor people is growing in "fragile" states, which the authors define as countries which cannot meet their populations' expectations or manage these through the political process (sounds like some European nations, too). The pattern that Mr. Sumner describes, they say, is a passing phase. Messrs Kharas and Rogerson calculate that the number of poor in "non-fragile" states has fallen from almost 2 billion in 1990 to around 500m now; they think it will go on declining to around 200m by 2025. But the number of poor in fragile states is not falling—a testament both to the growing number of poor, unstable places and to their fast population growth. This total has stayed flat at about 500m since 1990 and, the authors think, will barely shift until 2025. As early as next year, the number of poor in what are sometimes called FRACAS (fragile and conflict-affected states) could be greater than the number in stable ones. That would imply something different to Mr. Sumner's view: instead of being irrelevant to poverty reduction, foreign aid will continue to be vital, since fragile states (unlike middle-income ones) cannot afford to help the poor but instead need help themselves.

A war on sugar has begun in the UK that echoes the nation"s successful campaign against salt. The effort is【C1】______because it could help to reduce obesity, but cutting sugar out of people"s diets poses【C2】______challenges. Last week, a group of academics and policy【C3】______specializing in medicine and【C4】______announced that they had formed a campaign group, Action on Sugar. Their idea is to convince manufacturers to【C5】______and gradually lower the【C6】______of sugar added to foods—so slowly that it isn"t missed by【C7】______.It is essentially the same【C8】______as a campaign that is【C9】______credited with reducing British people"s salt intake. Over the past decade, CASH, a non-government organisation, helped to create anti-salt【C10】______ aimed at the general public, 【C11】______year-by-year targets for companies to reduce salt levels. These were 【C12】______but had the backing of the government, and it was【C13】______that the targets would be legally enforced if companies【C14】______. Most manufacturers lowered their salt levels —and, 15 , there has been a【C15】______per cent 【C16】______in salt intake in the UK, according to CASH. Repeating the trick with sugar may be more【C17】______not least because we do not know for sure if our palates (sense of taste) can adjust to eating food that is less【C18】______. By contrast, studies have shown that if volunteers are forced to eat a less salty diet, over several weeks they gradually begin to【C19】______food that is less salty. "There"s no reason to think that would not hold【C20】______for sweet taste too," says Charles Spence, a neurogas-tronomist at the University of Oxford.

Though some people have suggested that women should return to housework in order to leave (1)_____ jobs for men, the idea has been rejected by both women and men in public (2)_____ polls. Lately some union officials have suggested that too many women are employed in types of work were (3)_____ for men and that women should step aside to make (4)_____ for unemployed young men. They argue that women, especially women in their child-bearing years. (5)_____ delay economic development and result (6)_____ lower productivity, poor quality and inefficiency. To solve the problem, they suggested that working women stay at home (7)_____ their husbands or brothers were given double wages. They argue that (8)_____ these circumstances, families would (9)_____ their same level of income, and women could run the house and (10)_____ children much better. The suggestion, (11)_____, has been flatly rejected by 9 out of 10 people (12)_____. Some other people have suggested another way (13)_____ "phased employment "theory. The theory suggests that a woman worker take (14)_____ from her job when she is seven months pregnant and stay off the job (15)_____ her baby reaches the age of 3.@It suggests that women (16)_____ leave receive 75 percent of their (17)_____ salary and be allowed to return to work after the three-year period. This will (18)_____ children, women, their families and the society and it (19)_____ seems to be more acceptable than the suggestion (20)_____ women return to their homes forever.

BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B

King Richard III was a monster. He poisoned his wife, stole the throne from his two young nephews and ordered them to be smothered in the Tower of London. Richard was a sort of Antichrist the King—"that bottled spider, that poisonous bunch-backed toad". Anyway, that was Shakespeare"s version. Shakespeare did what the playwright does: he turned history into a vivid, articulate, organized dream-repeatable nightly. He put the crouchback onstage, and sold tickets. And who would say that the real Richard known to family and friends was not identical to Shakespeare"s memorably loathsome creation? The actual Richard went dimming into the past and vanished. When all the eye-witnesses are gone, the artist"s imagination begins to twist. Variations on the King Richard Effect are at work in Oliver Stone"s JFK. Richard III was art, but it was propaganda too. Shakespeare took the details of his plot from Tudor historians who wanted to blacken Richard"s name. Several centuries passed before other historians began to write about Richard"s virtues and suggest that he may have been a victim of Tudor malice and what is the cleverest conspiracy of all: art. JFK is a long and powerful harangue about the death of the man Stone keeps calling "the slain young king". What are the rules of Stone"s game? Is Stone functioning as commercial entertainer? Propagandist? Documentary filmmaker? Historian? Journalist? Fantasist? Sensationalist? Crazy conspiracy monger? Lone hero crusading for the truth against a corrupt Establishment? Answer: some of the above. The first superficial effect of JFK is to raise angry little scruples like welts in the conscience. Wouldn"t it be absurd if a generation of younger Americans, with no memory of 1963, were to form their ideas about John Kennedy"s assassination from Oliver Stone"s report of it? But worse things have happened—including, perhaps, the Warren Commission report? Stone uses a suspect, mixed art form, and JFK raises the familiar ethical and historical problems of docudrama. But so what? Artists have always used public events as raw material, have taken history into their imaginations and transformed it. The fall of Troy vanished into the Iliad. The Battle of Borodino found its most memorable permanence in Tolstoy"s imagining of it in War and Peace. Especially in a world of insatiable electronic storytelling, real history procreates, endlessly conjuring new versions of itself. Public life has become a metaphysical breeder of fictions. Watergate became an almost continuous television miniseries—although it is interesting that the movie of Woodward and Bernstein"s All The President"s Men stayed close to the known facts and, unlike JFK, did not validate dark conjecture.

Crying is hardly an activity encouraged by society. Tears, whether they are of sorrow, anger, or joy, typically make Americans feel uncomfortable and embarrassed. The shedder of tears is likely to apologize, even when a devastating tragedy was the provocation. The observer of tears is likely to do everything possible to put an end to the emotional outpouring. But judging from recent studies of crying behavior, links between illness and crying and the chemical composition of tears, both those responses to tears are often inappropriate and may even be counterproductive . Humans are the only animals definitely known to shed emotiomal tears. Since evolution has given rise to few, if any, purposeless physiological responses, it is logical to assume that crying has one or more functions that enhance survival. Although some observers have suggested that crying is a way to elicit assistance from others(as a crying baby might from its mother), the shedding of tears is hardly necessary to get help. Vocal cries would have been quite enough, more likely than tears to gain attention. So, it appears, there must be something special about tears themselves. Indeed, the new studies suggest that emotional tears may play a direct role in alleviating stress. University of Minnesota researchers who are studying the chemical composition of tears have recently isolated two important chemicals from emotional tears. Both chemicals are found only in tears that are shed in response to emotion. Tears shed because of exposure to cut onion would contain no such substance. Researchers at several other institutions are investigating the usefulness of tears as a means of diagnosing human ills and monitoring drugs. At Tulane University"s Tear Analysis Laboratory Dr. Peter Kastl and his colleagues report that they can use tears to detect drug abuse and exposure to medication, to determine whether a contact lens fits properly of why it may be uncomfortable, to study the causes of "dry eye" syndrome and the effects of eye surgery, and perhaps even to measure exposure to environmental pollutants. At Columbia University Dt. Liasy Faris and colleagues are studying tears for clues to the diagnosis of diseases away from the eyes. Tears can be obtained painlessly without invading the body and only tiny amounts are needed to perform highly refined analyses.

And it is imagined by many that the operations of the common mind can by no means be compared with these processes, and that they have to be required by a sort of special training.

BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B

"Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine." It's a classic quote from the film Casablanca, but can a computer【C1】______the magic of such classic lines? Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil and colleagues at Cornell University have taught a computer to【C2】______classic quotes with an accuracy【C3】______that of mankind. It means computers might one day help film【C4】______test their latest classic lines. The Cornell team collected quotes from the Internet Movie Database, which contains a list of lines flagged by users as deserving to be【C5】______. The context【C6】______a line is uttered can make a quote more notable, so as a control, the team【C7】______each classic quote with an ordinary one from the【C8】______context It was the same【C9】______and spoken by the same character at around the same point in the film. The computer analysed the pairs of quotes— around 2200 in total—for language【C10】______, unusual words, and word combinations. The computer【C11】______to recognize several characteristics【C12】______to the classic quotes, creating a model that could help find them. "The phrases contain【C13】______combinations of words, but at the same time they have a sentence structure that is common, so they are【C14】______to use," says Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil. The analysis also showed that classic lines often have a(n) 【C15】______: they can be widely used because they don't contain words that【C16】______them to a specific context. The model was able to【C17】______between classic and ordinary quotes with 64 percent accuracy.【C18】______scored 78 percent The team【C19】______that political candidates could use the model to assess their【C20】______.

A deal is a deal—except, apparently, when Entergy is involved. The company, a major energy supplier in New England, provoked justified outrage in Vermont last week when it announced it was reneging on a longstanding commitment to abide by the state' s strict nuclear regulations. Instead, the company has done precisely what it would not:challenge the constitutionality of Vermont' s rules in the federal court, as part of a desperate effort to keep its Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant running. It' s a stunning move. The conflict has been surfacing since 2002, when the corporation bought Vermont's only nuclear power plant, an aging reactor in Vernon. As a condition of receiving state approval for the sale, the company agreed to seek permission from state regulators to operate past 2012. In 2006, the state went a step further, requiring that any extension of the plant's license be subject to Vermont legislature's approval. Then, too, the company went along. Either Entergy never really intended to live by those commitments, or it simply didn' t foresee what would happen next. A string of accidents, including the partial collapse of a cooling tower in 2007 and the discovery of an underground pipe system leakage, raised serious questions about both Vermont Yankee' s safety and Entergy's management—especially after the company made misleading statements about the pipe. Enraged by Entergy's behavior, the Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 last year against allowing an extension. Now the company is suddenly claiming that the 2002 agreement is invalid because of the 2006 legislation, and that only the federal government has regulatory power over nuclear issues. The legal issues in the case are obscure: whereas the Supreme Court has ruled that states do have some regulatory authority over nuclear power, legal scholars say that Vermont case will offer a precedent-setting test of how far those powers extend. Certainly, there are valid concerns about the patchwork regulations that could result if every state sets its own rules. But had Entergy kept its word, that debate would be beside the point. The company seems to have concluded that its reputation in Vermont is already so damaged that it has noting left to lose by going to war with the state. But there should be consequences. Permission to run a nuclear plant is a public trust. Entergy runs 11 other reactors in the United States, including Pilgrim Nuclear station in Plymouth. Pledging to run Pilgrim safely, the company has applied for federal permission to keep it open for another 20 years. But as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission(NRC)reviews the company' s application, it should keep in mind what promises from Entergy are worth.

Although there are many skillful Braille readers, thousands of other blind people find it difficult to learn that system. They are thereby【C1】______from the world of books and newspapers, having to【C2】______on friends to read aloud to them. A young scientist named Raymond Kurzweil has now designed a computer which is a major【C3】______in providing aid to the【C4】______. His machine, Cyclops, has a camera that【C5】______any page, interprets the print into sounds, and then delivers them orally in a robot-like【C6】______through a speaker. By pressing the appropriate buttons on Cyclops's keyboard, a blind person can "read" any【C7】______document in the English language. This remarkable invention represents a tremendous【C8】______forward in the education of the handicapped. At present, Cyclops costs $50,000. 【C9】______, Mr. Kurzweil and his associates are preparing a smaller【C10】______improved version that will sell for【C11】______than half that price. Within a few years, Kurzweil【C12】______the price range will be low enough for every school and library to【C13】______one. Michael Hingson, Director of the National Federation for the Blind, hopes that【C14】______will be able to buy home【C15】______of Cyclops for the price of a good television set. Mr. Hingson's organization purchased five machines and is now【C16】______them in Maryland, Colorado, Iowa, California, and New York. Blind people have been【C17】______in those tests, making lots of【C18】______suggestions to the engineers who helped to produce Cyclops. "This is the first time that blind people have ever done individual studies【C19】______a product was put on the market," Hingson said. Most manufacturers believed that having the blind help the blind was like telling disabled people to teach other disabled people. In that【C20】______the manufacturers have been the blind ones.

A fundamental problem for understanding the evolution of human language has been the lack of significant parallels among nonhuman primates. Several studies found that nonhuman primates do not have a vocal tract. However, such points have been challenged by recent research, suggesting that nonhuman primates may after all be valuable models for understanding the evolution of speech and language. The main animal model for vocal learning has been birdsong acquisition. However, there are crucial differences between birdsong acquisition and human language learning. And given some severe limitations, for example, birds have two vocal organs and do not have the flexible supralaryn-geal structures that facilitate speech, of birdsong as a model of speech, there is value in seeking other appropriate parallels among mammals. Recent studies on macaques and baboons have shown that the vocal tracts of these monkeys can produce a full range of human-like vowels. Turn-taking is a key to fluent human conversation and has been thought to be unique to humans. One study found that captive chimpanzees increasingly share resources when resources are diminished. Collaborative turn-taking for food has been seen in other primates. These recent studies show that there is value in looking for the evolutionary origins of speech and language in nonhuman primates. Human speech and language are highly complex systems with multiple components. Thus, to fully explain language origins, researchers must seek multiple models that represent both diverging and converging evolutionary processes. There may also be differences among primate species in the developmental processes that parallel human language acquisition. However, no studies have yet described vowel-like sounds in these monkeys, so marmosets and tamarins may be useful primarily for developmental studies. It is probable that early humans faced evolutionary pressures that differed from those encountered by other primates and that have made our complex communication system adaptive. Language may have been important for coordinating activities in large cooperative groups. If individuals can thrive without complex vocal signaling, there would be little motivation to push the communication further. Different sensory and motor systems may be important. We tend to evaluate language through a vocal / auditory system, whereas research on apes is beginning to illustrate the complexity of gestural communication. Nonhuman primates do not talk, but we should not expect them to. Each species has its own adaptations for communication. Nevertheless, there is much about language evolution that we can learn from nonhuman primates, provided that we study a variety of species and consider the multiple components of speech and language.

Homework has never been terribly popular with students and even many parents, but in recently years it has been particularly scorned. School districts across the country, most recently Los Angeles Unified, are revising their thinking on this educational ritual. Unfortunately, L.A. Unified has produced an inflexible policy which mandates that with the exception of some advanced courses, homework may no longer count for more than 10% of a student' s academic grade. This rule is meant to address the difficulty that students from impoverished or chaotic homes might have in completing their homework. But the policy is unclear and contradictory. Certainly, no homework should be assigned that students cannot complete on their own or that they cannot do without expensive equipment. But if the district is essentially giving a pass to students who do not do their homework because of complicated family lives, it is going riskily close to the implication that standards need to be lowered for poor children. District administrators say that homework will still be a part of schooling; teachers are allowed to assign as much of it as they want. But with homework counting for no more than 10% of their grades, students can easily skip half their homework and see very little difference on their report cards. Some students might do well on state tests without completing their homework, but what about the students who performed well on the tests and did their homework? It is quite possible that the homework helped. Yet rather than empowering teachers to find what works best for their students, the policy imposes a flat, across-the-board rule. At the same time, the policy addresses none of the truly thorny questions about homework. If the district finds homework to be unimportant to its students' academic achievement, it should move to reduce or eliminate the assignments, not make them count for almost nothing. Conversely, if homework matters, it should account for a significant portion of the grade. Meanwhile, this policy does nothing to ensure that the homework students receive is meaningful or appropriate to their age and the subject, or that teachers are not assigning more than they are willing to review and correct. The homework rules should be put on hold while the school board, which is responsible for setting educational policy, looks into the matter and conducts public hearings. It is not too late for L.A. Unified to do homework right.

场景：一组面试的大学毕业生正在等待某个公司主管的面试，他们面带微笑，各自憧憬着美好的未来—高薪、高职、大房子、跑车、沙滩海岸带薪假期…但他们都忽略了一件事，那就是他们必须从头做起、努力工作才能换回梦想的一切。 1) 用自己的话描述以上情境； 2) 试着分析上述情境体现出的心态； 3) 你的观点。 You should write about 160—200 words neatly.